Comparing yourself to others is a trap because one of two outcomes is guaranteed: you will either find yourself to be superior or inferior. Your assessment is variable because you can always find someone better or worse than you in any situation. If you compare yourself to a supermodel, you’ll fall short; if you compare yourself to the least attractive person you can find in the grocery store, you’ll feel better. If you compare yourself to the most successful person you know, you’ll feel like a failure; if you compare yourself to someone who hasn’t achieved anything, you will feel like a success. Neither feeling better than nor less than others is a truthful assessment.

Galatians 6:3-4 tells us to compare ourselves to ourselves. This way we can get an accurate assessment. Are you doing the best you can and making progress? Then you are doing well. Are you letting yourself slide, not doing what you know you can and should do? Then you are not doing well.

We often compare ourselves to other people, yet we are each unique with different aptitudes, personalities, and life experiences that make a comparison useless. We also compare our insides with other people’s outsides. We look at who people appear to be without knowing all their imperfections. Of course everyone looks great in church on Sunday morning. You only know what happened getting ready at your house, and you assume everyone else didn’t have an argument or a child who didn’t want to go. And guess what? You look perfect on the outside to them too!

Comparison results in pride, self-pity, envy, jealousy, covetousness, competitiveness, and low self-worth. It keeps you stuck in unproductive feelings and attitudes. Pride is misplaced when it comes from superiority. It is only accurate when you can feel good about what you really accomplished regardless of what someone else has or hasn’t done. Self-pity sabotages future success by keeping you in a helpless state. Envy, jealousy, and covetousness are unproductive mindsets that also keep you from taking responsibility for what you do with your own life. Competitiveness isn’t wrong in work and sports, but it sabotages intimacy in relationships. And low self-worth isn’t healthy.

By Karla Downing

Relationship Devotional Prayer

 
God,

Help me compare myself with myself to measure my progress so that the assessment will be accurate.

Relationship Devotional Challenge

•  Stop comparing yourself to other people. Instead, compare yourself today to how you were yesterday. If you are making progress, feel good. If you are not making progress, decide how you can do better.

Scripture Meditation

Galatians 6:3-4

“If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Each one should test his own actions. Then he can take pride in himself, without comparing himself to somebody else.” (NIV)

What is the problem? Comparing yourself to others.
What is the solution? Comparing yourself to yourself.