By Victoria Joanna  BBA, CNP, RNCP http://www.victoriajoanna.com/

  “If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater an lesser persons than yourself.” ~Max Ehrmann, Desiderata

This is one of my favourite poems.  It contains many wonderful nuggets of wisdom about life, but for now, let’s focus on the act of comparing ourselves to others. While often it stems from a place of not feeling “good enough”, comparing ourselves to others and how we perceive somebody else’s life can be the catalyst for creating dreams and goals we think will make us happy.

When I was in my late twenties, I had a coach say something to me that completely changed my perspective and way of thinking.  She explained that “when we compare ourselves to someone else, what we are doing is comparing their outsides to our insides”.  This means that while we see only the external, we make assumptions on how they feel.  What we are doing is projecting how we think it feels to be, do or have the thing we desire.  Think about that for a second, it could change your life.

When I was going through my career change this was a huge paradigm shift.  When I started the process of introspection and transition, I was amazed to learn how many women in senior corporate jobs weren’t happy.  For their own set of reasons, it didn’t provide them with the fulfillment they thought it would.  I was in the same position.  I thought I had wanted a certain life, in part based on what I had observed as a young women.  Now I wished someone would have told me that these successful women I admired weren’t necessarily as happy as they appeared!

I had always heard advice like “the grass is always greener” and “nothing is as it appears”, but I never really understood how it applied to the way I thought about my life until I heard the “insides and outsides” comparison.  Now, every time I catch myself having these types of thoughts, I assess whether I may be making assumptions based on my own internal dialogue.

Why is this important to be aware of?  When we set goals for ourselves by observing and admiring other people, we can set ourselves up for disappointment when we finally reach them.  Whether it’s how much we want to weigh, how we want to look, the job, house, or family we want to have.  All we know is that we want to feel a certain way and we think that those things will bring that feeling.  

As a result, we all get into this spiral of chasing the “illusion of fulfillment and happiness”.  It’s an illusion because it’s based on false beliefs, not necessarily reality.  We look outward to determine our goals rather than inward.  Yet the only way you can be truly happy is to be fully aligned with your own truth and authenticity.  You won’t find that by looking at other people’s external results.

So how do you set goals for yourself?  How do you create a life plan and a vision that are going to make you happy?  There is only one way.  You must go within yourself.  This is hard for many of us to do, as we have lived our entire lives trying to do the right thing, live up to others’ expectations or false assumptions about success, achievement and the ideal life.

For women in particular, this means questioning our assumptions about careers, family and relationships.   Stop assuming that the other women around you are all happy.  Stop wanting what they have and judging yourself for not having those things. 

At the moment we let go of all of the pre-conceived notions about what our life is supposed to look like, we free ourselves to make different choices, to pursue our dreams, even if they don’t seem like what “everyone else” would do.  When we live from this place of authentic freedom, we will have more joy, confidence and the clarity to define who we are and what we want.

When we step out of the comparison trap, we are finally free to be ourselves.