5 Ways to Beat the Comparison Game

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Adaptive Strategies to Implement When Comparison is Crushing Your Spirit

We’ve all played the grueling comparison game, and, let’s be honest, we have all lost miserably at times. Can we ever really win this game? We can if we choose to employ strategies that challenge the very essence of comparison.

Areas Commonly Subject to Comparison

Take a moment to consider where you tend to fall on the game board of comparison. The spots we “land on” are the areas in our lives that we tend to spend the most time comparing to.

Do you hover around the spots regarding looks or social status? Do you keep landing on the financial status spot? Or maybe you find yourself spending a lot of time on spots like marriage and family. Wherever we land on the game board, the finish line seems just out of sight. Why?

Effects of Comparison

There is no winner in the game of comparison because the very nature of playing has the potential to breed negativity and even jealousy if we play dirty. We seem to lose sight of what we have by focusing on what we don’t.

Playing the comparison game is a losing battle because your journey is just that- YOUR journey.

| Related reading: 17 Ways to Visualize Your Highest Self and Start Showing Up as Her

Your path in life is specifically yours. The Jones’ path is theirs. There’s no sense in trying to keep up with them because they’re on a different route of this crazy game board.

Minding your own business and only worrying about your own path and journey actually feels so much better than concerning yourself with others.

Comparison can manifest itself in two forms:

• We compare ourselves to those with more and end up feeling worse because we are not as far along in our journey.
  • This causes us to feel even worse because we don’t measure up to the incredibly high standards we think we should be meeting. We end up telling ourselves, ever so subtly, that we are not good enough.

• We think comparing ourselves to those with less will build us up.
  • This causes unnecessary and negative pride and produces a ripple effect where we can cause others to spiral into a losing battle in the same comparison game.
  • Others then feel less than and may in turn compare to those with even less in attempt to build themselves back up. Comparison can be cyclical if we are not careful.

| Related Reading: You Are Who You Surround Yourself With: Who the Right People Are and How to Find Them

Strategies to Beat Comparison

So how do we play to win? The struggle of comparison is very real, but here are five tactics you can take to your next game.

1. Focus on what you have and what you’ve got going for you.

Choosing to wear gratitude glasses and looking through a lens of thankfulness will allow you to better appreciate what you do have and the person you are, rather than focusing on what you don’t have and who you are not… yet. Doing this will bring you some serious inner peace.

Concentrate your headspace on the qualities you consider your strengths to increase your self-worth and confidence. This will allow you to better resist the urge to compare because you will begin to feel like enough.

2. Focus on this very moment, not the future.

While it’s healthy to look to the future and make plans, a fixation on your progress (or lack of) may lead to discouragement and a feeling of “stuckness.”

Allowing ourselves to be fully present in each moment we live out will not only distract us from the urge to compare our progress and standing in life to others but also allow us to become content where we are, while still striving for growth.

3. Build others up and congratulate their successes.

Do this genuinely or not at all.

You can actually choose to be happy when a coworker receives the raise you thought was coming your way, or when a friend closes on a house, when your offers have been consistently rejected.

The key is choosing to feel thrilled for them instead of jealous. Choosing to lift them up in praise rather than tear them down with envy.

Is this hard? Incredibly difficult, actually. But as with everything else, practice makes perfect. Try it out and see how it works for you.

4. Focus on creating meaningful goals to get to where you want to be.

Try writing or drawing them to keep a record of the goals you set so you can log progress toward them. It is helpful to create timelines in which you want to see progress.

Be sure your goals are attainable and realistic. Goals that are overly lofty will be too overwhelming to begin, let alone make progress toward.

Break your goals up into small, manageable chunks that are easy to accomplish. Every day is an opportunity to take a small step toward your goal, and in the interest of our game analogy, move a spot or two forward on the game board.

5. Live YOUR journey, not someone else’s.

Let’s think literally about a path. The terrain of your path matches the type of shoes you are wearing, figuratively.

You’re wearing sandals and your path is through the dusty, dry desert, while the Jones’ are wearing hiking shoes because their path is through winding mountain trails. You certainly won’t get far on the Jones’ rocky, steep path with your sandals, just as their journey wouldn’t bode well through the desert with hiking shoes.

Similarly, the distance of your path is relative to the training in life that you’ve gone through. The difficulty of your path is comparable to what you can handle in this moment. You were designed to complete your journey, and nobody else’s.

Keep these things in mind the next time you are tempted to compare yourself to others. Let yourself be reminded of the healthier, more adaptive strategies to combat comparison.

Let’s Bring it Home

Focusing on what you have, staying in the moment, celebrating others, creating goals, and remembering to stay on your very own path are key to beating the comparison game.

Choose one of these strategies and implement it. None of us are successfully implementing all five strategies on a daily basis. The goal is to arm yourself with techniques in your arsenal so that when the comparison game presents itself, you are ready to conquer it!

Want more info?  Check out the devotional that inspired this article here.

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