How often do you compare yourself with other businesses and start doubting your own? It happens to the best of us and sometimes it’s unavoidable. Every time you go on social media, you are likely to see other entrepreneurs or competitors doing something amazing or offering something unique.
The thing is, feeling doubtful of your own offering when seeing what others are doing is not serving you or your business’ best interests. Naturally, when doubt appears, people tend to do one of two things – let it eat them up inside to the point of not moving forward with their business at all, or simply trying to keep up by offering similar things.
What’s left is a stagnant business or a business that is no longer YOU and more of like everyone else.
While you can’t run away from seeing other businesses on your feed, you can change your reaction to them so that they don’t leave you feeling behind or less confident.
Here are my five reasons why comparing yourself to others is a barrier to success.
- Comparing yourself to others allows them to drive our business actions. Which is completely counterintuitive to having your own business.
- Selecting perfection for comparison. The characteristics that admire you about that person are likely to be their best traits. Now combine that with a few others’ best traits and you get unrealistic expectations. You aren’t seeing their weaker traits (which are definitely there), making you strive for the ideal, when in fact, you should be focusing on your natural strengths.
- Adapting your business to what others are doing. You may be in line with your competitors but you are diluting the most important aspect of your business – your unique personality that attracts your ideal clients.
- Comparison leads to resentment. You don’t know that person and what they are going through – chances are there are strengths that you have that they don’t. There’s no use hating them for the strengths they have that you don’t, in the end, you are the same.
- Everything you have achieved will be belittled by what others are doing. This is not healthy, you have our own journey to success and you should take time to pat yourself on the back for them!
Chances are, we’ve all felt this as entrepreneurs – it’s natural! But it’s important to OWN your journey and not focus on everyone else’s achievements.
Give yourself grace. Once you have awareness, all you have to do is make a decision to change and become better. It’s a skill that we practice every day and keep getting better at.
Allow yourself to be yourself. We are special and unique in ways that are not duplicatable. And there are people out there who want to hear from you. Be your true authentic self .. ALWAYS!!