The Ego-Trap of Self-Improvement

I’m going to say something which may make you defensive: you think you’re better than some people. Admit it. No matter your self-esteem, there are people in your life, perhaps friends, strangers, or colleagues who you think you’re better than.

Sure, there are people you feel inferior to – all those famous singers and actors, those gorgeous strangers on Instagram with fit bodies, big biceps, plastic surgery and glorious hair, your classmates who went on to live lives of prestige and richness, or your parents who you never quite lived up to.

“It’s interesting. No truly confident or secure person will ever feel superior to another, because their sense of self and worth isn’t dependent upon winning a comparison.”

However, those who are more inclined to feel inferior to others due to crippling shame and self-hatred are more inclined to feel superior than those with confidence. Why? Because superiority is bred from an underlying inferiority complex. No truly confident or secure person ever feels superior to another, because their sense of self and worth isn’t dependent upon a comparison. They had developed a self-sufficient validation system.

You may not be that arrogant person who parades their pride or belittles others, but if you’re someone with an insecure sense of self and you struggle with low self-esteem, I can guarantee that you regularly compare yourself to other people and feel fulfilled when you outmatch them in some way. Knocking people down a few pegs, verbally or in the silent comfort of your own mind, is an easy but artificial and corrupt method for building yourself up.

Everyone with an inferiority complex has a shadow of a superiority complex buried inside them somewhere which reveals itself in different ways. Those with low self-esteem find themselves caught in the emotional chaos of the comparison flux: they feel great when they see someone doing worse than them in an area of life they’re self-conscious about (such as their career) but feel sad and miserable when they see someone thriving in that area.

For example, a person who is self-conscious about their weight may feel an unconscious or conscious sense of pride when they see someone slightly heavier than them, but feel immediately ashamed of themselves when they see someone much thinner. This is a shallow example to employ but, unfortunately, it’s very common. The same goes for reunions with friends. People self-conscious about their career may not want to socialise with those richer and more successful than they are, opting instead to make friends with people they feel occupationally superior to.

“People self-conscious about their career may not want to socialise with those richer and more successful than they are, opting instead to make friends with people they feel occupationally superior to.”

People with low self-esteem waste away their lives comparing themselves to other people, and to make matters more painful, they’re aware they’re doing it. They’re alarmingly aware of how bad they feel after spending hours online staring at photos of other people living lives they can only dream of, with life partners they can’t seem to find.

They promise they’ll stop comparing themselves to others tomorrow; they unfollow the accounts which make them feel mediocre and unsuccessful; they unfriend the friends who make them feel small and decide instead to take up positive self-talk. But then, after a few days or weeks, they fall right back into comparing themselves to those ‘better’ than them. ‘Why can’t I stop comparing myself to others?’ They cry in frustration, ‘It always makes me feel miserable’.

Why then, I hear you ask, can’t they stop? After all, they know it makes them feel miserable, and they have the desire and drive to make a positive change. The reason people are always unsuccessful in ceasing to compare themselves isn’t due to a lack of will, determination, passion, or pain aversion. It’s due to the incompleteness of their mission.

Their apparent inescapable addiction to comparing themselves to those ‘better’ than them isn’t rooted in some subconscious, psychoanalytic masochistic drive; they aren’t hardwired to seek data which fuels their self-destructive thoughts. No, they’re only prone to negative self-comparison because they’re addicted to positive self-comparison.

When a person challenges themselves to stop comparing themselves to others, they only ever focus on cutting out negative self-comparison (i.e., against those who are superior). Nobody ever wants to give up positive self-comparison (i.e., against those who make them look good). People with low self-esteem are dependent upon positive self-comparison, which is why giving up negative self-comparison feels impossible. Their brain is hardwired to seek out those who are worse off, not out of malice, but out of the desperate need to drown out their own self-hatred.

Both inferiority and superiority complexes are disempowered states of being. Both inadvertently depend upon other people to make the person feel worthy in some way. Everyone wants to feel special and unique, but many people waste their life chasing a sense of significance through comparison. You can compare yourself to every single person on this planet and be none the wiser about your significance, originality, or distinctiveness.

Even hypothetically speaking, if you were to discover by the end of your life that you were superior to the majority of people you ever met, in the grand scale of things, what would that even mean? What significance would such a status hold, and what positive meaning would it have to you or the world around you?

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The main influencing factor that leaves countless people worldwide disempowered in their thinking & fruitless in their action-taking is a lack of personal responsibility. Responsibility proceeds all personal empowerment.