LMTV #60: Compare and Despair

Do you ever compare yourself to others? And then find yourself coming up short?

Comparisonitis. (noun) The compulsion to compare one’s accomplishments, characteristics, attributes, etc., to those of someone else in order to determine relative ranking or importance.

It’s a pretty common affliction, the kind of thing that almost everyone experiences from time to time.

To be sure, seeing someone else excel at something can certainly be inspiring. It can move something within us that makes us want to excel in some way, too. It can be a great motivational force that stirs our own Heart’s Desire and gets us moving in a direction that may bring us to the next greatest version of who we are meant to be. And what a wonderful feeling that can be!

In this sense, looking outward and making comparisons can actually serve us in a good way. But the problem is, many of us don’t stop there.

Many of us are continually comparing ourselves to others, and what we seem to end up doing is forging a pretty strong belief that we aren’t smart enough, bright enough, healthy enough, successful enough, and on, and on, ad nauseum. Can you relate to this?

Consider the toll it takes on us when we compare ourselves to others. We not only feel separation from the target(s) of our admiration—which can instantly have us feel down and alone—but we also feel a certain heaviness or unworthiness because of our underlying sense of “lack” or “being less than”. And this can dim our inner light even more.

This week the Soul Talk Guys have invited back Shadow Work facilitator and coach Junie Moon Schreiber to help shed some light on this very real problem—and something that she herself has had to deal with as part of her own journey. As Junie challenges us to consider:

If we could see the beauty in each of us, admire and praise others for their gifts and then look to ourselves to see our own unique expression, what might happen then?

Indeed. What might happen then? Well, that’s exactly what Tommy & David intend to find out this week—with Junie's help, of course!

The fact is, it’s hard to see your own special and unique gifts when you are busy comparing yourself to others. And you know what they say, right? “Out of sight, out of mind.” Meaning that, as long as you don’t see your own qualities, you tend to forget that they exist. So it takes some effort to bring your awareness back to yourself and to re-connect to those gifts. So this week’s episode will be a lot about remembering who you really are.

Go ahead, see the beauty in someone else. But then remember that there is great beauty within you, too.

Enjoy the video, and please submit a comment below!

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