Hey There Friends!
Have you ever had a time in your life when it seemed like EVERYONE around you was winning? I mean, like your best friend met the love of their life, your coworker just received a promotion, your brother got a huge raise, heck even the dog got a new house! Everyone was having their moment. While everyone’s life was seemingly changing for the better, your life seemed to be at the looongest standstill. If you’re anything like me, you’re truly happy when you see good things happening for others, especially when it’s someone close to you. You’re totally excited to celebrate their wins with them, but in the back of your mind, you wonder what the holdup is on your own big life change. Believe me when I say if you’ve ever felt this way, you are not alone.
A few years ago, I experienced these exact feelings. My classmates were landing great jobs, my friends were starting families, colleagues were starting their own practices…name something new and exciting, and I knew someone who was doing it! So, what was my problem? Why was there nothing new and exciting happening to me? Guys, listen, I seriously wanted to write a complaint letter to someone about my life. Have you ever been served the wrong meal at a restaurant, or the wrong drink at a bar, and had a little bit of an attitude when you sent it back? Well, that was my entire mood about my life. I wanted to tell somebody, ANYBODY that this is not the lifestyle I ordered, bring me the top shelf, please! LOL! I was totally convinced that I either was doing something terribly wrong or life was just unfair, and I’d been dealt an unlucky hand.
After a while of sulking and tallying up “life points” with a final score of Chrissy- 0, Everybody, but Chrissy-10,000, I realized that having these little private pity parties was getting me absolutely nowhere. I also realized something else. There was something that I had let creep into almost every area of my life. Something that I’d allowed to strip my ability to focus on all of the goodness within me and around me. That something was comparison. I had somehow started placing my attention on everyone else’s victories, and worse than that, I’d found myself believing that their victories were my failures. Let me tell you, 100 Comparison Lane is one miserable place to reside.
To be honest, I can’t even tell you how I arrived at this place, but once I realized what was happening, I was determined to fix it, or at least work on it. So, I whipped out my journal and began to write. I wrote about how I truly felt; invisible, excluded, bitter, angry, like I wasn’t enough. It was tough, and kinda embarrassing, to actually acknowledge these feelings; but even more, it was rewarding to face them and expose them. Exposing them took away their power. As I continued to write, I listed some good things about me; the things about me that made me proud. These were simple moments like donating clothes to the local women’s shelter or staying at work a little longer to help out a coworker. As I continued to write, I jotted down the things about me that set me apart from others; traits that were uniquely mine. The more I studied my lists, the more aware I became of my own wins and victories. In a sense, I really was losing because I was attempting win at someone else’s race instead of focusing on my own course! I had allowed comparison to take away everything about me that I DESERVED to be proud of.
Now, making these lists was not the magic cure for my “comparison disease”, but it made me more aware of it, which helps me to stop it when it tries to creep back in. Notice, I said “helps” me and not “helped” me. You see, this is an ongoing process and a lifetime work. We will always be tempted to look at the lives of others and compare them to our own. I believe that it’s just our nature. However, we must remember that we will never win at some else’s race, but we are already the winners of our own course. We are winning, friends!!
If you happen to struggle with comparison, I’m challenging you to write down the things about you that make you proud, and the things about you that are unique to you. You’ll likely come up with a list longer than you imagined just by switching your focus to your own journey!
Keep me posted on your discoveries!