Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers - How to Stop (Negative) Self-Comparison and Increase Your Confidence

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

We often hear how negative self-comparisons can be, especially when it comes to social media. But what if we could use comparison as a force for good? A tool to help us grow and flourish at work and in our personal lives?  Great news, we can! Today you’ll learn how to stop negatively comparing yourself to others and start measuring your progress in healthier and more productive ways. Plus, you’ll learn the scientific theory about why you’re actually more likable the less perfect you are. Hi, I'm your host, Sarah Mikutel. Ready to take this work deeper and radically transform your life? Let's talk. Book your call here. sarahmikutel.com Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

Welcome to Live Without Borders, a podcast about how to live the good life through stoicism, personal development, and cultural exploration. I'm your host, Sarah Megatel, an American in England who's here to help fellow citizens of the world like you make the most of the brief time you have here on Earth. It is time to make every moment matter. I'm about to complete the eighth and final week of my beginner's improv class. And improv, in case you don't know, is improvisational performance. It's a kind of theater that is created spontaneously without any scripts. And the performers are just making up everything on the spot based on suggestions from the audience or some other kind of prompt. And the thought of this originally gave me a heart attack, but this is why I wanted to do it. It's a comfort zone exercise to stretch out of your comfort zone. So on the first day walking into this class, and to be honest with you, the whole train ride there, my heart was just racing with anxiety. This was public speaking combined with that nightmare where you forgot that you enrolled in a course and now it's time to take the final. So this was a beginner's class. So I kind of

assumed that other people would feel like me or at least have the same level of training. And out of the 14 of us, many were like me. But some of the guys in my class could rival Jerry Seinfeld. They are just so hilarious and loud and they don't seem to have a self-conscious bone in their body. And I have never thought of myself as somebody who compares herself to others. I don't feel jealous seeing people do cool things on social media because I like to do cool things in real life too. I don't spend a ton of my life online. I like to just go out and try things myself. I enjoy being inspired by other people without judging myself against them. But my improv class has made me realize that I do engage in moments of comparison.

Of course I do. Most people compare themselves, at least occasionally, to other people. It's part of being a human being. Whether it's a sibling or a business competitor or some other random person on the internet, we evaluate how we're doing against how somebody else is doing. And we often hear how negative comparisons are, especially when it comes to social media. but what if we could use comparison as a force for good, a tool to help us grow and flourish at work and in our personal lives?

We can. Today, you will learn how to stop negatively comparing yourself to other people and start assessing your progress in healthier and more productive ways. Plus, you will learn the scientific theory about why you're actually more likable, the less perfect you are. Let's go. I and many others in my class joined Improv to get better at thinking on my feet. other people joined due to stressful jobs and they wanted dedicated time to play around and be creative. Other people joined the class because they liked the idea of performing on stage and want to work up to doing that. And most of us also want to practice simply getting out of our heads and being more in the moment. During our time together, we have played games and invented theatrical scenes,

often based on one word prompt. So somebody shouts out banana and then you're often running. running with a scene partner creating a whole world around this banana. We've had to sing, become wacky characters, move in odd ways, speak only using strange noises. I felt a little awkward, okay, a lot awkward doing this. But some of the guys just really fully embrace their character transformation and went all in. No fear, fully committed. And this made me feel like the worst person in class. Like, oh God, I didn't realize this was a comedy show. Even when our teacher told us to tone it down and just do a normal scene, this gets kept escalating and I felt pressure to compete. So in the beginning, I was very much in full fight or flight.

Humans have a natural tendency to make objective and subjective comparisons with other people. And comparisons play a big part in our self-esteem and how we see ourselves. Objective comparisons are quantifiable. They involve tangible measures that most people agree on, like grades, certification. implications, income, material possessions. You either achieved this thing or you possess this thing or you don't. We don't need a lot of interpretation of anything. Subjective comparisons are based more on how you see the world. It's your opinion. So this is things like attractiveness, talent, happiness, success. You're judging people based on how you perceive them according to your values, your

perspective, your state of mind at the time. When we compare ourselves to others, we are also making upward and downward comparisons, according to social comparison theory. We have a tendency to compare ourselves against the people who we perceive to have more than us or are better skilled than us. These upward comparisons often make us feel bad about ourselves. Jealousy comes up, inadequacy, feelings of self-doubt. And upward comparisons are one reason that so many people quit things well before they really get started. And we did have a few people drop out of our improv class. We just don't want reminders of how much we suck, and so we withdraw. We often forget about the people who don't have as much as we do or who aren't as skilled.

Measuring ourselves against those people would be called a downward comparison. When you make external comparisons from a judgy point of view, you block the three psychological needs that are required to stay motivated according to self-determination theory. These are the need to feel competence, relatedness, and autonomy. So competence. We want to feel like we are good at what we do and we want other people to see us that way too. When we negatively compare ourselves to others, our sense of competence and self-esteem goes down and we get frustrated. Then there's relatedness. We want to feel like people like us, that we are part of a team that we are cared for, we are supported. When we spend our time judging ourselves against others, we're putting up a barrier. Collaboration becomes competition and we don't get that feeling of.

connection that we're looking for. We feel like we don't belong. And then there's autonomy. We want to feel like we have control over our lives. Of course, most things are not in our control, but we can choose how to respond to situations, to reflect before we react, to zoom out and be more realistic and mindful about the situation and the thoughts going on in our heads. To challenge first impressions, we can choose to see the world through different perspectives and we forget how much we have control of when we are focused on unhelpful comparisons. As improv class progressed, I practiced I practiced managing my mind, including remembering the stoic principle. It's not things that upset us, but what we make them mean. I stopped comparing myself to my classmates and celebrated the fact

that I kept showing up. I chose to keep coming back. This was in my control. And I chose to participate in all the exercises, even the ones that made me feel like a total weirdo. This honored my values of perseverance and bravery. I started to get out of my head and be more fully present for my scenes. Our teacher made a really great point that when we are overthinking, we're not listening. So instead of worrying about how I would look, I started connecting more with my scene partner and just going with the flow. Our teacher cultivated a very supportive environment where we were encouraged to make mistakes and just have fun. As a class, we embraced each other's creative ideas, and to witness all these little stories unfold out of nowhere felt truly magical.

And as I collaborated with the other students and relaxed my guard, my own competence grew. I enjoy developing scenes now and I am less concerned with how I'm presenting or if I'm being judged. A few people in class have even told me that they love my improv style, which they describe as more conversational. And the fact that people think I'm good at this came as a total shock. At first, I seriously felt like I was the worst. Their feedback increased my sense of freedom to interpret my scenes in my own way. And I will admit that I did enjoy this external validation. And I do like when I get a laugh in class.

Because let's be real, extrinsic rewards do motivate us. We might love our job, but we're also doing it for the money. We like keeping a roof over our head and good food on the table. But as we know by now, it's intrinsic rewards that truly light us up. Intrinsic goals reflect who we are as people, our values, our interests, we feel an internal drive to pursue them, and we feel happy and fulfilled when we do. External goals can make us happy too, but this is a different kind of satisfaction and often isn't as long-lasting. The motivation needs to come from within. And that is a big part of that self-determination theory that I mentioned. When we feel autonomy, competence, relatedness, we're more driven by purpose and values,

and this is more fulfilling than extrinsic motivators. When we lack feelings of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, that's when our self-esteem dips, and we go searching for external recognition of our self-worth. Before my class, I don't think I had been to an improv show, at least not in any language that I speak well. And the idea sounded a little boring and awkward, if I'm honest. I really didn't want to watch people doing improv on stage. But I guess the truth is I hadn't put a ton of thought in it at the time. I just thought, hmm, I'm not sure that's for me.

But since starting my class, I have seen two improv shows by people who are actually experienced doing this kind of thing. And I laughed my head off the entire time. And as I mentioned, some of my classmates are hysterical. I'm sure some of that comes by nature. but it turns out that they've also taken comedy classes and have even done stand-up. So it turns out that they are more advanced than me when it comes to performance, and it would be unreasonable for me to be on their level from the start. But my upward comparison of them doesn't have to be negative and is in fact positive now.

Well, I have no aspirations to be a comedian. My classmates have inspired me to let go more, to commit to the scene, to get into character, to have fun to aim higher. They have shown me what's possible, and I might even do a stand-up comedy class at some point. I can't believe I'm saying this, but yeah, it's true. It interests me. This would be an intrinsically motivated goal,

inspired by that positive upward comparison. These kind of comparisons motivate us to keep learning, keep trying, keep playing, keep exploring new ways of thinking that we haven't considered before. Stories about people trying and failing and getting back up again, this gives us something to aim for. If he can do it, I can do it. When you catch yourself in negative comparison, flip it to appreciation for what others can teach you and also to what you already have to offer. Instead of wishing you had somebody else's skill or personality, view them as role models.

How can they help you grow? What mistakes have they made that you can just leap over and avoid? What can you learn from them that you can blend into your own unique style? Downward comparison when you're comparing somebody who doesn't have as much as you. That can be an act of gratitude, especially when the downward comparison is comparing present you to former you and how far you've come. So celebrate your achievements. You have learned a lot.

You have changed, grown, you are somebody else's role model. Comparisons are natural. It's up to us to choose to use that. in a constructive way. So if you want to flourish, focus on the positives of upward comparison and downward comparison. If you want to reduce the amount of negative self-comparison in your life, there are a few other things that you can do. Number one, be self-aware. Recognize what's triggering the comparison. Did somebody else start a business that you have been thinking about but haven't acted on? Did you see a friend's Hawaiian vacation on social media? And why do you care about this?

what does it have to do with your life? Really think about it. What is the fact behind the situation? What are you making it mean? Is this tied to your personal values, your personal growth? Or is it related to external validation or envy or feelings of what would other people think? Research suggests that the intensity of our comparison depends on how much we care about the thing being compared, so the relevance. Also, how similar we are to the person we're comparing ourselves against. And the physical proximity to the person. How often are we seeing them? Have a think. Is there a pattern to the comparisons you make? How is it impacting your mood? Next up, challenge your negative thoughts. Take a step back and look at the facts of the situation. Are you setting unrealistic standards for

yourself? Are you comparing how much you earn to somebody who has 10 years more experience? Are you comparing the size of your house to the size of our friends who inherited $5 million? Let's say somebody in your field keeps sharing her monthly income on social media and it's much higher than yours, you might think, I can't believe she's making so much of my money than me. It's not fair. I work just as hard, if not harder, but I'm nowhere near her level of success. Why don't people think I'm as good as her? What does she have that I don't have? Am I a failure? There's a lot of overgeneralizing and self-judgment going on there. And this can lead to self-doubt and perhaps even a desire to give up. There's something called scarcity mindset. And

This is the belief that there is a limited amount of success available in the world, limited resources, limited positive things to go around. And scarcity and mindset can make us feel really jealous. Like we'll never keep up. We have to keep working harder, pushing further to try to get a piece of the pie. And it can cause the opposite in a lot of people. When we keep our focus on everything that we don't have, what we're lacking, this can often cause people to just spin around and not take any action to change the situation. An alternative way to look at the example of somebody posting her monthly income on social media is that this person has a lot more experience. Maybe she hired a business coach. She shows up every day talking to her audience. Maybe these are things that you haven't done. Take a realistic

look at your efforts. What goals did you set? What task did you assign to those goals? Did you deliver or did you faf around waiting for inspiration? I'm not saying you did, but these are things to consider. Okay, tough love talk over. When we slip into scarcity mode, our attention goes into what people are trying to take away from us. Focusing on what we can contribute feels a lot better. So does focusing on our own growth. Someone else's success doesn't steal away from our potential. So accept an honor where you are now.

Again, when it comes to upward comparison, consider what lessons you can learn from people rather than envying them. Be happy for them. And remember that judging people basically. on external criteria misses a lot of the story. You don't know anything about their character or their values or their sense of well-being. There are a lot of unhappy rich people. We are all in different paths, and who we are as people isn't tied to our income or how many houses we have. It's tied to how we live our lives. Are we living from our values? And finally, recognize your progress. Self-comparison causes a lot of emotions to come up. This includes feelings of embarrassment, which is what I felt.

at the beginning of improv. Recognizing your progress helps you shift out of these negative emotions by admiring how far you've come. This more growth-oriented mindset feels much better than negative comparison. It's more realistic and it's more motivating. In the book, The Progress Principle, the authors emphasize the importance of setting specific goals and celebrating small wins, not just big accomplishments. We want to feel like we are making progress in an area of our life, something that's meaningful to us. And when we experience the positive emotions that come with accomplishment, we feel intrinsically motivated to go after more small wins. Our brain wants to keep this pleasurable positive reinforcement loop going. This increases both confidence and competence. Step by step,

this leads us to achieving much larger goals. What strengths and skills have you developed this year that have positively impacted your life? How are you keeping track of this progress? I love talking about growth mindset and it's one of the best ways to pull you out of unhelpful comparisons and also cowardly living. Stanford's Carol Dweck developed the concept of growth mindset. And if you haven't read her book Mindset yet, definitely get it on the list. At its core, the book is about the power of yet, the word yet. That is, you might not be where you want to be yet. People with a growth mindset believe that we can learn new things. People with a fixed mindset, believe that our abilities are limited and that if you don't have a natural gift at something,

you'll never be good. Most people have a fixed mindset until they hear about this theory and then they realize, oh yeah, I've never done this before. Why did I assume I would be amazing from the start or bad forever? Growth mindset is the belief in your ability to improve through effort. It's belief in yourself. It's loving the challenge. People with a growth mindset view failure as a learning opportunity and they are open to feedback. They welcome opportunities to develop their skills. They see other people's success as inspiration instead of threats. And they are committed to gradual improvement and enjoying the process. They are not obsessing over the end game. They're putting in the hard work and they know that that's part of the journey and that's what they're on board for. Here are some questions

to consider. What fixed mindset beliefs might you be hanging on to? What lesson can you take away from something that didn't work out the way you wanted? What is one challenge you can start embracing with a growth mindset? These are all good things to journal about this week. Okay, we're feeling good, we're ready to grow, ready to be inspired, and we're going to be fine with falling on our face, growth mindset. There is some evidence that people actually like us more when we do fall on our face, when we do mess up. This is called the Prattfall effect, spilling a drink, falling down, sharing a vulnerability. These things make us seem more human to people, more warm, more relatable, as long as we are generally perceived to be competent and not a hot mess. This reminds me of the

karaoke scene in my best friend's wedding, which I just rewatched on the plane recently. Cameron Diaz's character doesn't want to sing karaoke, but she ends up being forced into the situation. She's very beautiful and preppy. She's even wearing pearls. So people probably assume that she's got a nice voice, she opens her mouth. People are just shocked at how bad she is. But she perseveres and the room rallies around her. They start to find her horrific singing utterly charming and her fiance falls more in love with her. She becomes more human. She's not just this preppy blonde lady with a cardigan draped around her shoulders. She becomes even more likable because she just went for it. And this is related to my improv teacher's greatest advice. Just commit. Don't half-ass it.

As long as you commit, people will get behind you. These are wise words for life in general. Commit, don't compare. Find people who believe in you, but most importantly, believe in yourself. Growth mindset. My experience in improv hasn't been about becoming someone else. It's been about becoming a better version of me, a more self-actualized version of myself. I wish this same self-discovery and growth for you.

How can I help? If you are ready to stretch yourself, I invite you. you to book a call with me. We will explore your specific goals and how we could work together so you can gain the confidence and skills you need to create the life that you have been dreaming about. Go to sarah migatel.com to book your call. That's all for now. Thanks for listening and have a beautiful week wherever you are. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarahmicatel.com

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