Why do we compare ourselves to others?

Do you find yourself saying ‘I compare myself to everyone’?. It comes back to the brain. In its negative default, the brain is always looking out for dangers. The problem is that this negative default makes us constantly compare ourselves to others and therefore become less happy with our lives. We may feel that we have to compare ourselves to others to make sure that we fit into society to survive.

This is not just a challenge for women, but also a challenge for self esteem for men or for your own confidence.

As a result, our mission is to train the brain to be happy. As the cliched quote goes: ‘happiness comes from within’: this is very true. Therefore, make sure that you are looking inside yourself to find happiness, rather than looking to find it in others. This requires constant action but worth it.

Ok Jonny but how?… well, as usual, here are some personal strategies that I have used for this particular challenge to stop myself being compared to others.

1. Reduce social media hours

As mentioned at the start, social media is overloaded with information and people’s activities. Social media is the worst place to go if you want to stop comparing yourself to others. At the same time, it is great for networking, growing your own business (if you have one) or making contact with people. Looking at it too much is only going to cause negative feelings for us.

As it’s something to which we can become addicted, trying to cut it out completely is not going to work. Instead figure out the best times to avoid it and when you can use it. For me, I don’t go on social media until midday. This is because I need to complete my hardest tasks by midday and so I can’t afford to go on social media to distract me. I then stop looking at social media in the evening so that I can chill out and enjoy something relaxing, whether that’s watching Netflix, reading a book or playing my PS4.

2. Write down your achievements

Write these down no matter how small you think they are. They are what you’ve achieved and not what somebody else has done. Writing down what you’ve done, time and time again, teaches you about the great things that you’ve achieved. It then allows your thinking to focus on those great things about you. This, along with your other habits, will take time, but this is teaching you not to dismiss all the great things about you. You are enough. This helps your self worth.

3. Watch yourself on video each day

Does this sound a bit vain? Well I don’t care if this is the case if it gets results. The first time people look at themselves on camera or hear themselves speak, they can think ‘oh that’s horrible’, which is exactly what I’ve felt. When I do it consistently every day though, I learn to appreciate myself.
You don’t have to be an expert speaker or even a YouTuber. You can do this just for yourself. The beauty of doing this, is that you learn to be comfortable with yourself. You are no longer just looking at other people on video and thinking ‘oh I wish I was more like them’.

Summary

So, to stop comparing yourself to others, stop and think what is going to prevent you from comparing yourself to others. Again, as with anything, if you ask the right questions, you will get the right answers, and then take positive action. The above blog gives some practices that you can incorporate into your life in order to try and reduce how often you compare yourself to others and how to become your own hero. You may think of your own ideas, as you ask yourself what might help you to stop self-comparison. Like anything, it will take time and effort but isn’t it going to be worthwhile to feel great about yourself every day, rather than looking at what someone else does? It’s your choice.

The video can be found HERE

The podcast can be found HERE

Jonny Pardoe © May 2020

http://example.com

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Anchor and Amazon:

Jonny Pardoe

Photo by Richard Jaimes on Unsplash

The post Self Comparison or be your own HERO appeared first on The Self Esteem and Confidence Mindset.

Treat self esteem just like a muscle in the gym. You won’t improve it unless you work at it. You probably have heard the phrase ‘Don’t skip leg day’ in the gym. If you haven’t… what it means is that some guys will work purely on their upper body and not on their legs. The result? They come out with massive or muscular upper bodies but thin or ‘chicken’ legs. In particular, self esteem for men seems to be something a lot of us neglect (me included, in the past).

The same is true with self esteem.If you are not constantly working on it, then you will not increase it. Simple. Mine became so low at points that I became so fed up with it, that I decided to do something about it. I dived into book after book, course after course but where I started to reap rewards, was when I started applying consistent habits to my life. My self esteem is by no means perfect now but it is so much higher than it used to be and most of the time I feel great about myself. Of course, I will have knock backs from the inevitable challenges of life, but then I know the habits which will help me to get back on top.

What I am going to share with you today

• What is self esteem
• Simple ways to boost self esteem with some powerful habits

So what is self esteem?

I thought I would cover this as there are so many definitions out there: self esteem, confidence, worth, acceptance etc. You’ll find a whole range of results in different books and search engines. From personal experience and my best sources, these are my definitions:

Self confidence = how you feel about yourself in a given situation or skill

Self worth / acceptance = how you feel about yourself now in life

Self concept = the idea of what value you bring to life and what you are capable of

Self esteem = a combination of self worth/ acceptance and concept

Therefore, to increase self esteem, it’s important to have a great opinion of yourself but accept who you are now. Positive thinking alone will NOT work. If someone ever says ‘think positive’, to be totally honest, it’s not very good advice. You can’t think your way into better self esteem; you have to be applying regular actions that improve your self esteem. You need to apply the right habits.

Powerful habits to help build self esteem

These are things that I’ve researched and then applied to my own life. I do not talk about things unless I’ve actually tried them firsthand, as I’m not some robot computer quoting theories. I actually want to talk about real life experience.

Weekly goal planning

Setting goals helps you to connect to your own value. Setting goals helps you to understand what you want and to feel a sense of purpose. It’s important to be ambitious but also to set realistic goals, which can be broken down. A big challenging goal can be broken down further.

Now – it can be great for the self concept side to think ambitiously and to set big challenging goals, but if you aim too high and don’t reach them all the time, your self worth / acceptance will decrease. This was one of my biggest challenges with my self esteem. Therefore when challenges come, reevaluate the goals and break them down further. It’s important to review your goals and those tasks that support them, at least weekly, to check that you are on track.

I spend a couple of hours every Sunday morning doing this. There is plenty of guidance on goal setting available but the important thing to do is to set challenging goals which are then broken down so targets are achievable. That way you will get a boost in momentum as you go. If you don’t hit a goal (which has happened to me plenty of times in the past) don’t worry too much. Instead assess the challenge and go again.

Journaling the good and the bad

Understanding and fixing low self esteem starts with understanding what your good and bad habits are. These help to increase your self awareness. When you increase your self awareness you will be able to take actions that are better for you. Personally, this is something that I do every day.

For example: yesterday I felt great when I was fasting but I felt rubbish when I was scrolling on social media for too long in the evening.

Consciously writing it down will allow your mind to adjust your good and bad habits, but first of all, adopt this self awareness habit to acknowledge what makes you feel good or not so good. This is a great start to self improvement and self love.

Exercise

You’ve probably heard about the benefits of exercise, producing endorphins, chemicals which make you feel good. Yes… so this is the next habit to consider. Exercise is a great habit for you. It doesn’t mean that you have to run a marathon a day or exercise two hours a day. 20-30 minutes of exercise is sufficient. Ideally something that makes you break into a sweat. By exercising you are looking after your body, therefore giving a message that you are caring for and loving yourself. This is brilliant for self esteem.

Positive talk in the mirror

Have you experienced those horrible conversations in your head? ‘You’re rubbish’ ‘That was pathetic’ ‘Nobody likes you’ and much more. Well if you constantly speak to yourself like that, guess what? You probably won’t feel great about being you. It’s not enough to try and override it every time it comes up, though. You have to constantly speak to yourself in the right way; that way you train your brain to speak more positively to yourself. For this purpose, I speak to myself in the mirror for a minute, telling myself what I like about me. This can be hard at first but start by picking small things that you like about yourself or good things that you’ve done in the past, Then make this talk a habit.

Spending time alone in silence

This comes back to self awareness. This is about not running from your thoughts but allowing them to be there. When we are alone with our thoughts, it allows us to acknowledge them, understand them and therefore understand what might be needed.

I do this twice a day: one 30 minute run or walk and one 10 minute sitting alone with my thoughts. It is important to note though, that MUSIC OR PODCASTS ARE NOT ALLOWED.

Why? Well although these things can be great for us, and can be useful at other times in the day, for the purpose of this, those things will detract from allowing us space to be alone with our thoughts. Music or podcasts are distractions from our own thoughts. So therefore allow time with yourself with your own thoughts.

How to improve self esteem – Keep working on that self esteem muscle with habits

So the above are some very powerful habits to help work the self esteem muscle, which have worked for me. There are other habits to help overcome low self esteem available but give the above ones a try and see how you get on. They don’t have to be massive habits, some can just be short, practised for a few minutes a day but see what works for you. Give it some time. Journaling how you feel after trying things is a great way to pick up what works for you.

Self esteem is a muscle you just have to work on, even if it’s hard work at times. It’s a muscle not to neglect; why would you want to feel miserable about being you, when you are you? The choice to work on it or not, is yours.

You can find my video of this blog HERE

You can find my podcast of this blog HERE

One final note…

The six pillars of self esteem. Check out this video if you want to boost self esteem even more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhuabY4DmEo&t=4s

Photo by Daniel Apodaca on Unsplash

Jonny Pardoe © April 2020

http://example.com

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Anchor and Amazon:

Jonny Pardoe

The post Self Esteem Improvement – 5 POWERFUL Habits appeared first on The Self Esteem and Confidence Mindset.

My story
So often when we are stressed or overwhelmed, we are unable to focus on the present situation or present moment. We have so much going on in our heads, that we lack the clarity to decide what to do next, and this is harmful for our mental health. I’ve experienced this in a working environment, when I’ve had so much on my to do list or when I’ve being trying to write books.
The main thing that I’ve experienced though, is that once I’ve overcome a problem, it doesn’t seem that big a deal and I’ve wondered what I was worried about in the first place. Then I feel that I’ve moved forwards from what seemed stressful or overwhelming. For example, when I first started self-publishing my books, despite the fact that Amazon has a brilliant publishing system, the idea of writing a draft, then another draft, proof reading, getting cover designs, getting measurements right (the hardest bit for me) and then going live, was quite overwhelming for me. Now I’ve done it several times. It’s second nature.
But yes… there will always be new situations in life, which may prove challenging. For me, this was happening too frequently and so I had to increase my self care and prepare myself better for each day. I would try and work through things, but it was reducing my sleep and not making me feel good. I decided, therefore, to focus on feeling good to reduce my stress and feeling so overwhelmed. I started applying actions and consequently, my state and my ability to face challenges improved.

So how can you reduce stress and feeling overwhelmed?

So, these are the things I researched, tried and tested and found to be effective. Now, I don’t find myself half as stressed or as overwhelmed as I used to. I would suggest experimenting and giving such actions time. The important thing is finding what works for you.

1. Plan your week

The key to this one is being flexible when needed, but as a good starting point, creating a strong foundation. I used to have just ‘to do’ lists. Although these can be effective in getting the tasks out of your head on to paper, giving ourselves sufficient time in the day can be a struggle and so this approach may not always help.
Instead, I would recommend using Google calendar or another form of calendar. You don’t have to go over the top on organisation, but having a visual reminder of what your week is going to look like can be a real benefit. It allows you to set realistic expectations for your week. For example, you might schedule a slot each morning for a routine or to try tackle that difficult task at work for a couple of hours in the day.
Again, the key to this is flexibility but this a proactive way of planning your week rather than trying to do things as you go along. I would also suggest investing time in trying to understand yourself better and in learning to schedule things in when it is best for you. For example, I’m on top of my mental ability before 1pm. If I schedule hard, complex tasks between 2-5pm, there is minimal chance of me completing them well, if at all. Instead I get these done in the morning before work or in the first half of the day at weekends.

2. Create a feel -good morning routine

This links a bit to the previous one, by allowing yourself to have a morning routine. This is not saying you should have a 2-hour routine every morning (as that would probably get tedious and the chance of not following through would increase) but rather saying that having a set routine gets you off to a great start. What will make you feel great is different from what makes me or someone else feel great.
Putting something in place early in the day, helps you to prepare for any stressors or challenges later on in the day. In my case, I do a few stretches, a quick affirmation, visualisation, breathing exercise and journal of gratitude, all of which only take me 10-15 minutes total (a minute to a few minutes for each thing). Then I go onto reading on which I spend 20-30 minutes. Why do I spend more time on reading? It’s because learning new things makes me feel good and that I am growing. It really sets me up for my day.
So, think what might benefit you in the morning and make some time for that in order to prepare you for the day.

3. Allow time for you on your own

I’ve started incorporating this more and more, with the result that I feel amazing. I am able to get so many good ideas and my self awareness has increased so much. When I say being on your own, this can either be a walk, a run or even sitting alone in a room with your thoughts. 20 minutes at least, a day is important.
Now a point I would like to emphasise here is that being alone, means completely alone and present… NO MUSIC, PODCASTS OR RADIO. Why? Well, these things can distract your mind. They are not allowing your mind to have room to think. You want your mind to be allowed to think, even if that is a scary prospect. Those distracting influences aren’t bad for you; they just won’t allow your alone time to work properly.

4. Gratitude

This has been a critical practice for me as I’ve always been someone whose mind is rushing to the future, thinking about his next goal. I recently purchased a book ‘The Magic’ by Rhonda Byrne that gives a 28-day challenge of practising different types of gratitude. It’s certainly allowed me to feel more relaxed and happy with what I’ve got.
Gratitude takes away fear / anxiety about things. As Tony Robbins quotes ‘You can’t be grateful and fearful at the same time’. Gratitude won’t make stressors or any possible feelings of being overwhelmed disappear completely from your life, but with regular practice, it will prepare you for the day ahead by getting you into that positive state of mind.

5. Breathing

Think about it: when you’ve been feeling stressed or overwhelmed, how did you feel? Probably your breaths were short, your heart raced faster, and you did not feel calm / in control of your body. It was probably the opposite pattern from when you were calmer or happier. Well… obviously but what may not have been obvious is that you can change your breathing to change your state.
I try and do two short breathing exercises a day in order to promote this calmer breathing state. When you change your breathing, you can change your state of mind. So, making time to tune into a more calmer breathing pattern, can calm you down.

6. Journal

Ok, so the above are more proactive management techniques for helping to reduce feelings of stress and being overwhelmed, as you meet new challenges. There is of course a chance that something unexpected may arise and knock you off course though. Therefore this one thing has helped me get through potentially stressful and overwhelming situations… journaling.
The way I do this is to journal questions which help to identify what the problem is. Then I will proceed with asking questions to get through it. Your brain often over exaggerates issues and just writing it down on paper can be a good start in working through it. It may of course be a big thing, but asking what the real problem is and then working through positive questions such as ‘what can I learn?’ or ‘what can I do to improve this situation?’, can help the brain to seek out the right answers.
Getting struggles out of my head and on to paper, has shaped my positive thinking. Then actually going through this process, allows my brain to do it more automatically. It is training the brain to work through stressful and overwhelming situations. It also allows the brain to see it visually on paper.

Conclusion

So, the above is really a guide on some actions you can take to overcome stressful or overwhelming situations. These are things that have worked wonders for me, but my suggestion is to try and work out what is best for you. One important thing to note though before I go, is that if you don’t change your actions, you won’t be able to change the way you feel. So, make sure you take action if you want to stop feeling stressed or overwhelmed and to start feeling amazing about your day.

You can find this YouTube video HERE

You can find this Podcast HERE

Jonny Pardoe © April 2020
http://example.com
Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Anchor and Amazon:
Jonny Pardoe

Photo by Christian Erfurt on Unsplash

The post Stress and Overwhelm Hacks – Feel Amazing About Your Day appeared first on The Self Esteem and Confidence Mindset.