Comparison Robs You of Celebration

Comparing ourselves to others is a natural tendency, but it can be destructive. Some of us use comparison to test whether we’re good enough or if we’ve achieved enough at this point in our journey. Some use comparison to judge others’ progress on whether they’re worthy of our time and attention. Or to overinflate their own standing in their field.

Celebrating Others

It’s difficult to celebrate the accomplishments of a friend, colleague, or family member if we’re comparing their happiness and accomplishments to our own. Another person’s accomplishments are not about us. When we compare ourselves to another, we’re evaluating our own accomplishments and worth against theirs. As if that will somehow measure our success. While we know that another person’s achievements are about celebrating that person and their work, comparison twists that happy moment into a way we condemn ourselves. We start to feel bad about what we haven’t done, about the path we’ve chosen, and where we are on that path.

Celebrating Ourselves

I’ve managed to make great success in celebrating others. Where I’ve recently discovered I’m lacking is in celebrating my own achievements. Comparison can rob you of celebrating your own milestones because they seem small. There are a lot of people out there who’d like to celebrate those marks of success no matter how small you’ve made them in your mind.

Is there Healthy Comparison?

One of the best ways I’ve discovered to evaluate my progress is to track where I’ve been. One of my own struggles has to do with social media. Writers are so often told that we need to have an online presence. As an introvert and person who came from a profession that discouraged an online presence, this is a huge hurdle for me. It gives me an incredible amount of anxiety. One thing that I’ve done is mark when I joined each platform and track the number of followers for each site yearly. Social media is an area where the growth is small and unnoticeable for me from day to day. I can’t convince myself to post more than once a week. Tracking the number of followers each year allows me to see that I am extending my reach. I keep adding new platforms, which all grow a bit each year. This has given me a better look at my progress.

Looking to the Future

As helpful as looking back at where you’ve been to get a better sense of your progress, it’s also helpful to look at where you’re going. Setting goals and evaluating your progress toward those goals is helpful in guiding you. Adjusting your course when you’ve lost sight of your goals or when you’ve started pursuing things that don’t help you reach your goal can be useful. Or, if opportunities you didn’t expect come up, adjust your goals to better reflect where you want to go now. I have a post that might help in your venture on How to Make Stronger Goals.