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May 20 - May 21, 2020
The sensitive one … I often feel fragile and I can be easily hurt by other people, especially if I feel ignored. A belief you have is that you don’t deserve to be loved and the fear of disappointing people can keep you feeling stuck and fearful of even trying. Your ability to feel deeply is an invaluable GPS system to guide you to move forward with your own path. Use it to your advantage.
The perfectionist one … For me, everything has to be just so and sometimes I set expectations that feel impossible. Because you are such a hands-on person, you can juggle lots of tasks and shoulder responsibility, which ties up your time and energy, leading to you being distracted by other people’s progress. Nobody can compete with the commitment you can show to something important to you – turn that bottomless self-discipline onto yourself.
This is an important point at which to pause as so many of us think we are failing when actually we are simply not in alignment with what we really want, and we are instead pursuing the dreams and goals of other people. For you, these inherited dreams might come from a parent, a teacher who inspired you at school, or something you heard a friend say once. But ultimately, we inherited that standard or marker of success, we did not choose it and it might have overridden our own internal guidance system.
Another pattern I see with clients when they are getting clearer on what they really want is that they have outgrown the goals and desires they once had for their lives. Just like anything organic or nourishing, our goals will often have a shelf life or an expiry date. For example, you might have set out in your early twenties to climb the corporate ladder and make a name for yourself in a certain industry. However, now you might be no longer interested or stimulated by that work, which would make it time to assess where your next steps can take you professionally. So, let’s check in on
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Social media is feeding our perfectionist tendencies in ways we have never experienced before, and rather than seeing inspiration on our feeds and following with action, we are over stimulated and paralysed by a fear that keeps us stuck. Like, if it cannot be perfect straight away then what is the point? This then reinforces the conditions for comparison as we: Find it increasingly difficult to be happy for others who are successful as we feel the sting of them being ‘out there’ in the world doing what we want to. Hold ourselves to the standards of others’ accomplishments rather than our own.
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Become so end-result focused that we skip the steps and flick straight to the end. This means we miss out on the necessary process of learning, finding our own way, and arriving at our own method, our distinguishable tone or look, in the pursuit of reaching our goal, which fuels the fires of comparison even more!
To make this a smooth, easy and effective practice, I always ask clients to activate my ‘house-party rule’, that is, if you would not invite that person, brand or account to attend your house party and meet all your favourite friends, eat your food and dance to your playlist on your kitchen table, then they do not have a place in your feed.
Boosting your self-confidence is a key step in ridding your life of comparison as it gives you agency over your actions and ownership of your thoughts and behaviour.
That said, few of us actually wake up to encouragement or pats on the back out of the blue from the people whose opinion we care about. The reality is, nobody will DM you before that big work meeting, there won’t be a bunch of flowers to congratulate you for ending a toxic friendship and you’re not going to receive a social-media shout out for going to the gym like you said you would.
Secrets seem to get a bad rap and yet they are sacred containers we can use to grow and nurture ourselves and our dreams. When you are working towards curing your comparison, space, time and silence around the moves you are making and the decisions you are taking are fundamental requirements. Too many times I have seen confidence destroyed by a well-meaning friend that although uninformed, offered an opinion they were not necessarily asked for. If something is important to you then it is precious, unique and valuable. Do not let it become the fodder for an impromptu conversation or a source of
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I’m not saying you have to push away those who care about you most, or close yourself off to important information and go it alone, and yet, be mindful and conscious about where you seek advice or guidance, as a word in the wrong direction can make your confidence leak all over the floor.
‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t mean anything if it’s followed quickly by ‘but’. You’re either sorry or you’re not.
How many times have you shot down one of your own ideas or not taken action on something because you, and you alone, have decided it wouldn’t work out? We have decided not to back ourselves and instead rejected ourselves and squashed our own value.
It’s a bit like an uncomfortable comfort zone.
Ultimately, someone else getting what they want, whether you believe they deserve it or not, does not mean a failure for you. Arguably it does not mean anything. It is information that can choose to serve the fire in your belly or burn and destroy your potential. Choose wisely.
‘When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower’ – Alexander Den Heijer
Ultimately, we teach people how to treat us and it is down to each of us to make sure our boundaries are clear.
How we look at ourselves, what we say about and to ourselves, and how we present to the world are sending messages that say, ‘I don’t value myself, so you don’t have to either!’
