If you are like me, you probably catch yourself frequently falling into the ever-enticing but yet dangerous pitfall of comparing yourself to others.
According to social scientists, we compare ourselves to others so we can evaluate our own opinions and abilities by comparing ourselves to others in order to reduce uncertainty and learn how to define who we are.
But what’s the potential damage of this?
Bottom Line – IT’S A LOSING BATTLE!
Women who run their own businesses from home fall victim to an interesting catch-22.
They work for themselves so they have freedom from bosses and going into a workplace, but that freedom deprives them from co-worker relationships and everyday pats on the back that fuel their confidence to achieve big things.
As I interview self-employed women who run the gamut from “big fish” to fresh starts, I’ve found that it doesn’t matter how far along you are in your career or current business. We all get demotivated when we compare ourselves to others and find ourselves lacking.
And that makes us less likely to take the risks and put in the extra hard work/extra hours after we put our kids to sleep that we need to in order to succeed.
Lack of Skills Won’t Hold You Back—Lack of Confidence Will
Psychological studies have confirmed time and time again that confidence is not only correlated to success, it is often a precursor, even more than competence. You’ve all no doubt heard the adage that 80 percent of success is showing up (or 99, depending who you ask).
But what it leaves out is that confidence is what gets you to show up.
In corporate salary negotiations, a Carnegie Mellon study demonstrated that men negotiate their pay four times as often as women, and that when women do negotiate, they ask for 30 percent less. A study at Hewlett-Packard showed that men apply for a promotion when they thought they met 60 percent of the criteria and women only did when they believe they met 100 percent of the qualifications.
Let’s look at three easy things you can do to stop comparing yourself to others and get past that feeling that you aren’t good enough so you can show up for the opportunities you need to take advantage of to move your business forward.
1. Create an Accomplishment List
When you are comparing yourself to others, what you are really doing is looking for a bar against which to measure your own accomplishments.
But when we do this, we are usually only looking at one slice of our achievements through whatever lens accomplishes your goal (and even though we wouldn’t admit it, when you go looking for comparison, your goal is usually to show yourself that you are wanting!).
So before you start spiraling through your rolodex of other self-employed women—or employed women, or self-employed men, or recently anointed saints!—take out a plain old pen and paper.
Not only does writing your accomplishments down physically give them more weight, but creates something tangible you can post next to your desk to keep yourself in line the next time your confidence is lacking.
Make the time frame however broad you need to come up with comforting results.
- Had a stressful but busy week? It’s easy to feel like the roadblocks you’ve hit are the only things that have happened. But every one you’ve surmounted is an accomplishment.
- In the middle of a slow period? Catalog all of your self-employment accomplishments this year. Week by week it may not feel like a lot, but when you see the number of hours worked, words written, or dollars earned over the course of the year, it adds up.
- Just starting out? Take an even wider scope and catalog your best accomplishments in your entire career.
Get Something Done Right Now, No Matter How Small
If you have trouble making an accomplishment list, or it still leaves you feeling lacking, do something right now to give yourself a sense of success.
Accomplishment carries its own powerful psychological (and hormonal) weight that can in the short- to medium-term instill you with enough confidence in your skills and your ability to continue your accomplishments in the future to banish the lows that cause you to compare yourself to others.
Some accomplishments carry more mental weight than others, but you don’t need to do something “big” to reap noticeable benefits in mood and self-esteem. One of the best ways to get a quick boost is to eat a frog or dissolve a tolerance.
Eating a frog is when you take something that you keep putting off, that you know you really need to do but just can’t bring yourself to for some reason, and you just do it. Like the old apple a day philosophy, many people who eat a frog every morning say it makes their whole day feel less stressful.
Tolerances are little things that bother you that have a large aggregate impact on your life. Maybe it’s an extra step you have to do every day to log into the email for your blog that makes you lose valuable momentum. Maybe it’s not being able to leave your laptop out on the table so you can dive right in in the morning because you’re afraid of your toddler or dog knocking it over.
Dissolving a tolerance with a permanent solution is never something that makes it high on your to do list, but it can bring instant relief into your day and your psyche.
Compare Yourself to the Right Others, In Person
A longer-term solution to feelings of self-doubt and a need to compare yourself to others above and beyond you, however, involves training yourself to compare yourself to peers who will empower and support you, rather than sanitized figures of success.
Psychological studies have actually determined that social media is one of the main culprits in modern society for the negative comparisons many women draw. But the ways in which it is bad for self-esteem for adult women are very different than the ways you may have heard like cyber bullying.
People primarily post positive experiences on social media, which leads to a myopic picture of their lives. A study out of Stanford demonstrated that people consistently over-estimate the fun they think their friends are having and underestimate their negative experiences, and that, as a result, Facebook increases the tendency to think that everyone is more happy and successful than you are.
Furthermore, the study announced that women are particularly vulnerable to this trap. Comparing the number of likes or comments on posts can be particularly dangerous.
Take your socializing offline as much as you can and keep your business social media goals professional, not personal. Join a local small business or women’s meet-up group so you can get the whole picture on how other women in your situation are doing.
You might find out they are envious of you.
How Steve Jobs thought really resonates with me…..
Don’t focus on what other people are doing, focus on your own heart and intuition and trust that. That is how you become an original.
What can you do today to give yourself a self-esteem boost to stop comparing yourself negatively to other self-employed women?
