6 Steps to Overcome Feeling Inferior
Stop Comparing Yourself to Others
This is a big one and often hard to do (I’ve been there myself). Stop comparing yourself to others. It’s such a disservice and very unfair to yourself. You don’t know the other person’s story. You just see this small part of what they are giving off. They could very well be comparing themself to you. It’s a waste of time and energy, and you’re just making yourself feel bad by doing so. Instead, focus on your own journey. What is important to you? How can you move in that direction? What did you do today to take a step towards your goals? You will feel so much better if you just focus on yourself.
Have an Attitude of Gratitude
Practice real, honest gratitude. Not the superficial kind that will help you suppress your feelings. But actual gratitude for what you are truly grateful for. Be honest. Express gratitude at the start of the day/end of the day/throughout the day. It will help you focus on what’s going well in your life. What are you grateful for? Reciting a random list from the internet isn’t good enough. It has to matter to you in order for gratitude to work. So what matters to you?
Challenge Your Thinking
Engaging in negative thinking is very easy to do and becomes a habit. Well, it’s time to break that habit by challenging your thinking. Do you really always fail? I bet you don’t. I bet there are things you have done extremely well. Think about it. Is it true that you never do things good enough? Often, the standards we use to judge ourselves are quite harsh. Examine your standards for yourself. Are you being fair to yourself? Is it even achievable? It’s possible you need to adjust your standard so you can do things that are “good enough.” Give yourself a break. Challenge this all or nothing thinking, focus on the in-betweens instead of the extremes.
Focus on Your Strengths and Successes
It’s very easy to focus on the negative, so let’s do the opposite. What have you done well in the past 3 months? What have you achieved? What are you good at? Instead of focusing on what you haven’t done well, let’s balance the scales and focus on what you have done well. Take time to focus on your strengths to balance out your weaknesses. Knowing what you are good at can help strengthen what you need to work on. If you’re having trouble, make a list of your strengths and successes as seeing them written down can be empowering.
Learn From Failure
Don’t let failure keep you down. Instead, use it as an opportunity for growth. Learn from it. Examine what worked and what didn’t work. What can you change to do better next time? The key here is to learn how to fail without making it personal. Use failure as information, and not as self-rejection.
Accept Yourself
This last one is a wild one, are you ready for it? Accept yourself. Yes, that’s right. Practice radical self-acceptance. Accept your flaws and weaknesses. Accept that you are struggling with believing in yourself. Accept that you need to work on yourself. Because guess what? Everyone needs to work on themselves from time to time, and that’s okay. It doesn’t make you inferior, it makes you human.