It’s easy to get caught up in the daily struggles of life, comparing yourself both to other people and to where you thought you would be by now. As a society, we’re hyper focused on the future: getting the next thing, making more money, achieving the next milestone. We don’t take enough time to recognize how far we’ve come, how much we’ve grown, and everything that we have.

This dynamic can leave you feeling powerless and unmotivated, but it doesn’t have to. You can take the opportunity to shift your perspective and find gratitude for yourself and your accomplishments instead of getting frustrated by focusing on where you expected to be.

Frankly, it doesn’t matter what you expected. What you expected has nothing to do with reality, nothing to do with your life and where you are. There’s also a good chance that your expectations are tied to societal views of success, in other words: they are ego driven – related to being seen a certain way in the eyes of others.

Despite understanding these points, it’s still easy to fall in this trap of self judgment and comparison. It’s a natural part of being in this social media driven society. It can feel like no matter what you do you can’t get ahead. Yet being hard on yourself serves no purpose, it doesn’t make you productive – in fact it wastes time and kills motivation. So why do we do it?

We’re Socially Conditioned to Compare

It seems to be unconscious, that is to say it happens automatically – without intention. It’s as if we’re programmed to measure yourself against others and their accomplishments, programmed by our outward focused society and its obsession with perfection, influence, and likes. It didn’t start with social media, advertising has been shaping our perspective on beauty and success on a broad scale since the days of Mad Men and before.

One of the big problems with being conditioned in this way is that we are conditioned to compare ourselves to notions of perfection that are often fabricated or at the very least embellished. What influencers post on social media is often a touched up snapshot of their perfect angle, with their stomach sucked in – very far from reality.

Comparing yourself and all the nitty gritty details of your real life to the false perfection of social media and advertising is a recipe for emotional heartache, and it can even lead to body dysmorphia and eating disorders if left unchecked.

The first step in transcending the conditioned pattern of comparison is to be conscious of it, to learn when that conditioning takes over and to watch how it works. The next step is to replace the conditioning, to use it as a cue to do something else: to be proud of yourself.

If you’re conditioned to unconsciously judge yourself, a good remedy is to consciously take time to be proud of yourself. It’s a simple idea but a powerful practice. When was the last time you paused to appreciate how far you’ve come?

Be Proud of Yourself

Perhaps most people only take time to be proud of themselves at milestones such as a birthday or the new year, but why not do it every day?

Be where you are, and be proud of it. Love yourself for it. Leave the judgment, if you’re not happy with where you are then come up with a plan to change it – just know that any change must start with acceptance of where you are now.

Reach for bigger things, push yourself toward the realization of your dreams, but don’t micromanage each step of the way. That’s a recipe for mental breakdown, yet even a mental breakdown isn’t so bad as long as you let it evolve into a breakthrough.

Life’s too short to measure yourself daily, you’ll always come up short if you let your expectations run ahead of you. If you’re going to do something, you better do it because you love it. You better do it because it makes you feel good, or makes other people feel good, or both.

Don’t paralyze yourself with feelings of worthlessness and self-doubt for too long, wake up to the beauty of the moment. Take time to be proud of yourself.

When you look in the mirror and judge that little belly fat and say to yourself “not there yet”, look again – look at all the beautiful progress you’ve made. Look into those bright eyes and remember the little child you once were, brimming with curiosity and natural intelligence. You’ve come a long way! You’ve seen and experienced many places, you’ve embraced many people, you’ve touched many hearts.

You’ve climbed mountains of emotion and then fallen back down them, tumbling and hitting every rock and tree on your way – but how glorious it is to be able to simply feel the richness of that journey.

I’ll take my pleasure with pain, thank you.

Let Go of the Mind’s Expectations

The notion of success can be suffocating, it’s suffocating because it’s not yours – it’s based on what other people see and that’s forever out of your control. Chase it to the end, and you’ll find you didn’t succeed to yourself, you succeeded to society – what is the point of that?

Since when did it matter where you are, what you’ve accomplished, or how much money you have in the bank? Since you listened to the voice of society, that’s when. As a child you didn’t care about any of that because you didn’t learn to yet, as a child you were just living.

Everything that you have can be taken away, because its all been given! Yet you never received consciousness, consciousness is what you are.

The expectations that you have are not your own. They’ve been influenced by you, but they come from your family, your peers, and society. Become aware of this connection, learn about your expectations and where they come from. Bring them into awareness and let them be, without attachment they have no hold over you.

Follow Your Heart

You’re alive, but are you living?

We’re all alive until we’re not, but truly living? That’s easily seen in the children of the world – being unabashedly themselves, full of wonder and excitement at the fact that they get to experience each day. Somewhere it gets lost. Somewhere from learning to walk to learning to drive we start placing the thoughts of others over our own, we bow to the authority of society instead of listening to our hearts. Fuck that.

Follow your heart and please yourself first! There’s no shame in that, as long as you don’t do so at the expense of others. Focus on you and your needs. Build your dream for you, don’t do it for society, don’t do it for your peers or your parents. Do it for you and see what radiance and joy you can uncover when you put yourself first.

That’s the biggest impact you can have on someone else – to truly live in your most vibrant heart-centered state. People see that, they notice it. They’ll be drawn to your energy, and maybe they’ll take the cue to do the same for themselves.

Your Move

Whenever you feel the pain of self-judgment, that’s your cue: take time to be proud of yourself! Every day, every hour – soak it in. You don’t even need a reason for it, you don’t need an excuse to feel good. You don’t need anyone’s permission. There’s nothing you need to do first. It’s completely free. You just have to take it.