Losing Yourself in Comparison

Sarah Powers
Aug 18, 2019
2 min read

"I wish I was pretty like her, skinny like her, smart like her."

I wish that my personality was like hers...."

For years I have struggled with thoughts similar to the ones listed above. I desperately wanted to love myself and be confidant in who I was, but comparing myself to other people has always been like second nature to me.

It would go both ways as well, not only would I compare myself to people that seemed to have it more together more than me, but I would also compare myself to the ones I felt I was doing better than. It was a continuous, vicious ugly cycle, one that I could never seem to break free from.

I had a very deep problem with comparison, and it was making me a miserable and ugly person. Comparison has always been such a part of me that I often didn't realize just how much I was doing it. I spent so much time, energy, and even money trying to change how I looked and dressed, all to be a version of a person that I had seen in someone else. I focused so much on the person that I wished I could be that I no longer knew who I really was.

Comparison causes us to lose our identity. When we are so fixated on wanting someone else's life we lose sight of God's specific plan for ours. We become so obsessed with someone else that we wish we could be, that we aren't even living our own life. How sad it is to think that God designed us each uniquely and beautifully, yet we would rather be a poor copy of someone else.

Think about it, why didn't God just make us all the same? Why didn't he make us to all look the same, talk the same, and think the same? God has made each of us different because he has different plans for each of our lives, because he found an unmatched beauty in each of us. He gives us different stories, different struggles, different strengths and different weaknesses. He never wanted us to all be the same.

When we realize that God created us all to be our own unique person we realize there is no need to compare ourselves to a person that we were never meant to be!

It can be really hard to stop comparing yourself to others, I still struggle with comparison myself. But changing your mindset can help to make all the difference. It is perfectly good to look up to and admire others, but when it turns into envy and desperation to change who you are, that's when comparison has taken over.

How can we change our habit of comparing ourselves to others?

Appreciate that God has made us all unique.

Compliment others instead of being jealous of something they have.

Take a social media fast.

Remember who you are a child of God - loved and created uniquely and for a purpose.

If you have any thoughts or ways that you deal with comparison, I'd love to hear them!

Thank you for reading,

-Sarah P.

*photos taken from www.dailyartmagazine.com & www.lifebuzz.com