The Comparison Trap - "I'm not good enough for..."

Ngl, for every single person I've come across, I have at one point or the other felt intimidated and looked at them from the very narrow practical perspective of their lives with which I had seen them from. By this statement, I mean every single person I have met😂 so if you're reading this and you know Ify in person, yes, I have at one point 'eyed' you. 

The comparison trap could come in comparing yourself with different things belonging to the people around you. It could come in form of wealth, beauty, talent, accomplishment, intellect, success, e.t.c. I'll be using myself as a major case study in this article because I am a person so guilty of this 😭😂 or should i say entangled in this trap. While being entangled in a comparison trap has its pros and cons, we shouldn't forget to develop ourselves with the positive effects rather than the negative ones as it could lead to different psychological illnesses, some of which are anxiety, eating disorders and many more. Making the negative part of it get the better part of you leaves you with nothing honestly. You are left with stagnation and a very low self esteem. I can relate to this.

Talking about a low self esteem, as regards to me, I'll be giving credit to a very influential person I know who happens to be Jerome. Not to exaggerate but Jerome helped me build 90% of the self esteem I have today. He must have left the 10% for me to build myself lol.

"I dont think I can do this", "I'm not good enough for this", "I can't/ don't meet up with..." . All these are just flimsy excuses we give to ourselves so we do not get to "try and see" our possibilities. 

Lest I forget, let's get to see what the comparison trap really is in simple terms. So it is the tendency of evaluation which we give ourselves based on the level or standards rather of the people we find around us. This affects majorly our thoughts, emotions and beliefs of ourselves and in this age, the social media happens to be the major factor behind this. However, let's not be mistaken that of course, we could use HONEST self evaluation to check our achievements but while doing this, we shouldn't get carried away with the feeling of sadness when we get to see or realize that we haven't achieved goals we should have achieved. 

Let's move further now to looking at a few positive effects of comparison and as stated earlier, I'll be using myself as a major case study. 

• It could provide you with information to help you make some important judgements in social contexts. Now, I can remember still being in junior school and the boys in my class, as they would do from time to time, were grading the girls' beauty in class. I happened to come third and this made me quite sad. On getting home from school, I ran to my mum's dressing mirror and looked so closely at myself in it. It was such a judgmental look. It made me conclude that the left side of my face appeared to be prettier than the right side lol. It made me live by showing off the left part of my face more to the boys in class then. Anyways getting to senior school, I decided to look at the bright side of the right side of my face and ngl, from them till tomorrow, I really do not care what my face looks like because I simply believe YES, I AM PRETTY. If I hadn't decided to think of my facial appearance positively, it would have definitely lowered my self-esteem, as I'd feel insecure about my perceived IMPERFECTIONS.

• It gives room for motivation to improve or hasten your speed towards achieving an already set goal. Still in my junior school, our then music teacher was introducing some musical instruments to us. I can remember telling him so much about his good I could play the recorder in my primary school, unknown to me that he was going to make me stuck with the recorder but something else had caught my attention. It was the saxophone!😭 Watching two of my classmates play it so well made me feel so inferior, but guess what I did? I decided to make friends with the girl who could play it better, got to be around her almost all the time, and just one afternoon during rehearsals, told her to make me just HAVE A TRY. I blew in little air and the saxophone made a very loud sound. The enormous joy in the little me pushed me to my music teacher and persuaded him with everything in me to let me start  rehearsals with the sax instead of the recorder . Not letting jealousy get the better of me allowed me to try something bigger, which brought me a lot more fame in my secondary school days."

We move now to possible negative effects   of being in a comparison trap: 

• It definitely will first of all reduce your self confidence, most especially once you're done evaluating your success with that of someone else, you tag yourself a failure. Sometime last year, I happened to enter this pageant. Getting so much persuasion from my mum, elder sister and Jerome, I reluctantly agreed to "go for it". All was going well actually and I don't know where this confidence came from but I was convinced within me that I was going to emerge the winner. Oh well, as the saying goes that man supposes but God disposes... Oh chim🤧. That was my life at that point as I didn't even emerge the third runner up!!😭💔. I was so sad with myself with tears in my eyes and telling everyone " I know I was going to fail and that was why I didn't want to go for it". Now I tagged myself a failure due to that event which made me feel inferior whenever I heard or got to see any of the contestants that won the pageantry. It made me feel so less of myself until I had to make the decision to work on myself I rather than being tied down by some past experiences.

•  It begins to instill in you jealousy about people due to their achievements and success: if I can remember my 2 years ago self, when I had to start learning how to cook and do things on my own, I always had this envious feeling when MY LITTLE SISTER ALWAYS WENT INTO THE KITCHEN TO COOK!!! crazy right?😂. I was damn serious when I said I felt inferior with any and every single person I know at one point or the other but it was just up to me to simply let go of whatever feeling I was having and work on myself... I mean, like I should. And it's really something nice that I do just that. 

• It also pushes you to set impossible or in better terms unrealistic expectations of yourself. So sorry but I do not have an experience on this but I'll be giving an instance in place of it🙂👍. So, me coming across a big influencer on my fyp on Instagram and then I get moved or motivated rather by her achievements at a really young age already and then I begin to slide into the comparison trap by trying to meet up with her standards, looks and all, forgetting she started her journey while she was way younger to get to the point where she is at right now. Wanting to be like her is more like deceiving myself and a waste of time, as I will definitely get carried away, forgetting the time, energy, resources, and dedication she must have put in to reach where she is and then there's me who wants to be her so bad in the twinkle of an eye.

Of course, whatever has a good side also has a bad side. The comparison trap could be a good source of motivation and drive to an expected goal but we shouldn't get carried away with the pessimistic feeling that comes with it. I'd recommend staying off social media and having a better look at yourself could help loosen your entanglement in the comparison trap. 

Also, one thing that keeps me going is that "THERE'S A LIFE, A REAL LIFE OUTSIDE SOCIAL MEDIA"