Compare yourself to no one...except yourself!

It's so hard in life in general to not compare yourself to others. I finally figured out (at the ripe ol' age of 44!!!) that you really just need to compare yourself to yourself. Say, for example you compare yourself right now to the you of a year ago. Do you like the way things are? Do you like who you are right now in comparison to who you were a year ago. And if not why not? What changes do you need to make to become the person you really want to be?

I think it's human nature to compare yourself to others but I try to fight that. If you think about it, what exactly will you gain from comparing yourself to others? It reminds me of that line in Desiderata that states, "If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself." Boy! Is that not true?!? I've been thinking about this lately because I noticed that I was doing this. I noticed how true this statement was. I would be pompous or completely inferior based on what part of my life I was comparing to someone else. I realized that didn't make me feel good. So I was reevaluating this and figured out that I really need to not do that. And then was when I realized it's great to compare myself to myself for the following reasons.

1) Accomplishments: It's very easy to see what you can and have accomplished if you compare yourself today to yourself last year or, heaven forbid, 10 years ago! Just try that. You'll see how great you feel about yourself. It's amazing what I have accomplished on both a personal and professional level.

2) Redirect: Seeing where you are compared to where you were and where you want to be it's easy to know if you need to redirect yourself. Are you on the right path or trajectory to reach your goals? No? Then redirect and you'll get there.

Hopefully your goal graph is going in the general direction of up and to the right as time moves along. That would mean you're aiming high and getting there!

3) Learning: You can easily see where you went wrong and whether you want to admit it to anyone else or not, you KNOW where you went wrong and what needs to change. So admit to yourself you messed up, learn from it and move on. Now you know more about yourself than you did last week or month or year. Don't you just LOVE learning more and more about yourself? I certainly do! And in addition to learning about yourself, look at what you're learning, period! Can you believe how much knowledge your brain can hold? It boggles the mind when you think about that. Learning makes you feel great and powerful and enabled. It makes you strive for more - yes, a thirst for knowledge! It doesn't get much better than that!

4) Improvements: Look at how many ways you have improved in yourself. Now how would you know that if you didn't compare yourself to yourself? If you compared yourself to Joe Shmo you certainly wouldn't know. If you're improving in almost every area of your life then you're doing great. And if you're not, maybe you need to do #2 and redirect. ;-)

That's my short list and maybe something to think about. I love that I have therapy for myself every time I write my blog! Who knew? That's one thing I didn't really realize blogging would do for me. Love it and encourage others to try it! It's the best! It's so freeing and fun. If I didn't enjoy it I certainly wouldn't do it!

Have a great weekend!