How I stopped comparing myself to others— letting go of the fear of being “behind”

If you consider yourself as a high-achieving woman, a perfectionist, or someone who feels the need to perform, chances are, you may often feel like you “should” be further ahead in life.

Whether it’s in your business, career, or relationship status, you may feel behind if you can’t reach a goal by a certain timeline, a biological age, or an expected timeframe. And that if you can’t be fast enough, don’t try hard enough, or achieve enough, you may miss out…

I myself used to be someone who felt behind compared to others, especially to women who were “higher up” than me. Starting from a school age, I compared myself constantly with peers who were on top of the class and felt I was “behind” even when I was just short of 0.5 points.

Later on in my life came entrepreneurship, where just as before, I compared myself with people posting about their high income months, luxury boat rides, and private jets online. And the same thing as before, I felt like a “loser,” “a failure” for not having the things they had. 

If you’re like me, you may find that feelings of being “behind” persist no matter how hard you try. Like for me, despite putting effort in my business 24/7, it still did not feel like I was accomplishing enough. Even in my spare time, my brain would go on and on about how I was falling behind and was not where I was supposed to be.

And all this mental absurdity went on until I felt like “nothing” after rejection upon rejection hit me– leaving me paralyzed, broken, and stabbed by shame which led me onto my healing journey.

But here I am now, years later, and I can’t be more grateful for all of that experience. The grip of my ego needing to push further ahead has now totally loosened, and I’m now left with an ease, a freedom that I never thought was possible. Unlike before, there is no more of the person I “need” to become or an expectation that I should match up to. Instead, all there is left is a liberation for who I AM…

And so today, I wanted to break down the process of how I healed myself from the bondage of comparison and being “behind”.

This article is for you especially if you have tried so many personal development tools/ strategies, yet still feel like you’re left back in square-one (burdened by so many more things you haven’t yet accomplished). It’s for the woman who is tired of criticism, self-judgement, and self-doubt and you now finally want to BE enough, in fact more than enough. It’s for you if you want to experience unconditional safety, peace, and love, beyond comparing yourself…

You are not the one who needs to be further ahead

Whenever we feel behind in life, you will first notice that the pain primarily comes from the need to be a hyper-unrealistic, top-tier image of yourself. (Although yes, your mind may try to convince you that it IS realistic because so-and-so person did it or you did in the past).

It’s an image that is different for every individual– to some it may look like an image of someone beautiful, popular, fit. To others it may look like an image of someone who’s wealthy, strong, successful in her career etc. Regardless, this hyper-unrealistic image of who you need to be, will feel like a huge contrast, in fact almost “unattainable.”

And because of it, the ego will even convince you more that you “should” become that and only when you become that, can you feel like you’re on top of the world. 

Yet this urge to be hyper-unrealistic (aka be the top A person, super-successful, massive achiever) falls apart when we realize that we are not as “perfect” as that image… At least, not perfect in the way that the ego wants you to be.

Instead, you may be faced with your humanness… like wanting to make it to the top 1% but finding yourself struggling to even know how to go about your next project. Or like wanting to have an “instagram filter” look but finding yourself having breakouts, on top of messy hair, thinning skin, and under-eye bags. 

This is where cognitive dissonance sets in– an inner battle between who you are and who you think you “should” be.

And because of that, you may hear a voice inside your head that says “Why aren’t you there yet?” “What’s taking you so long?” “Why can’t you just be as good as Stacey?” and on and on. Which is where the fear of being behind kicks in…

One can be in that state of inner suffering with judgements, criticism, and fears for as long as we think we are the one who’s behind in life. When the truth is, it is only our ego minds that is behind. Who you truly are, in your true essence is changeless and eternal, and therefore can never be be behind.

You cannot intellectually try to “know” your way to this of course, you can only realize it through experiencing it yourself first. And to experience that inner truth, that ever-present perfection of yours, you can begin by asking: 

Who is the one that’s suffering? 

Who is the one that is behind and feels like she needs to be further ahead? 

Who is the one that is beating you up because you aren’t as good as what she expected?

And once you do that, you will start seeing that all of that is in fact just a story– a story that has been implanted to us at one point.

There was a time in your life when you didn’t have any concept of what it is like to be behind or ahead, and you didn’t pressure yourself to be like others. All you knew was this pristine awareness of life itself… and you were free to exist, free to play, free to simply be. Until later, you learned to compare yourself with others, not out of by choice but at one point it felt like you had to in order to survive. 

Like for me that moment was when my dad yelled at me for a mid-tier position I got. (Back in Myanmar, the country I was raised in, we had positions for grades like who got the 1st in class, 10th in class– promoting comparison with others, I know). Since then, my mind learned that being average= not receiving love from dad, and being 1st in what I do= being loved. 

To you, your story may be different but still, you will see that your story of needing to be ahead was created out of pain, when you thought you wouldn’t be loved, accepted, and valued as you are. Instead, you had to believe that you had to be ahead of others if you were to be “cool,” likeable, and loveable.

But the thing is, all of that is a false story. It’s not the truth of who you are– one who is pure awareness, pure existence itself. And the only reason why it’s getting painful to compare yourself with others is because you’re at war with who you are. 

Let the unloved emotions pass

Once you begin seeing more of who you are (beyond the achiever), you will then see that the main reason why you feel the need to be further ahead is because there are heavy, dense, “nasty” emotions you would face otherwise.

Such as, the shame of not being good enough, the guilt of being inferior, or the fear of being judged by others if you finally let yourself be “behind.”

These emotions are not necessarily “bad”– they serve us an evolutionary purpose to belong to a group and survive as a species. However, when these emotions are driving your motivations and desires, all they do is perpetuate suffering, while never getting to the root of why we suffer. 

And so, the next stage of healing is to simply let these dense emotions pass… You do so by gently listening, attuning to your emotional needs, and tending to them– if you want support with it, this is something I facilitate inside my psychic healing sessions. You can book one here, the intro call is totally free. 

During such a release, you may see again that it is in fact these emotions that ARE the one that are suffering, NOT actually you.

That means, the voice in your head that says things like “why aren’t you further ahead” is not you; it is only fear disguising as you and speaking through you. In other words, the mind becomes “possessed” by these fears, guilt, and/shame and so begins attacking us. 

Liberation happens when you let these emotions pass, without judging them, suppressing them, or controlling them.

By doing so, you are merging with the unconditional love of the Creator (call it Divine/God/Universe). To this love each and every part of you is loved and accepted– even if you are average or are behind the pack. It is only the ego mind that cannot fully love that judges us and so compares ourselves with others. But with this love, you are allowed to be whoever you are. 

And with that, a new form of freedom will arise– the kind of freedom you probably have never experienced in your life before.

To me, one of the ways on how that freedom arose was through having creative freedom, because I can now freely express myself without having to care about how my results are going to be perceived. (You can read more on how I found creative gifts through letting my inner child be a “back bencher” here).

To each and everyone of us, there are unique talents, gifts, and abilities that want to be expressed through us. And even more importantly, there is unconditional joy that can be felt in the core of us. And for us to experience that, we can only do so through letting the ego (the false self) who needs to be “ahead” fall away…

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So my love, whenever you feel the fear of being behind or anything of that sort where you don’t feel good enough, know that the antidote lies in the gentle art of letting ourselves blossom as we are, instead of forcing yourself to excel through pushing ourselves more, doing more, or beating ourselves more. Until we do that, we become slaves to the ego mind that says we can’t be at peace unless we have achieved great things first– which only ends up prolonging our inner conflict and mental suffering.  

But the good news is, you are not this ego nor the voice that says you are behind.

You are the Self (i.e. the Universal Self) who can never be behind because the Self is the All that is– so how can there be another self outside of you to compare to? She is one with the Divine who contains it all, including the average, inferior and superior, where all are looked upon with perfect love.

And because of that, in the eyes of the Divine, there is no such thing as “average,” “inferior,” and “superior” anymore. All these terms of hierarchy only exist in the false self– the limited ego mind that thinks you can be defined by such labels.

And the more and more you realize this, which is the truth of who you are, the more you will become freed from pointless judgements of the ego. And instead you will begin seeing the same beauty that is IN everything– where the water in a dew drop is the same as that of the oceans and herein, the bigness and smallness of your achievements cease to exist, for the Divine is IN All that is…