Welcome back to another episode of Sniffing Out the Bullsh*t! This week’s title probably confuses you as it’s a completely made-up word.

Yup – I decided to make up a term to describe a state of being that I believe many suffer from.

We all do it – none of us are immune. Why we do it is another matter.

Of course, I’m talking about comparing ourselves to others.

Somehow, over the years, we’ve been conditioned to base our self-worth on how other people see us and not how we see ourselves.

Think about it…

We spend a lot of time wondering if we’re not smart enough, attractive enough, popular enough…

And you know the culprit of these feelings, right?! SOCIAL MEDIA.

You know it. You just would rather ignore it, because social media fills up your time and gives you something to do when you’re feeling bored.

But tell me how many times you’ve thought one or even all of the following things when looking at social media:

“I wish my body was as good as theirs.”
“Wow – they have the best life – look how much they get to travel, how much cool stuff they have. I wish my life was that cool.”
“How do they get so many likes and engagement on their post? My posts never get enough likes. I guess I’m not good enough.”
“They’re like the perfect couple – they’re always so happy; they do everything together; they do and have all these cool things.”
“OMG they got a promotion? But they’ve only been at that company like a year. That’s so unfair; I’ve been working soooo hard and they’ve already overtaken me??”

Or, for the entrepreneurs: “OMG they’ve landed ANOTHER client? They’re doing sooo well. But I’m spending all this time networking and I’m still not landing anywhere near as many clients as them!”

Be honest… how many times have you said any of those? OMG I feel like that Beckham meme – BE HONEST ????

Imagine David popping his head around the corner at you to say this… be honest.

So, I think I’ve said ALL of those things to myself.

And that’s when I realised how bad social media is for me.

But unfortunately, it’s not just social media’s fault ad so I need to get a handle on this comparanoia, as it happens in all areas of life.

Think about what life was like before social media.

I’m now thinking there’s some youngsters listening to this thinking “There was a time before social media??”

Yes, I’m old and when I went to school, we didn’t even have phones.

BUT, there were still comparisons being made all over the place.

Instead, it was what things people had. I remember being really upset at school because I felt like everyone (and it was probably only a couple of the “cool kids”) had Nike Air Max Triax trainers. But my parents didn’t want to spend so much money on trainers for a kid who would grow out of them in a month.

I realise now that’s sensible, but at the time I thought they were just the worst people in the world for ruining my rep.

It made me feel poor, not cool, and I constantly felt jealous of what others had.

Then, as we got older, we compared grades. Now, I was OK on this front, but I definitely did some “downward comparison” here. I thought I was better than people just because I got better grades.

It took me another 20 years to realise that I’m not smarter than these people, but I just knew how to take exams!

Sure, I have a certain level of intelligence, but these kids had not learned how to use their intelligence to their advantage, but I did.

Then, when we got to 6th form, it was about what car we drove. There was soooo much comparison going on – some were driving to school in a Porsche and some in vehicles that barely passed their MOT.

Me? I took the train!!

The peeps in their cars who drove past me certainly did some downward comparisons there. Shouting TRAIN WANKER, probably.

But the usual comparison is the upward comparison – we naturally compare ourselves to people we perceive are better than us.

But that’s just it – a perception… that we can change.

We’ve been comparing ourselves to others for years.
And what good has it done us?

That’s why I call it Comparanoia.

Because when we compare ourselves to other people, it leads to this sense of paranoia – that we’re not good enough.

It reminds me of this Seneca quote:

“We suffer more in imagination than in reality.”

This comparanoia has led us to think we’re not worthy because we’re basing the level at one that doesn’t often even exist. How much of what you see on social media is actually real? Or at least, it’s really selectively real.

We are comparing our behind-the-scenes with other people’s highlight reels and coming to the conclusion that our lives are not good enough.

Only we know everything that goes on in our lives – the struggles, the procrastination, the stress. That stuff is not shown on social media and so we’re comparing these bits of our lives to the success stories, the highs, the wins.

It’s no wonder we feel like crap!!

But sadly, other people are not the source of how we feel about ourselves – they just expose how we really feel deep down inside.

I’m sorry if I’ve just dropped a huge source of reality on your there, but how we feel is only up to us.

We always say that THEY made us feel a certain way. I mean, I say that all the time. But I’m trying to stop.

They didn’t make us feel anything – we felt those feelings. We’re the only ones who can control them.

Remember that phrase:

“Life is 20% what happens to you and 80% of how you react to it”?

Actually, I’m sure it’s 90/10, but I just love the 80/20 rule so I’ve adapted it! It really doesn’t matter what the numbers are, but the point is that you don’t HAVE to react in a certain way – you can learn to control your feelings.

It’s absolutely not easy, for sure.

It also depends on where you are in life too – if you have low self-worth, you’re more prone to compare yourself to others. As you don’t necessarily have the confidence to be like “Yup – I’m awesome… it doesn’t matter what they’re doing.”

I certainly suffer from comparanoia – I hate myself after scrolling through social media. I compare my life to each post and make myself feel bad about it.

Instead, if I compare my highlight reel with their posts, I’m actually doing pretty damn well!

But usually, you compare with what’s currently on your mind. And what’s currently on your mind is usually a problem you are trying to solve.

Therefore, you compare their awesome news with your current difficulties.

This happens when you’re not truly engaged with your personal journey. Instead, you’re just copying other people.

I see this stuff allllllll the time with our agency clients. Someone will come to us and want their branding/website done and I will ask them some questions about who they are as a brand and how they want this to come across and they usually reply with something along the lines of:

“Well, these are our competitors and we just want it to look like theirs. I mean, don’t copy it exactly, but we want it really similar.”

You won’t believe how often we get this. Seriously like 80% of the time. There’s that 80/20 again!

This just shows that they have not thought about who they truly are. They haven’t found their WHY. And you know that Simon Sinek would not be impressed with that!

So, I have to take them through a branding journey to help them discover who they are and what they represent.

By feeling more connected with this, they don’t need to compare themselves to others as they know where they are on their journey.

Please please do try this yourself. If you’re not sure how to do an exercise like this, please feel free to message me and I will help you through it.

But if you know who you truly are, as you start to compare yourself to someone else, try this; appreciate the beauty of what they’ve achieved. Whether it’s money, success, a great body etc. Whatever it is, just appreciate it first.

Take a moment and just be like “well done to them”.

Then, if it’s something that you aspire to be, for example, if they’ve just announced they made their first million and you also want to do that, then use that energy as inspiration, rather than jealousy. Or feeling like you’re inferior.

Just appreciate that they’re awesome, but then think, OK… I can be awesome too.

This shift in use of energy will be transformative.

If you find yourself comparing because that person is younger or taller and you obviously can’t achieve these things, then you need to learn how to just appreciate their beauty without comparing.

You’re probably sitting here thinking “OK this is wayyyyy easier said than done, Sabrina”, but don’t tell me that you don’t look at Beyoncé and think “OK I wish I was her”.

Well, I don’t actually. I know many worship Queen Bee, but I don’t.

I think she’s hugely talented, seriously attractive and has a banging bod. But I don’t compare myself to her as we’re on completely different journeys.

I wasn’t meant to be on a stage singing and twerking…. BELIEVE ME!! No one wants to see that!!

I can admire her beauty and move on.

Just like how I admire the beauty of nature.

I absolutely love going for a walk in nature and just soaking in all the beauty.
I just got back from Spain on my solo retreat that I did and I was walking on the beach every day just enjoying the way that my feet felt in the sand and how the sea looked.

I didn’t look out at the sea and think: “OMG look how big and beautiful that sea is. I can’t be as vast as that sea. People won’t think I’m as good as the sea.”

That would be ridiculous.

But somehow, we do this with people. But it can be equally as ridiculous! We just don’t realize it.

So I want to try and give a few tips that I have worked on over the years to get me much better at controlling my comparanoia.

I have 5 things that I’ve worked on that have really helped, and I’m going to share them with you today:

First up, you need to define what success and happiness looks like to you. Because if you don’t truly know, then you’ll constantly be searching for more.

I’m gonna let you think in your head what that looks like for a moment – just imagine your ideal life where you’re super happy and you consider yourself to be successful. What does that look like?

I’m guessing you thought of how much money you had and what type of house you live in and what type of car you drive?

It’s very interesting how many people go towards possessions and finance first.

But financial success is just one element of it. Sure, what would your finances look like for you to feel successful or happy.

But also, what are you like physically? Do you want to lose or gain weight? Do you want to get rid of some health problems or change your lifestyle?

What about mentally? What is mental success or happiness like for you?

That sounds a little odd, but I want to be in my own head less.

I want to wake up and not be worrying about work. I want to just have the freedom to enjoy the day as I wish. Learn new things and go hang out with friends/family.

Your definition of success will be very different to others, and that’s OK. Because it’s what YOU want.

If you don’t know how you define success or happiness, then you will be forced to use the definition of others. And that’s how comparanoia happens.

OK the second step is to always be learning.

This is my motto for life as it applies to pretty much everything. But if you realise that everything is a lesson and you are forever a student, then there’s no need to compare.

You are not worse than others; you’re just on a different place in the journey and you’re still learning.

Have this mentality towards everything and you can turn the negativity into a lesson.

The third thing is to have the attitude of collaborate, don’t compete. There’s plenty of room in this world for everyone to be successful. But for some reason, we see certain people as competition.

Then, there’s this negativity towards each other and that’s definitely when comparison kicks in.

Instead, when you see someone doing well, think… Oh wow – they’re amazing; how can I collaborate with them to produce something awesome too.

This is the ethos behind N0BS – the members club for entrepreneurs, I founded. The tagline for the club is “Where everyone’s a winner”.

It’s two-fold as everyone who joins is already a winner because they’re such high calibre, but we also encourage collaboration and genuine support of each other.

We believe that if you collaborate, you all win!

Which brings me onto my fourth point… Know your strengths.

Some people may seem like competitors, but they’re actually not. For example, I ran a creative agency for 10 years and there are thousands of other agencies out there who could be seen as competitors.

But they’re not really as we all have our strengths in different areas.

We specialise in designing and building low-carbon WordPress websites. We know WordPress inside out. I’m known as the WordPress Witch because I can work my magic on WordPress sites.

Our strength is WordPress and the fact that we’re very big on design rather than the development side of things.

Some agencies are huge on development and make big enterprise sites, even on WordPress. That’s not us.

We do the simpler builds, but they’re all really beautiful because we love branding and graphic design.

When we compare ourselves to others, we look at our weaknesses. We compare their strengths and our weaknesses, which is why we end up feeling pretty crappy.

But if we know our strengths, we can feel more confidence. There will be fewer people to even compare ourselves to, because there’s no point comparing someone to ourselves if we know that isn’t our strength.

And confidence is a huge player in this comparanoia problem, which is why my last tip is all about trying to give yourself a bit of a confidence boost.

I like to set myself up for little wins.

We spend so much time beating ourselves up because we’re trying to achieve something huge, but we achieve great things every day but don’t take the time to appreciate ourselves.

So, I make sure I celebrate the small wins and I absolutely actively now do this on a weekly basis.

I encourage myself to do something each week that I’ve been putting off for a while. When you put things off, whether it’s because you consider it less of a priority than other things, you end up feeling a little bit like a failure.

You failed to achieve this thing.

So, I do something that I’ve been meaning to do for a while, even if it’s small.

I then celebrate that.

Most of the time I celebrate with an “evening off” or a trip to the spa to relax for a bit. But sometimes I even go and buy myself some flowers!

I spend some time trimming them and putting them in a vase in the living room and it brightens up the room, smells lovely and reminds myself that I did something awesome that week.

At the end of the day, you have to do whatever it takes to get you feeling the best you can, and comparing yourself to others is a downward spiral that you absolutely do not want to take.

It will take time to work on it, but please do try the above tricks and let me know how you get on.

Well, I hope you have enjoyed this week’s episode of Sniffing Out the Bullsh*t and I will see you next week for another episode!