How to avoid a comparison hangover
So I’m sitting here drinking coffee getting ready to start my day with a pilates class that will kick my butt but I’ve got time to kill before heading out at 815am so I’m watching TV, having started with the morning news- BBC Breakfast, NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt for yesterday’s news, and now Watch What Happens Live on YouTube. And this is when I start asking myself, when am I going to grow up??! When I get sucked into the reality show vortex,
Lately I’ve been thinking about a more productive way to spend my time and I have lots of ideas- and a lot that I actually need to get done around the house and in general- but I’m always dragging my heels. I do a lot of research online with little follow-through in real life and I can’t believe that this person who existed in their 20′s still exists today; big ideas, a bit of follow-through, but mostly big ideas!
My oldest is headed to a prestigious university next year to study Engineering (I attended the same university way back when) so a friend from said university mentioned a mutual friend whose son would also be attending our alma mater. The woman whose son will be attending next year is the CEO and President of a large, well-known American company (one that nearly all Americans have purchased something from) and my friend is herself the Vice President of Global Markets at a big bank. And then there I am, someone who’s always teetering on the brink of something but with little follow-through. I started becoming embarrassed for my son.
Here’s the thing I tell myself when I’m feeling particularly down about my lack of recognizable success; success comes in so many different versions depending on who you are. Kristen Bell used an expression once that I’ll never forget- she was talking about the pitfalls of thinking that all that glitters is gold when pursuing Instagram and how that can cause a ‘comparison hangover’, when you’ve spent too much time in a day comparing yourself to others.
So here’s a small piece of advice that I’ve come up with, one that I often tell myself in an effort to get myself out of my self-imposed slump; take stock of all the little things you’ve done and continue do on a daily basis and soon you’ll see that what you thought was a mole hill is actually a mountain.
