Comparison Trap Kills Financial Dreams and Goals
We all have heard of the comparison game. Some might hear and appreciate all the wisdom tied to it. Some might roll their eyes and scoff at the thought. I was that person who just laughed it off. I thought that I knew everything about it and how it didn’t really affect me much. I thought that I was stronger to resist the trap. Boy, was I wrong big time. I became the biggest fool and realized the hard way plenty of times just how much of a sucker I was just to have that acceptance card with everyone. If I just had what they had, I thought my life would be complete.
Unfortunately, I realized that the more I modeled my life after comparing to others, it just made me more miserable. I wasn’t being myself. I didn’t know myself because my life was basically someone else’s and based on their own approval. I was constantly comparing my life to someone else’s in order to gain approval.
The truth is if I didn’t approve of myself then there was no way anyone else would either. How could I expect to have a friend if I wasn’t a friend to myself? How could I expect a happy marriage one day if I wasn’t content who I was while never being satisfied with where I was or what I had? My potential spouse wouldn’t be very happy in the marriage for sure.
I think that I was a smart person, or at least the potential of a smart being. But fear and insecurity had turned me into a fool. I couldn’t say no to things that I wanted to because I had that “need” to be liked and approved by others. I got into debt because it made others happy more than myself. I disrupted my own future by people who wasn’t even there on a bad day. I disrupted my own future based on the approval of people who were only in my life a short time.
The comparison trap is meaningless. It is an endless cycle of wanting to be well-liked in a world who could hate you over the smallest things or people who could gossip behind your back. I know this because I unfortunately have been that hateful person as well. I was operating in the “hurting people hurt people” mentality and I suffered major consequences of my actions. When we compare ourselves among ourselves and then get offended by something they’ve done, we tend to make it personal (or maybe that’s just me). It’s just a trap that is often hard to get out of especially alone. This is why community is SOOOO important. We need someone willing to say the hard things to us and we need to receive what is said. But of course there’s a balance to this as well. We can stand up for ourselves but also not play victim all the time either. There’s a balance to everything.