Episode 016: It’s Not You, It’s Me

We’re taught by society, social media, and the news just how easy it is to compare ourselves to others. That type of constant comparison can be detrimental to our self esteem, resulting in harmful self-hate. In today’s episode, I’m sharing a short passage from my brand new journal, The (I’m)Perfect Journal, about comparison. Listen in to hear a few prompt, how you can build your own story and success, and where you can grab a copy of the journal!

Review the Show Notes:

Starting a Workbook/Journal (00:56)

Let’s Dive Into My Favorite Section of the Journal (1:35)

Comparison (1:54)

(I’M)PERFECT Journal Reading (2:33)

Everyone Compares Themselves (4:40)

Prompt: When I compare myself to others, what Is the main comparison I make? (5:30)

How would I define the motivation for this comparison? (5:41)

What is it and why does it exist? (5:46)

And What Can I say to this motivation the next time it comes up? (5:51)

The Message of this Journal (10:30)

Your Story is Your Own (12:39)

This episode is brought to you by the (I’m)perfect Journal! The (I’m)perfect Journal is a guided journal for discovering & embracing your perfectly imperfect self. Purchase your copy today!

Review the Transcript

Welcome to some place for everybody where we talk about belonging and being a human in our bodies and living in and learning to love our bodies. I’m your host, Carly someplace. This podcast is brought to you by Someplace Images Boudoir everybody, you can see the full show notes at some place for everybody.com

Now let’s change some self perspectives Hi y’all and Happy Monday. This is Carly someplace your host of some place for everybody. So today I want to talk about a very near and dear to my heart project and topic. So I’ve definitely touched on this topic before if you haven’t listened to the episode that I do with my co author Hannah Witton about our amazing, absolutely phenomenal if I say so my freakin self journal.

So about two years ago, Hannah and I got together and started writing a, we were gonna call it a workbook at that point. And we were going to be able to, you know, just have a couple of questions help people feel more comfortable in their body. Talk about some, you know, sensitive subjects and different things like that. Well, two years later, and if you want to hear all of the backstory, please go listen to my episode with Hannah. But two years later, we have 190 page, beautiful watercolor journal that is finally finally finally available to purchase, which is so incredibly exciting. So to introduce you a little deeper to this journal, I want to read to you the introduction of one of my favorite favorite sections. And I think that this is one of the biggest things that really is kind of the starting point of this podcast is that so this is the chapter on comparison, comparing ourselves to others.

And and I think that this is a huge thing that we all just generally talk about here on the podcast, every single interview I’ve had every person I’ve had on myself, we’ve all touched on this subject of, you know, looking at others and feeling that we’re not good enough, in some way, shape, or form, be it that the beauty industry has told us that we are too big or too small or too something, or that society in general has told us that we are too much of something. And all of that comes just from social comparison. And that’s why this chapter is one that completely resonates with me, our comparison chapter. Here we go. We all compare ourselves to others, it is truly inevitable. In the 1950s, social psychologist Leon Festinger started studying this concept of social comparison theory, which posits that human beings can’t actually define themselves intrinsically or independently. They can only define themselves in relation to someone else.

It Festinger is to be believed comparing is an inevitable practice in our lives designed to help us better understand ourselves, and build our sense of identity. But comparison can be a bitch, and it’s been brought to the forefront today more than ever due to social media. We are not meant to be the same as others, we’re meant to be ourselves. But we do things like comment on other people’s photos as being hashtag goals, when what we truly need to do is focus on ourselves. You may have at one point in your life made a negative comparison based on appearance, wealth, ability, intelligence, status, partners love life, or even the number of likes that you get on a post. We all do it, you’re not alone in that. But is it possible to make comparisons that aren’t always bad for you? And how do you battle the feelings of jealousy, the sense of lack and everyday comparison that are pressed on you by society? The answer involves a deep, long process of bringing these comparisons to the front burner, and focusing on your worth.

When you don’t focus on your own worth you fall victim to compromising your integrity and in turn scar your self esteem. It also involves you being honest and upfront about what your motivation for the comparison is. Are you comparing yourself because you feel threatened? What does she have that I don’t have? Are you using the comparison is a form of motivation? Or even trickier? Are you using the comparison as a form of motivation not because you want to be a better version of yourself, but because you want to beat the other person who by the possibilities? There are a lot of different reasons why you might compare yourself to others. But the golden key in all of this is to begin to recognize the how and the why of your comparisons. So that ultimately you can begin to refocus your energy back in words, not for them, but for you. So I don’t know if any of those words like really resonated with you, but even reading it back, I’m like, damn, I do a lot of this stuff. And even I do it and that’s the thing is that everybody does it. Everybody compares themselves everybody places so much pressure on themselves to compare and again, where do these comparisons come from? Are you comparing In the capacity of,

I want to be better than this person, or do I want to be better version of me, those are two very different things. And that takes a lot of deep diving into your own self into your own thoughts into your own everything, to figure out where you stand in that comparison game. So while I’m not going to give you every single thing that’s in this chapter, I want to walk through a few main key points of this chapter. And, again, why it’s my absolute favorite. So one of the questions that we have in here one of our prompts, when I compare myself to others, what is the main comparison that I make? Think it through? How would I define the motivation for this comparison? What is it and why does it exist? And what can I say to this motivation, the next time that it comes up. For me, personally, a lot of the comparisons that I make are, I’m sure you’ll guess it about my body, it’s been fed down my throat my entire life, that if you were just 10 pounds lighter, you’d be so much prettier. If you just did this, if you just worked out, or if you were just skinny, or if you had a flat stomach, if you had all of these things. I remember being on the beach in high school, with a ton of the girls that I went to high school with in my class.

And a friend of mine, a close friend at that point, looking at me, and her looking at everybody else, laying out down the beach. And, of course, I was wearing a bikini because that’s who I am as a person and I grew up next to a lake in a mountain town. So I’m a bikini woman, regardless of my size, looking at herself in a bikini, and looking at all of the other girls that were on the beat us and looking at the little lower belly pooch that we all have because like, I don’t know, it’s protecting our bodies and our uterus. And, like, if we all have it, doesn’t that mean that it’s normal? Uh huh, exactly. That’s what I thought. Just so you know, in case you’re wondering, that little lower belly pooch that you can’t get rid of no matter what no matter how hard you how hard you try, is a fat layer meant to protect your whole body, your uterus, your stomach. It’s not a flaw, just because you can’t make it go away. That’s a good thing. Just you know. Anyways, I remember sitting there and I remember her looking up and down at all of these other girls and looking at her stomach. And looking at that lower belly pooch and being like, God, I’m just so disgusting. And I, like feel ashamed to be in a bathing suit on the beach. And when I heard that come out of her mouth. The first thing I thought was, if that’s what you think of yourself, and that’s what you think of your body that is quite a bit smaller than mine. Then what do you think of me? What do you think of my body that’s larger than yours? What are the thoughts running in your head? Do you think that I’m disgusting, and not worrying? Do you think that I’m all of these terrible things that you say about being fat? Oh, no. Like, if you cannot hear the sarcasm in my voice. There’s nothing wrong with being fat. I’m fat, but it’s fine. It’s totally fine. But when I look back, and I actively watched her compare herself to these other girls, we’re at a lessons God, we must have must have been like 16 I know. We thought we were like, on top of the world and everything on the face of the planet. But like, newsflash, we definitely did not even in my 30s No, like we were children. It’s like when Ariel is telling her father, I’m 16 I’m a grown up, no girl, you are a child.

Anyways, when I compare myself to others, what is the main comparison I make? For me, it’s my body. I’m almost always comparing my body. Because that is the way that I was taught. That is what I was taught to do. That is what I have been driven to do my entire life. And that is, the main comparison that most people make about my body for me is that they judge me based on my body, they compare my body to their body, and in the society that we’re in, for the most part. If I’m bigger than them, they’re like, Oh, thank God. Not saying this is everybody’s thought process. But I’ve seen this a lot. They’re happy that I’m larger than they are. Because being thin is being happy is what society feeds us this bullshit over and over and over and over again. And if I’m smaller than them, usually, it makes them feel uncomfortable. However, the world is changing. And that’s not always true. And it’s the most glorious thing on the face of the planet. That regardless of whose body I’m around and who I’m around, I don’t feel like I’m being judged. Maybe sometimes, maybe sometimes, but for the most part, I have become comfortable with myself. I have worked on myself every single day for years.

To make those comparisons go away, or to stop seeing them, or to stop seeing the way that people are comparing my body to theirs, and being happy, if I’m the one that’s bigger, or being uncomfortable, if I’m the one that’s smaller, I hate those comparisons. But those are still the comparisons that I make. Those are still the comparisons that I was taught. And it’s an incredibly, incredibly hard thing. To say it out loud. But it’s true. And it’s honest. And that’s what this journal does is that this journal dives deep into your sense of self and what you were taught. And just because you were taught, it doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily right. And I think that that’s the biggest thing. Because as we have access to the internet, which in so many ways is such an amazing thing, obviously, but we have access to more knowledge.

And we have access to more points of views, and we have access to differences that we didn’t before. We have access to read actual medical journals, we have access to read news articles, and we have access to read things from the other side of the world, or we have access to read anything and everything we could possibly want to we can gain so much knowledge we can gain so much. And it’s not just all about comparison. It’s not all about social media. It’s not all about that connection that we crave and that we seek and that we want that we also spend our times comparing and looking at others highlight reels on their social medias, literally.

They’re called reels, y’all. They are called reels, highlight reels, literally, top of your Instagram highlights. What do you think that is? Take those words. Think about them? And are you actively comparing yourself to those things? And here’s the other nugget that I’m going to give you from this chapter. Because I really want to encourage you. I mean, yes, I don’t want to be like, Oh my god, buy my journal. But do do it for you. Not for me. It’s great. I’m so happy that you want to purchase it and you want to be able to move forward and yes, absolutely. However, what I really want you to do is be able to answer these questions for yourself. What I really want you to do is that thing that everybody asks me about? Where does your self confidence come from? My self confidence comes from knowing myself, my self confidence comes from working deeply on myself, and going over these questions over and over and over again, and then not being afraid to talk about them and share them. So here’s that other question that I want to leave you with.

And I want you to really deeply think about. And I’ll give you my answers. So when something good happens to someone that I know, do I find myself resenting them, or celebrating their success? Why is that? So here’s what I know to be true. One of my best friends is a self made millionaire. I’m so incredibly proud of her. So incredibly proud of her. I’ve watched her take private jets to the Caribbean. I’ve watched her buy a multimillion dollar home. I’ve watched her do so many incredible things. And she did it all herself. And she built this empire herself. And I have zero, jealousy.

Zero, because I’m proud of her because I’ve watched her every single step of the way. I have watched her go against these hurdles. I’ve watched her climb mountains, I have watched her lose friendships, I have watched her do so many incredible things. And she has been so strong, and she has been so fierce and she has been so amazing throughout the entire thing. And the first thing that she has started doing is helping others up. Why would I be jealous of that? Because she has more money than me. Money is not everything. It’s also a renewable source. It comes back, it can come back. And I can understand that there are so many different walks of life. And this can be completely different. But I’ve watched her make herself and all she has turned around and done is encouraged me to do the same. So why would I ever be envious of that?

Why would I look at her house and be like why not me? Well, Carly, have you worked harder than that? Have you done these things? Have you put yourself out there? Have you overcome the hurdles that she’s come up on? No, not yet. But her story isn’t my story. And that’s okay. And I think that’s the biggest thing in here is that her story is not my story and my story is my own. My story is what I get to make it all of my failures are absolutely my own. And there is a nobody else when I fail. It is just on me. However, all of my successes are also just all on me. When I feel like I’m on top of the world It’s because I put myself there. And that might sound so freaking cocky to some of you. And I don’t care, because I work hard. So when these comparisons come up, when I look at my friends who have things that I don’t have, I can, honestly, from the bottom of my heart, know that I am happy for them. Because I will get what I deserve. And I will get all of the things that are coming to me, because I work hard, because I have a pure heart because I have all of these things. And because I can do so much with the knowledge that I have, and the person that I am. And I truly believe that for everybody, I truly believe that for everybody. Again, I truly believe that there is some place for every single body. And I mean that not just in the sense of your body, but in your body and your soul. In your mind, there is such a unique space in the world for you. And every single person here can be themselves and should be themselves.

And our comparisons should be this person is really good at this. So if I need to help with this, that’s who I’m going to ask, that’s what I’m going to hire. That’s what I’m going to turn to not this person is so good at this. Why am I not? There’s such a learning lesson here. They’re such a learning lesson in comparison. And I truly, truly encourage you to purchase a journal to dive deep into this, to get to know yourself. Not every section is going to be super hard, but quite a few of them are. That’s what it takes is it takes overcoming it takes being honest with ourselves, it takes moving forward and what we have learned and deciding if what we have learned is correct or correct for us. Those are two very different things. So I encourage you, my friends, grab a journal, go to imperfect journal.com. And scroll down and click purchase.

And I want to see where this takes you. I want to see the journey is that this takes you on and the things that you learn about yourself and how incredibly powerful you are. And how incredibly beautiful and amazing you are in the way that you get to be yourself. And that is your greatest superpower and nobody else is like you and that when you’re comparing yourself. It should be in ways that are good. I want to be more kind like them. I want to be more genuine like this person I want to be use those comparisons. Use those comparisons for yourself. It’s worth it. You’re worth it. Imperfect journal.com Thanks so much for listening to someplace for everybody. If you love this episode, would you mind leaving me a review in your favorite podcast app and subscribe to the show. If you’re looking for a community to love on you and support you in your self love Journey, come join our all gender Facebook group someplace for everybody which can be found in the show notes at someplace for everybody.com Until we meet again. Be kind to yourself.