• How to Quiet Comparison-itis & Start Feeling Better About Yourself

  • Jan 31 2024
  • Length: 11 mins
  • Podcast

How to Quiet Comparison-itis & Start Feeling Better About Yourself

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  • This week, a client in my mentorship program who’s leading the development of a brand-new community center, shared that while things are going really well, she’s also noticing a lot of uncomfortable feelings coming up in response to the work. She wrote: “Things are good, and I have waves of self-doubt and fear that make me anxious - Like, how can I possibly actually do this? Often it comes in the form of a negative self-comparison to an imaginary other person who would be doing all this better. What practice could I engage in to keep me out of comparison mode?” In today’s episode, I offer six practices to soothe the inner voice of comparison. If you sometimes hear a voice of comparison, self-doubt, and fear arise as you reach toward your goals, this is for you.   CLICK HERE TO READ THE SHOWNOTES This week, a client in my mentorship program who’s leading the development of a brand-new community center, shared that while things are going really well, with more and more organizations getting involved, she’s also noticing a lot of uncomfortable feelings coming up in response to the work. I’ll share with you what she wrote to me, and I invite you to see if it sounds familiar: She wrote: “Things are good, and I have waves of self-doubt and fear that make me anxious – Like, how can I possibly actually do this? Often it comes in the form of a negative self-comparison to an imaginary other person who would be doing all this better. I’m wondering what practice I could engage in to keep me out of comparison mode, especially as more people get involved and I anticipate an increase in self-doubt/judgment coming up for me if I don’t pay attention?” Now, in case you, too, hear voices of comparison, self-doubt, and fear arise as you reach toward your big goals, I want to share with you what I told my client and offer you six practices to soothe your inner voice of comparison. Let’s dive in. 1. Instead of trying to stay out of comparison mode, expect that your brain will automatically compare, especially when you’re facing a new challenge. In her book, Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown writes that research demonstrates that our human brains are physiologically designed to compare, but we have a choice about how we respond to the comparisons that arise. Brown writes: “The bad news is that our hardwiring makes us default to comparison—it seems to happen to us rather than be our choice. The good news is that we get to choose how we’re going to let it affect us.” 2. Give your inner voice of comparison a name. When a part of ourselves is struggling, it can be as though we’re looking through a mask without realizing the mask is there. But when we give names to the struggling parts of ourselves, it’s like we take our masks off and can come into a conversation with them. With that in mind, I invite you to give the part of yourself that compares or doubts or judges you a name. Make sure to choose a name the part would want to call itself, a name that is free from judgment. I call the comparing part of myself the Monitor, which is a name that I learned from Emily and Amelia Nagoski’s book, Burnout. They write: “The Monitor is the brain mechanism that manages the gap between where we are and where we are going… Technically, it’s called the ‘discrepancy-reducing/-increasing feedback loop’ and ‘criterion velocity,’ but people fall asleep immediately when we say that, so we just call it the Monitor… The Monitor knows (1) what your goal is; (2) how much effort you’re investing in that goal; and (3) how much progress you’re making. It keeps a running tally of your effort-to-progress ratio, and it has a strong opinion about what that ratio should be…[1]” So perhaps you’d also like to call your inner voice of comparison the Monitor. Or maybe, like Don Miguel Ruiz does in his book, the The Four Agreements, you’ll call this part the Judge. RuPaul calls hers the Inner Saboteur.
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