Someone said to me recently that people tend to compare themselves to each other a lot.  I didn’t think much of it at the time but since then it keeps coming up in conversations and situations where I can see people comparing themselves and it’s holding us back from being ourselves.

“If only I could be as clever as her”

“If only my kids were as well behaved as theirs”

“If I had money like that I’d be happy”

I was even on an adoption course a few weeks ago and could feel the ladies comparing themselves to each other and I was doing it too – “I’m such a light weight only having 3 children when they have 6!”  Sounds so ridiculous seeing it written down but it’s so true we all compare our success, identity, sense of worth and achievements against those around us and we always fall short.

People talk about unconditional love and I often wonder what that means – is there ever anyone who can love without any conditions in this world.  Even parents find it hard sometimes and have to choose to love when their kids turn their backs on them.  We are so defined by others sometimes and there are many times when we don’t receive what we think we need from others – so what do we do then?

I think I’m going to start a campaign to be yourself.  The slogan could be ‘If you won’t be you who will be’ well maybe not so catchy, but you get the idea.  If we carry on spending all our time and energy comparing ourselves to others we’ll waste all that time when we could be ourselves and give the world what we have to offer.  It’s a great way to keep us all caged up and wondering around confused instead of really being ourselves and contributing what we’re meant to in the world.

All sounds very dramatic I know but how about just letting the comparisons go?  So you’re not as pretty, clever, thin, outgoing as someone else AND that’s ok – that’s how it’s meant to be – we are all different for a reason – there is no-one else like you in this world – there’s only ONE YOU don’t deprive the world of the greatness you can bring!

Tags: be yourself, Comparisons, unconditional love

This entry was posted on Monday, June 28th, 2010 at 2:26 pm by Nicola Marshall and is filed under General Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.