Comparison is something we all do to one degree or another. It’s generally a harmful activity: we are naturally self-critical. When someone says something negative about you, it’s hurtful, but when you say something negative about yourself, it’s much worse. It stops you moving forwards, it closes down opportunities and it causes you to do the opposite of growth.

Comparison happens because we are all different. It will probably always happen. But how you handle comparison is what can make it a good experience or a bad one.

Comparison can be a really destructive force. It can wreck your confidence, ruin your self-image, cause you to try to be something you’re not. It can poison friendships with jealousy. It can cause you to give up on something you enjoy doing, or that you’re good at. It can discourage you from reaching a goal. It can make you devalue your existing achievements.

This is bad comparison. There’s also good comparison. Good comparison is what happens when we meet an inspiring person. There’s a sense of admiration and also the feeling that you could do what they have done, or if not that, then something similar. Good comparison can cause you to move towards better things. It builds confidence. It makes you feel good about your future. It turns intimidation into inspiration.

It’s a bad one if it causes damage to your confidence, or if it causes you to give up. It’s a good one if you learn from it and grow from it.

Turning bad comparison into good comparison is simple, but takes a bit of effort. The basic rule is the same one that underlies good mental and emotional health. Apply positivity to negativity. Stick with that, for long enough, and you will see vast improvements over time.

There are two things that I do when I feel intimidated by someone else, and they both begin with A. Accept and Appreciate.

Accept

Acceptance is telling yourself the truth about a situation. It means you stop lying to yourself, and you’re honest with where you’re at. Here’s a truth that’s painful to accept at first: there will always be people better than you at any given task. Once we accept that and make peace with it, we will be a lot happier and a lot more productive. You’ll begin to realise that you’re valuable because you’re you, not because of what you’re good at.

Acceptance also means you accept yourself just as you are. We place all kinds of standards and requirements on ourselves that we have to meet before we’ll consider ourselves OK. This is a difficult barrier to overcome, but with persistence you can bring it down.

Sometimes just saying, “I like myself” can take the pressure off. Say this before you meet your goals. Say this even if you don’t have any goals. Having a kind and gentle attitude towards yourself is actually really important. It’s worth investing into, and it’s not a selfish thing to do.

Appreciate

Comparison very easily turns into jealousy. Jealousy happens when we’re done damaging our own self-image, so we move onto other people! When we’re jealous of someone, we start looking for ways to bring them down. We look for failings, character flaws, mistakes — anything that makes them look worse so we can feel better. It’s a really ugly attitude, and it doesn’t do anyone any good.

Jealousy is worse than a waste of time. It’s a harmful use of your time and energy. It damages you. Instead of allowing jealousy into your soul, find a way to appreciate that person and the talent that they have. Admire it like you’d admire a good painting, or a piece of music. Analyse how they do it to see if you can learn from them. If you know them well enough, ask them a few questions.

If it’s not possible to learn from them, just be happy for them. Do everything you can to apply positivity to negativity. If jealousy is a struggle for you, remember to treat yourself with patience and kindness while you’re learning to get it under control. Jealousy already beats you up on the inside — there’s no point beating yourself up any more!

I hope this helps. Comparison is something that can really do a lot of damage to people, I really hope that these ideas have inspired you!

Other people are probably the biggest cause of pain in our lives. It probably outweighs financial and career woes in terms of heartache. Maybe you have an unappreciative boss, or your parents never affirmed you much, or you have a lazy colleague who takes the credit for your hard work.

These things are truly painful circumstances to deal with. They’re burdens to carry.

The way to deal with them is to do just what you do with a burdern — bear it. Because these are problems that involve other people’s free will, you can’t solve them like you do other problems. Let’s not be lazy: you should try to solve them as and when you can. But do so with the utmost care, and recognise that A) it will take a long time, and B) it may never be solved.

So what do you do? Here you are with a big, emotionally costly problem that will be around for a long time.

The answer is to let the burden strengthen you, instead of weaken you. If your boss is unappreciative, stop trying to please him and just do the best you can, and count it all as generosity towards the company you work for. You end up being a bigger person as a result. If your friend is controlling and bossy, learn to stand up to it, and use the emotional pressure as a motivation to get some steel in your backbone. If your parents are critical, take the difficult but incredibly rewarding journey towards a more independent self-esteem.

Above all, learn forgiveness. Forgiveness isn’t for their benefit, it’s for yours. It doesn’t mean being a fool and staying open to the hurts, but it does mean refusing to see the other person as a monster and letting hatred eat you up on the inside. Twisting the knife only ever happens in your own guts!

I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad * by Robert Kiyosaki. Robert is a very successful entrepreneur, and this book is about his journey. It’s great for “thinkers” because it show you how to use your mind to make money. As a thinker rather than a doer, I found it really encouraging and liberating to learn that I can be successful too. If you’re a follower of this blog, you’ll know that I’m prone to exaggeration, but for once I can say that with all sobriety that this book has changed my life. (I’m not rich — not yet — but it’s dramatically impacted the way I think).

One of the principles he talks about is the need to acquire assets in order to make money. Assets are anything that make you money rather than lose it. So, for example, if you own a house and rent it out, you make money from it (people pay you to live there). On the other hand a car, traditionally seen as an asset, in fact loses you money because it goes down in value and you spend money on it (fuel, repairs, tax, etc).

I think the same principle can be applied to confidence. Spend your time getting things that add to your confidence. Just like if you buy some houses to rent out, you’re acquiring money-making assets, you can “buy” things in your life that will give you a return on your investment in terms of confidence (and a whole host of other things, such as optimism, experience, wisdom, growth).

If you have an unhealthy habit, say smoking, quit it! Don’t see this as getting rid of something bad, see it as acquiring something good. Quitting it will give you a sense of accomplishment. You can then reinvest this accomplishment into new projects. Your thinking will be, “I quit smoking, I could … ” (you get to choose what you do next).

A great source of confidence for me is past accomplishments. As a teenager, I had quite low confidence and spent a lot of time with my computer instead of, for example, going outside and getting a life. However, that investment (the cost here is time … and a social life) is now producing results for me. The confidence I picked up in learning to do something I couldn’t previously do can now be applied to learning things I can’t do at the moment but would like to do. For example, learning how to make money. I learnt PHP, I can learn to make money.

Build these assets in your life and they will never stop producing confidence for you. The trick is to use that momentum to go on to the next thing. Regularly remind yourself of your past achievements. (If you feel you don’t have any achievements, think again. I’ve learnt that that what I look for, I usually find. Don’t look at your life expecting to find failures, look expecting to find successes.)

* If you use this link to buy this book, I get some money from it. It doesn’t cost you any more, but it does help me to keep writing this blog!