Don’t compare yourself to others

Is comparing yourself to others only making you feel bad about yourself and your body? Let’s not waste energy on comparisons, as it keeps us from achieving our goals.

“Envy makes us feel empty even when we’re full,” says pastor Alex Ehly is referring to how people compare themselves to others while looking at their cups as half empty instead of half full. Little did he realise how much his statement hits a cord with us desperate dieters. We spend our days craving all sorts of things we can’t have that we miss enjoying what we can have!

We tend to believe that the grass is always greener on the other side. Sadly, all that comparing, craving and coveting steals our joy as we waste our days chasing after the wind!

A different strategy

What would happen if we tried a different strategy to replace things that leave us feeling empty with something that actually fills us? No, I’m not talking about doughnuts (Nice try!). What if we spent less time trying to look like the perfect neighbours next door and more time getting to know them?

You’ll find that they have their own challenges and we don’t have a monopoly on that. You might learn something from them to help you deal with your issues. 

You’ll also discover that when you go beyond outward appearances, you stop defining people by how they look. Instead, you begin to see them less through superficial lenses and more through a deeper understanding of who they are as human beings.

Think about how much time you’ll save when you stop comparing yourself to others. That time could be put to better use thinking about something life-giving instead of life-sucking. The only person we should be comparing ourselves to is our own self as we seek to do better today than we did yesterday and the day before.

There are a million improvements we each can work on that we can practice daily if we set our mind to it but when we’re busy looking at someone else, we end up taking our focus off our own goals.

It’s time to pause

Halt. Stop. Quit fooling yourself into believing the lies the world keeps trying to feed us. This is how advertisements and television commercials work. They try to sell you something you’ll never use, making you think you can’t live without it. They make it look so cool and show other people envying you for buying their product. Not to mention all the junk food commercials that make you feel hungry even when you’re not, causing you to break down and give in to the cravings.

The crazy thing is that we’ve all done this because we naturally envy and crave what we see. It takes intentionality to become aware of our thoughts and to stop doing what everyone else is doing, even if it means swimming upstream in a culture that keeps going downstream!

You deserve better. Give yourself some credit and take the higher road less travelled. Here’s to a healthier life physically, mentally and emotionally as we joyfully start living our lives to our fullest potential. 

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine