Let’s Talk Comparison.
If we aren’t loving ourselves well, we can caught in the trap of comparison and being overly self-critical.
Judgy party of one. I’ve noticed lately that I’ve been picking myself apart a bit more than usual and I wanted to delve into where that was coming from. For example, I’ve been scheduling a video to post for my Preferred Customer group and it has taken me weeks to get it done. Here are the excuses. Ugh, I didn’t do my hair today, my skin is all broken out, I need to do some Gua Sha on these wobbly neck bits, look at all the lines around my mouth. WTF? Why am I nitpicking tiny insignificant details of my face that nobody but me is going to notice? Why am I being so hard on myself? Am I not allowed to be human, with all of my flaws and signs of aging just because I sell skin care? Heck isn’t that why I sell skincare? So that I have an arsenal of tools for just these types of things. Skin breaks out because of who knows what…stress, hormones, internal issues, not cleaning my phone screen? I don’t know. But what I do know is I can order the Unblemish wash and toner and in a week or two my skin is back in balance.
I feel like this goes deeper. When I hold myself to impossible standards, I wonder if I do the same to others. I don’t think it’s conscious, but I do think it’s insidious. When I think of my friends and loved ones, I can’t imagine picking apart societally deemed imperfections. My first thought when friends speak negatively to themselves in front of me is to stop them and remind them of how amazing they are and that kind of self-talk isn’t true. To be fair I don’t equate my self-worth with what my skin looks like or how big or small my body is, but I can see where my self-confidence could use some realignment. When my skin was going crazy, I spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about it. Why is my skin mad? How can I cover it up? Another one? Stop touching it. Can they see my blemishes? Turn your face the other way for the picture. On and on and on. Just typing that feels RIDICULOUS and yet that’s where I was a few weeks ago.
Where does this surreptitious nonsense come from? Did it come from my parents getting divorced when I was little and not having the tools to understand so I made it up in my head that I needed to be perfect? Did it come from being married to a man with a penchant for cheating with often younger, sometime models so there must be something wrong with me? Did it come from being bombarded with perfect skin, perfect body, and perfectly retouched images every day of my life? Years of therapy unpacked my brain and I know NONE of that is true, well except for the beauty/fitness/influencer industry marketing part. That is actually happening to us on the regular but I know enough about photography to know that no one looks like that, I don’t care what the hashtag says. I don’t feel the need to filter my images so that my skin looks like a plastic doll, take drastic cosmetic measures, or even take 72 pictures to get “that perfect shot.” Scott would lose his patience pretty quickly, as would I. I’m ok with being authentic. I do the things to embrace aging without letting it run rampant on my face and body. I fall off the wagon on occasion due to life but I try to sustain healthy habits so I’m not hitting from behind. I eat mostly clean because I like how it tastes and makes me feel versus a lot of junk food that slows my system and saps my energy. I lift weights to build muscle for a more sculpted physique but mostly because I want to be strong and able to live the life I want until my time is done here. Maybe it’s just being more mindful of the images and media I’m consuming. Too many perfectly styled, filtered influencers in my feed make the comparison run rampant. But I’m a firm believer in two old sayings, “Comparison is the thief of joy” and “The only person you should try to be better than is the person you were yesterday.” So let’s love ourselves better today and every day.
