142 Comparing Yourself to Others

We feel terrible when we do it, but we can’t help but compare ourselves and our bodies and feel envious. Let’s talk about why this happens and how to turn this gross feeling into a healthy, re-connection with yourself and resolve for what you want most.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• Why it’s normal to compare 
• How to reframe “It’s not fair” and “Why don’t I have that?” 
• How to transmute envy into wisdom 

• Instagram: @mindful_shape
• Free Self Coaching Resources
• Interested in getting coached by me? Go to my website mindfulshape.com

Transcript

This transcript was auto-generated, please forgive any weirdness.

 Hi, and welcome to The Mindful Shape Podcast. I'm Paula Parker. I am a certified coach who is here to help you be in charge with food and feel good in your body. By understanding yourself and reconnecting with yourself and your body in maybe a new way. So similar to the secret eating episode I did, which is number 78, if you wanna go back and listen to that, comparing yourself to others is another one of those topics that comes up in the comfort and security and safety of a coaching call.

But otherwise we don't talk about it that much. It's that shadowy part of ourselves that we try to avoid looking at. We pretend it isn't there until it is, right? We're on Instagram or Facebook, and the more we scroll the gloomier, we start to feel so, or maybe it's, you see someone you vaguely know.

Whether that's online or in person, like a friend of a friend or someone from high school or college, someone who maybe used to work with, or even maybe a close friend. We think this person is ahead of us. She looks better. She has the body that we want, or maybe something's happening in her life. We think she has a life that we want.

Or maybe you know, you're out in the world and you're at the beach or you're at the lake and you find yourself comparing your body to other bodies and thinking negatively about yours and yourself. You can start to feel pretty defeated, pretty deflated. It takes the fun out of being at the beach, right?

It takes the fun out of our summer. Why do we do this to ourselves? In psychology, there's research to support that we anchor up, meaning we tend to compare ourselves to those who have more of what we want, versus comparing ourself, you know, downstream to those who we perceive to have less. So our brain tends to do that by default.

So if your brain is doing this kind of filtering, you are getting a pretty warped and false view of the world and of women's bodies in general. Another reason we might do this is from an evolutionary perspective. We needed to assess where we stood amongst others, how we fit in the tribe, where we fitting in, where do we stand in relation to others?

What's our status? This is important information for a species who would literally die if you were too outside of the norm, if you were being too different from others. There was. A threat that you could be thrown out of the tribe, right? So literally for your survival, it makes sense that your brain would be good at organizing information, looking at status as a filter.

You could also take the view that we seek reflection in others because we are inherently mirrored. Beings, meaning what's going on in somebody else's brain is going to affect what's going on in our brain, what I'm thinking and feeling, right? There's mirror neurons and on some level what we notice in others reflects something alive that's within us, so envy.

When you compare yourself to others and you experience envy, it's a message just as all emotions are messages. Comparison reveals our inner world. What triggers you about others? Shows you not what you are deficient in or your deficits, but where you're being called to grow or love yourself more. Accept yourself more.

Be willing to be self-reflective in a very honest way, and have your own back. Support yourself. It's worth rethinking. Envy. Because of how you know, terrible. It makes you feel when you feel badly about yourself and your body, you are much less likely to treat yourself with the utmost reverence and eat very well.

You're less likely to take your supplements to move your body. You are much more likely to say, you know, screw it, me, those bag of chips, right? And overindulge and feel worse emotionally and physically. Maybe even more important or more critical, you're less likely to take care of yourself after you've overindulged, you're less likely to get back on track instead of self-compassion or understanding, you are sinking and self-loathing and despair.

So yeah, it's worth transmuting this, right? Changing that experience of envy into something else. So think of the last time you compared yourself or your body to someone else, someone else's life or their body. And don't worry, we won't spend a lot of time here, feelings that you might recall, whether you were privy to them in that moment, or it's more now upon reflection that you are.

You know, aware of them, you were likely to experience envy, resentment, feeling discouraged about your own path, feeling disheartened about your own, where you are with your body, or where you are with food and not enoughness or shame. Now, there's no wrong feeling, so don't feel like you did something wrong or have any guilt about what you experienced.

It's very natural as humans to have the experience of comparing ourselves to others. It's also very natural to have negative emotion. Like that's just the thing that's, you're a human, you're gonna experience negative emotions, so don't feel bad that you went through this. What we can do with that if we don't judge ourselves, but instead get curious and see it as a message, is to use the experience of comparison for our own growth.

And if you are on a path where you are trying to reach a certain weight or I. Shape the relationship you have with food. This can be part of that process. So how do we go about doing that? Number one, let's use it for self-reflection and reframing. For instance, notice if your brain is offering up any, all or nothing thinking in which you're seeing that they have what you don't.

It's black and white. They have it. You don't. You are less. But when you do that, you are missing the full reality, the full spectrum. For example. You are ignoring what you do have the traits you like about yourself and your body, the strength or flexibility of your body, the skills you have when it comes to how you're eating, your relationship with food, the choices that you make.

You are not less. You are simply on a different path. Instead of some unintentional thoughts like, it's not fair, or, why don't I have that? Ask yourself, what do I think they are feeling or experiencing? Because that is really the million dollar question. The answer to that question will tell you why you're envious, why you want.

What they have, what you perceive them to have a body like that. Is it confidence? Is it ease of movement? Is it wearing those clothes go deeper than that? What does it feel like to wear those clothes? Is it pride, self-acceptance? Are you pleased? Are you elated? Are you content? Are you joyful? Are you self-expressed, maybe even triumphant or carefree?

This is valuable information. This is why you want what you want. This is why you're doing the hard work. You're putting in the time. You're putting in the effort. It's not to buy the next size down. It's those feelings we are after. We want to have that lived experience, and it's valuable to know because we can start creating those feelings.

Now you can teach yourself to generate those feelings. I'll be talking more about this because it's a process that I'm currently going through. It's something I'm working on and learning about. I'm asking, you know, how do I develop more mental mastery? How do I transmute emotions to integrate rather than bypass negative emotion and intentionally generate.

You know how I wanna feel? This to me is more interesting than releasing those last 10 pounds, and I also believe happens to be the key to releasing those last 10 pounds. When you compare and feel envy, know that it is signaling a feeling and experience that you truly wanna have. It's information about what you care about.

What you really care about, use it as momentum helping you really double down on your goal. So don't let it blind you from all the progress that you've made so far, and how good you already have it in the body that you are in Now, don't bypass that. Use it as an opportunity to reinforce your commitment to yourself and your appreciation and reverence for your body.

So you recommit. You stand firm in your conviction to not only be responsible with food, but your relationship with yourself to use it to love yourself harder. When it hurts to see somebody living in a body that maybe you want or it hurts to see somebody have something that you want, use it as an opportunity to love yourself even harder as is in the body that you have now.

When you do that, you will transmute that envy. Into power. Now you're probably thinking, okay, yeah, but like how do I do that, right? It doesn't seem so easy. So to help with this process, here are some self-coaching questions that you can ask. I'm also gonna put this on my Instagram so you can find it there.

My Instagram account is at Mindful Shape. Number one is how did I come to believe I was less than if I wasn't a certain shape or a size? Where did this program come from? Doesn't mean you don't want what you want when it comes to your body. We can live in that paradox, but we also wanna understand this is a program.

This is like an idea of what a body should look like, and if your body doesn't look like that, then you feel defeated. Why? I don't wanna change your goal, but I want you to understand that this is a program. You get to select it if you want, but you don't have to feel bad about it either. Like for me personally, I know that this was ingrained in me pretty early on.

Both of my parents highly valued appearance in different ways, but they both did. I, I got that message early on. That appearance was highly valued. For them. Right? And so of course as a kid you're thinking, this is highly valued in the world. My appearance matters. My appearance is part of my value. It might have come from society.

For me, I grew up when it was like that era of supermodels, that was a big thing in the late nineties of all of these supermodels. Well, of course you're looking at that. You're thinking, well, my body doesn't look like that. It's a problem. Of course it's not a problem, but that's the program that we are operating from still.

So we wanna push back on that and we want to understand where that came from. Okay. So that, again, not to. Discourage you from how you wanna feel in your body and what you want your shape to be. That's up to you. But that desire for that, that goal can only be autonomous. When you are aware and you are conscious of a social programming that you have, number two, how can I acknowledge this feeling and transmute it into resolve?

To resolve, into determination, into commitment, whatever word resonates with you. Number three, how can I acknowledge this feeling and transmute it into radical self-acceptance and self-love? Number four, who am I comparing myself to right now? What do I admire in them that I can awaken in me? What is it I think they are feeling and experiencing that I long for, that I have a desire for?

I love this idea that our desire is an electric fingerprint of deeper desire, that something meaningful. And last question is, how might I generate that feeling now? So what is it I think that they are feeling, and how do I generate that feeling for myself? Notice how powerful that question is. Closing thoughts.

Nothing has gone wrong if you're comparing yourself to others. Our goal is to use the intense feelings this elicits as an invitation to understand ourselves better, how we are thinking about ourselves and our bodies, and see it as a program in there and direct those thoughts intentionally. And of course, to uncover what we want more deeply, how we wanna feel, so that we can start generating the experience of life we want most.

That really matters to us, regardless of our current weight. So if you want to do this type of work together, you wanna go deeper, please reach out. Go to mindful shape.com and connect with me, and I will talk to you again soon. Bye.