The Habit to STOP for a better mental health
Do you struggle with using a friend, a colleague, a mentor’s experience as a benchmark to how you’re supposed to feel? How you’re supposed to be advancing and developing in life?
Perhaps you feel jealous of a peer for having a loving, blissfully happy, instagrammable relationship while you’re still single.
Or maybe you’re annoyed at that colleague who constantly gets everything done while still having time to party out (unlike you drowning in piles of overdue reports to submit).
Why do we compare ourselves to others when it makes us feel miserable inside?
Social comparison
is the tendency to judge ourselves based on the performance and experience of another is a natural way for us to assess how we’re doing. And it:
shows us what’s available and possible
guides us to where we want to be
gives us feedback on how we fare to the society in general
usually happens when we’re feeling uncertain
encourages self-improvement
Yet, comparison can bring about negative mental health consequences when we fall into the trap of needing to measure up to everyone all the time, causing us to feel:
we’re never good enough
the competition is tough
we need more stuff to feel happy
the pressure to advance our skills when we don’t necessarily need to
suffocated, overwhelmed
in the constant loop of needing to be better
You can grow by doing social comparison the right way, encouraging yourself, using another’s success stories as an inspiration and motivation for you to persist on your dreams instead of getting caught in the trap of feeling “just not good enough”.
4 ways to stop negative social comparison:
1. Gratitude
Being grateful for what you have already – the relationships, material objects, experience, skill sets, health condition – sets you up to feeling good about your current situation. From this place of feeling abundant, you’re prone to search out for inspirations when viewing another person’s situation. Instead of feeling down and behind another person’s achievement, you are able to visualize yourself in the experience you wish for yourself.
2. Positive self-talk
Most of the negative conversations happens in the organ between your ears – your mind! Instead of putting yourself down for not achieving what’s on your bucket list or not being as quick in doing certain task as another person, encouraging yourself will be a healthier option when it comes to motivating yourself to take action. When you cheer on yourself, you’re giving an instruction to your mind which says: I’m may not be where I want to be yet, but if I keep showing up, I will get there. When you feel positive, you have more energy, and you get to the finishing line faster.
3. Reduce social media usage
Did you know that according to an article on 2017, it was reported that the total time spent on social media on average beats time spent eating and drinking, socializing, and grooming?
When we’re constantly surrounding ourselves with images, videos, texts of what’s going right in another person’s life, our natural ability to self-assess actually results in us comparing the glam experiences of others to our “dull” everyday life.
Having reward users with likes and comments and reactions for posts that are engaging, it’s in the nature of these applications that users post images, videos of themselves in positive light. But remember, everyone has their daily routine, and they’re likely showing just a small fraction of their lives on the internet.
4. Shine light on the root issue
What you’re seeing and comparing yourself to is often not the main reason causing you to feel bad about yourself. Rather than pitting against yourself, forcing yourself to do things faster, with more accuracy, with better precision, sit down and assess what’s truly driving these obsessive thoughts and behaviors to push yourself for more.
Ask yourself: what’s really driving this behavior? Why am I really feeling this way? What are other similar situations that cause me to feel this same way? Digging deep into your emotions you’ll find that the true reasons fuelling the need to achieve more and do more may stem from something unrelated to the original event triggering an emotional response.
If you’re seeking professional help with an emotional, personal, relational, health problem and would like to delve deeper into the root cause of why you’re experiencing certain symptoms of mental illness, head over to https://www.carinayeap.com/application , and submit your application to work 1-1 with me. We will get you there – to a happier life!
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