Compared To Who?
I included this awhile back on my travel blog and thought it was worth including here too.
I had an insight with my coach that although I very much enjoy writing, and I share with people that I’d like to write books, I’ve simultaneously, repeatedly, avoided it like the plague. I recently realized something game changing. Just as I’ve done with many other areas in my life, the reason I didn’t want to write was because I compared myself to the world of writers I don’t even know and haven’t even read. Essentially I was comparing myself to any author that has ever been published and successfully sold enough books to make a profit and deeming myself as inferior to each and every one of them. Telling myself that they’re better or smarter and I couldn’t be like that.
From there, I made a decision, based on what some hidden part of myself believed to be true, that I shouldn’t bother because it didn’t really matter anyway. I related to it as if I didn’t have a shot and nothing I had to say was really worth sharing.
I clearly didn’t realize I was doing this. Now, the thing is, just the realization of this on it’s own has no real implication to impact having things go any differently. What instigates change is the willingness to shift your perspective and TAKE ACTION.
It didn’t hurt that I could get present to other areas of my life which I know I’ve already completely transformed such as friendships and coaching. I shifted these areas by distinguishing the inequality I’d created in viewing the situation as me vs. everyone else, and doing the work to build awareness around seeing and “getting” that I am just as good and just as capable as anyone else. But there had been a starting point for those as well. Seeing the stagnant, rigid way you viewed things previously along with a willingness to practice looking at them from a new perspective, or even creating a new perspective, is the initial access point to transforming your relationship to the very thing you’ve been coming up against.
In this particular case for myself, I created practices around taking a deeper look at my confidence in my writing and a commitment to write something, no matter how brief or long, or whether it would be shared or just for me, every single day. The other practice I took on was noticing every time I use the words “have to” or “need to” in my head or aloud and then repeating the same thing replacing those terms with “want to” or “going to”. From there, writing every day has been EASY and fun! I get to express myself and share freely without all the judgment I was previously tagging on to every word written.
Take a look at where you compare yourself to others. Note what areas you do this in. To whom are you comparing yourself? To friends? To a particular person? To a generalized group of people? To an entire industry of folks? How is it serving you to make those comparisons? What might a neutral relationship to others in each scenario look like? Or what if you allowed yourself the gift of seeing your equality.
There are an abundance of ways to objectively observe this pattern of thinking. Take some time and just reflect on some of the questions above. Or even better, take a moment and get present to your own questions that arise from considering the ways this (or something like it) shows up for you.
Change your thinking, change your results…
