Do you feel that you could be achieving more things with your life? Have you made certain decisions that you constantly regret? Do you think about one or a few people who you feel are to blame for whatever is missing, broken or inadequate in your life? Do you feel that you are capable of so much more, but for some reason or another, you just can't achieve the kind of life you would like for yourself?
If you have these feelings, it's very easy to stay emotionally down. It's easy to feel that regardless of what you do, your life is not going to improve because, at the back of your mind, your life just sucks. It may not be the absolute worst, but it's far from ideal.
Well, you might be engaged in a habit that constantly makes you feel lousy about your life. The more you do this, the more you get down on yourself. You beat yourself up emotionally and psychologically. You feel that whatever it is that you have achieved, it's never enough. You never run out of reasons to feel unhappy about whatever it is you have.
What if I told you that, to possibly billions of people on this planet, you have an ideal life? You might find this laughable because in your mind, you're living in this box, working a job you hate, not making the kind of money you feel you should be making, and looking far below the standard of beauty you set for yourself. You might even have many other reasons why your life is far from perfect or is even downright horrible.
Well, what if I told you that hundreds of millions of people all over the world don't even have $2 to rub together every single day? That's right, they are forced to live on less than $2 a day.
Since they don't have that money, they don't have enough calories. They're malnourished. Even the simplest luxuries of life slips through their fingers. And here you are, thinking about how miserable your life is, refusing to feel content when you are living the life hundreds of millions of people would kill for.
I share this with you to give you a sense of perspective because if you constantly feel lousy, it's because you are comparing yourself to others. I'm telling you, this is the most efficient way to feel lousy about your life. It doesn't matter what you've achieved in the past, it doesn't how talented, skilled and powerful you are as a person, you will always come up short.
If you don't believe me, imagine this scenario. Warren Buffet, a person who is consistently in the top ten list of richest people on the planet, can easily make himself feel lousy and worthless. How? He only needs to compare himself to Michael Jordan.
Michael Jordan is a basketball legend, so if Warren Buffet compares his basketball skills to Michael Jordan, he will lose each and every time. Guaranteed. See how powerful this technique is in making yourself feel lousy?
Now, most of us engage in this by simply checking our Facebook accounts. You'd see all sorts of awesome videos of people living life to the fullest, and here you are, struggling with putting food on the table and making sure the rent is paid at the end of the month. You focus on the worst things in your life while checking out pictures and videos of people sharing the best in their life. Do you see the disconnect? Do you see how this leads to you feeling lousy each and every time?
So what is the solution? Very simple: stop comparing yourself to other people. Instead, adopt this one practice that would enable you to focus on the things that are going right and use them as building blocks for the kind of life you want for yourself.