Are You Comparing and Should-ing?

Ever find yourself feeling the agony of comparing yourself to someone else and their success and judging yourself as less than? Of course — you’re a human on planet earth.

Until we start listening to our inner conversations and stop the debilitating dialogue, Comparing and Should-ing is what we do.

How about a new perspective and new way to use this habit of comparing and should-ing?

What if you could view this habit as a gift to yourself – a reminder that you are forgetting the truth of who you really are? Stay with me here – I actually do know what I’m talking about. I recently put myself through this painful experience of comparing and should-ing, and what I learned from it for me is priceless.

When I — or when you — compare myself and judge myself less than, what I’m saying is, “you shouldn’t be you – you should be someone other than who you are.” This is bullying at it’s worst and it hurts big time.

When this happens we have a couple of choices — we can succumb to the pain and be miserable — or we can use it to awaken us to our mistaken thinking that is blocking love’s presence in our life. When I compare I see that I am pushing away the very things I want, like –

• –Feeling good
• –Knowing I am loved and lovable
• –Knowing that I am meant to be who I am – not someone else.
• –Feeling empowered to be my best 

Regardless of what we may have been told about ourselves when we were kids that made us start comparing and should-ing, what I really want to know is —

• I am the “me that the Universe/God/Source created me to be. I want to be in this physical body and be all that I was born to be.

• This comparing is almost always about some physical aspect of me or about my performance – what matters is what I call my being-ness. Thinking I should be taller, skinnier, younger, more accomplished, famous, richer is irrelevant.

• If I decide I am going to make any changes I will first

1. Accept me fully where I am as I am.
2. Be clear that my “why,” is for the purpose of bringing more joy into my life.

My latest bullying happened last week when I read on Facebook about a friend taking a really “juicy” real estate position. I instantly began comparing my life to his – forgetting that he is less than half my age, and in the climb to glory stage of his life – forgetting that I’ve had many moments in the sun – totally ignoring the fact that I absolutely don’t even want to be doing what he is doing – all I could see was what I am or am not doing in my life right now. I spent at least an hour telling myself what a failure I was.

It was a painful, yet beautiful wake-up call, and again, that’s how I invite you to view it when you feel the pain of comparing and should-ing yourself. It seems as humans we often need to be led from our mistaken thinking about ourselves and be awakened to what is true. 

I received this meditation from Iyanla Vanzant, and when I need to be reminded of what she calls “my authentic identity,” I find reading it out loud is calming and healing:

I Am as God created me to be.
I Am One-
  -with the Mind of God –
  -with the Love of God –
  -with the Light of God –
  -with the Truth of God –
       -with the Wisdom of God –
I Am as God created me to be.
Nothing I have seen heard, experienced, done, been taught, told or made up about myself can or has changed the central truth of who I AM. 
I AM as God created me to be.