Comparison has a place…

Compare the meerkat, oops I mean market, is a great site isn’t it. It gives you confidence in your decision by letting you compare insurance policies based on all their different benefits and features. It’s useful to compare insurance in this way because at the end of the day, you want value for money and the policy that is right for you. There are comparison sites for lots of other things too; Broadband, TVs, cars, holidays, computers. But can you imagine if there was one for people!

It might look something like this:

How would it feel to see yourself judged in this way? Or see those you care about judged in this way? What effect might it have? Well it might upset you to see that you weren’t a ‘yes’ for things you wanted to be a ‘yes’ for. And those ‘no’s’ would become your focus, never mind all the fantastic yes’s you had.

This may really affect your confidence.

This is because we are sensitive souls and the mind has a negative bias so it finds it easier to focus on anything negative. Yes, positive thinking takes work. But the good news is that when you do it often it becomes more automatic, but more on that later.

You might then look at the list if you are Saskia and despite the fact that you have been ‘judged’ as being popular, kind and creative you might be jealous that Linda is considered confident and clever. This might make you, Saskia, feel like you are not as good as Linda.

You find it easy to overlook all that is good about you and everything that your friends and family love about you because you are comparing yourself to Linda.

So how might this comparing yourself to others make you feel? You might feel:

• Inferior
• That you lack confidence
• Unsure of your best qualities
• Intimidated by Linda

And as a result you might not shine as yourself, feel lost or retreat and feel unhappy.

We are often least kind to ourselves

Now the funny thing is, we are more brutal with comparing ourselves to others than comparing those we love to others. When we have our love goggles on, we tend to recognise the positive qualities of those we love more easily than our own.

I bet if I said to you now tell me 5 things you really like about someone you love, you could do it in seconds ,but how easily can you do it for yourself? Go on, grab a pen and do it now! Let me know how you get on (I am genuinley interested).

The more we focus on the good, the less the bad matters….

So back to compare the market.com. When we are comparing our insurance, there will be some things that are more important than others. Maybe you can’t live without a courtesy car, or the thought of a large excess fills you will dread, so it’s good to understand what all these things are.

You might make a call to have a chat about some of the policy features and decide that yes that is important to you. You know that when you know your policy priorities you can feel really happy and you have confidence that you have made the right choice

Well people are similar in that we all have inner values which are most important to us. Many people haven’t a clue what theirs are! This is a big piece of the work I do when I see clients in my hypnotherapy practice in West Sussex and worldwide on Zoom.

Many of my clients are what I call ‘out of sorts’. They’ve lost their way and don’t feel like they know themselves and they need some ‘realignment’. We do values work so that they can identify parts of their life which may be conflicting with these values. When you truly understand your values and know yourself better you will just feel ‘more you’. Your decisions and behaviours will be easier to align to your true self and life will be better.

There’s another benefit to knowing yourself. As well as knowing your strengths, it is good to be aware of your shadows. Those quirks and qualities that give you your unique edge and your vulnerability. When you know yourself you will live your life with much more confidence.

Tiger Woods focuses on golf.

An example I always use here is education. We expect students to do well in all the subjects and some do. But if you are really amazing at Maths but not English, are you better to focus your energy on the maths or English? Which will make you feel better? Which will you excel at?

I’m not saying that education isn’t important, but can you imagine if they had said to Tiger Woods, ‘yeah, you are really good at golf, but you should be better at tennis so why don’t you spend your time playing tennis!’.

He did what he was good at and had passion for and he excelled. Does he or anyone else care that he isn’t good at tennis? I doubt it!

We are not meerkats (or car insurance)

So continue to compare the market by all means, get the courtesy car and free windscreen repair for a bargain price and wait for your meerkat to arrive in the post, but don’t compare yourself to others. There really is no need. You have good stuff and not so good stuff about your personal qualities and how you look, but unless you are planning on having cosmetic surgery or a personality transplant you are what you are.

Those who love you will love you for what you are and you just need to join you own fan club and celebrate all that is unique, wonderful and special about you.

If you need to know what is special about you just ask your loved ones to make a list of 5 things they love about you and that will be a good start to feeling good about yourself.

How I can help you?

If you want to do some work on how you feel about yourslf, then please get in touch and let’s start your journey of getting to know you and building your confidence.