Comparison Is The Thief Of Joy
Last week, after I had completely crumbled and given myself the space and time to process things, I had a thought and it was triggered by this Theodore Roosevelt quote, one of my all time favorites...
“Comparison is the thief of joy.”
👿 She’s prettier than me.
👿He makes more money than me.
👿She can run faster than me.
👿His family seems so much happier than mine.
This is just a small list of some of the things that come to mind when I think about comparing myself to others and the negative spiral that used to follow...because, well, if I’ve been there someone else reading this has been too.
We think ...“She’s prettier than me”...and what we are actually telling ourselves is “I’m not that pretty” or “I’m ugly” or “I suck”...
We think...“She’s faster than me”...and what we are actually telling ourselves is “I’m not fast enough” or “I’m so damn slow” or “I suck”...
🦠You get the picture and it ain’t pretty 🦠
When we compare ourselves to others, we rob ourselves of the gift of acknowledging and accepting and appreciating our own “stuff”.
BUT...I had never really given thought to this concept of “comparison” when it came to my feelings and emotions...until last week.
You see, as I worked through my mini shit storm, I realized that when people have asked me recently the simple question, “How are you?”, I was prefacing my answer with a comparison to others and I wasn’t allowing myself to share my truth.
It went something like this...
Q: How are you Heather?
A: Overall I’m good. You know...(ENTER COMPARISON) so many other people are out of work right now / sick right now / worse off than I am right now / working and home schooling their kids right now, so I really can’t complain.
Or even worse...
A: “I’m FINE. You?”
🤮
💥What I was actually doing by responding that way, by prefacing, was comparing saying because someone else is in a better or worse place than I am, I don’t deserve to acknowledge how I’m REALLY feeling. That would be selfish. So I’ll just push my real feelings into a deep dark hole never to be spoken out loud for FEAR of being seen as a selfish asshole.💥
⬆️TRUTH ⬆️
💡So when Roosevelt’s quote popped into my mind a lightbulb went off! It was so bright it was blinding!💡
I am allowed to feel how I feel.
No prefacing needed.
No explanation required.
My feelings are mine.
My feelings are part of my experience in any given moment.
✨How I feel does not discount what anyone else may be feeling or experiencing and vice versa, what someone else is experiencing or feeling does not discount what I am experiencing or feeling.✨
We are all running our own race. We are each living our own life and experiencing our own things/thoughts/feelings/emotions.
Once I owned THAT ⬆️, it was like a giant release of negative energy, a giant release of frustration, a giant release of weight I did not need to be carrying.🙌🏻
Acknowledge your emotions.
Feel your feelings...ALL of them.
Let them rise up in you, and through you, and out of you.
📣Speak YOUR truth📣
And please, PLEASE, do not rob yourself of the gift of acknowledging and accepting and appreciating your own “stuff” because you get stuck in the vortex that is comparison.
💕Where you are in this thing called life is just where YOU are meant to be💕