2. Stop Comparison Shopping Your Way Through Life

Have you always thought of yourself as smarter, wittier, way cooler, foxier, more clever, luckier, a better this that or the other – or just their opposites – than any number of other people you know or have yet to make the acquaintance?

And, have you always spent your fair share of time mentally holding yourself up for close examination against all your real and imagined rivals – including your parents and siblings, and yourself at a younger age?

If so, do you realize you are a full system comparison shopper? (Yea YOU!??)

You not only comparison shop on the outside . . the odds are tending strongly in your favor for being a full-service internal comparison shopper as well.

How has that been for you, by the way? Always looking over your shoulder . . wondering how you measure up . . struggling to keep your place in line? Judging you. Judging them. (Sounds awfully tiresome to me. But then, maybe it’s just not my thing. And, trust me, we all have things.)

Not All Comparison Shopping Is Equal

There’s something you have to consider about having a strong internal comparison shopper gene, though: What happens when one or another of the criteria you rely on to hold yourself up as a shining light – or an equally dim bulb – against the rest of the world, kind of backfires on you?

What happens when someone spits on that shining light of yours . . and it suddenly sputters, and goes out?

Woops! Darkness. Confusion.

Or just as bad – maybe even worse – what happens when your secure little spot at the back of the pack is challenged by someone even more pathetic than you? Now you can’t just be a loser. You become a loser who is less a loser (i.e., more a winner) than that other loser. Now all you are is stuck in the middle of the pack . . a smudge of your former total loser self.

Double Woops! A light flickers under the door. Do you dare open it and risk  . . having that pathetic self image erased like the dirty little black spot you created it to be?

However you see yourself and your place in the world, what ever would you do?!

Cool! What ever WOULD you do?

You might find that you’d have to actually reassess what you’ve been up to all these years of judging yourself against – who, or what exactly?

You might have to go inside and have a little heart to heart with yourself about all the energy you have been piling into comparison shopping all these years. What have years of sitting in self-judgment done for you? What have they done TO you?

And that part of you to whom you gave responsibility for these eternal internal shopping ventures . . What does IT have to say to you? What’s its name, by the way?

(It’s far better to talk with a part of yourself you know by name than one you have to call “hey you”. No telling who’s going to answer if you aren’t specific.)

I think I’ll just call it Potsey for now. You don’t mind, do you? Go ahead and insert another name if you like.

Born to Comparison Shop?

Now, before you get all defensive, please know that I’m not laughing at you here. And I’m certainly not judging! You do enough of that all by yourself, right?

The fact is, we all do – me included, particularly when I’m stressed or not paying attention to things that matter more.

Yep, we all have out Potseys’ to take us comparison shopping through life. We all spend untold hours rummaging through the racks of our feelings and beliefs about ourselves . . and then holding those up against what we assume to be the feelings, beliefs, actions, and words of those we admire – or those we dislike.

Potsey loves that stuff!

Personally, I see all this inner comparison shopping as a national past time – or a national sickness. No one is immune. It’s built into the culture. It’s built into the gene pool.

(And each of us has built it into our very own Pottsey, who came into this world with a sworn duty to keep us constantly wondering about all the ways we’re not quite measuring up to our impossible standards. You just gotta love ‘em!)

Consider just for a moment: Aren’t we all born straining to look into those cribs on either side of us.? Don’t try to tell me those babies aren’t comparing innies/outies, and hair/no hair and who can scream the loudest and get the most attention. Absolutely hardwired.

It doesn’t do us much good, though, does it?

You bet not, because we seem to be hard-wired with a totally contradictory and self-defeating urge!

Try to remember all the times, as you were growing up, that you heard the words, “Be yourself.”  And as soon as you figured out how to do what they’d said, you got, “Why can’t you be more like ___________?” OR “If you only competed a little harder, I bet you could beat _______.”

And we wonder why so many people are so miserable.

Ah yes . . comparison shopping our way through life. It’s hard to escape.

But you can move its influence out of the center of your life.

Time To STOP Comparing Yourself

We can wrap that comparison shopping urge in a little adult perspective.

We can stop . . and recognize what completely, amazingly, uniquely whole individuals we are all by ourselves. And part of that stopping would include accepting and welcoming our Potsey’s into the inner family. It’s not really as hard as you think.

What if, the next time you catch yourself doing the comparison thing, you just stop for a moment before letting the judgment rise the whole way into your consciousness.

And what if, just for that moment, you were to hold that judgment our in front of you so you could take a really good look at it – warts and all. I’m betting that if you slow Pottsey down a bit in his drive to “entertain” you, he might lose some of the thrill. He might even get bored enough with all your delays that he’ll start letting comparisons slip by unattended.

OR

What if, any time you imagine you’ll be in a place or situation where inner comparison shopping could be really choice, you send Potsey off to compare the best strategies for building a walking bridge across the Atlantic . . or for securing all the energy we’ll need in the next 50 years, without further harming the environment . . or some such. Just give him something else to do so you won’t be tempted to get in your own way.

OR

What if, as I mentioned earlier, you and your Potsey sat down for a good talk. That’s right. Adult and inner comparison shopper being, just having a meeting of the mind – your mind. What is your “Potsey” really trying to do for you with all the comparisons? Is there some sort of validation you’ve managed to not give yourself – over and over again – through the years, that you could start remembering to provide? Is there something Potsey can do for you that’s more beneficial than driving you nuts with comparisons? (Maybe comparison shopping was the only way he could get your attention.)

Maybe if you just slow down a little and spend more time talking with yourself you’d feel much better about who and where and how you are.

And if a little outside validation is needed to help you move in a less inner shoppaholiccy direction, I’d be happy to share some. Just let me know you’re in need of some non-judgmental moral support. I’m there for you. And I bet others are too.

We’re all in this together. (Maybe this summer, we can all send out Potsey’s to Potsey Camp! Talk about bliss!)

Even better: What if we could all go to camp with our Potseys’, and have a non-comparative blast of a time.

What would you do? What WILL you do to celebrate the arrival of a real change in your relationship with your Potsey – your inner comparison shopping critic? I look forward to hearing from you.

Keep growing my friend,

Gail

Tagged as: beliefs, comparison shopping, consciousness, feelings, internal comparison shopper, non-judgmental, Potsey, Potsey Camp, validation