The Comparison Trap

{image via here}

Have you ever walked into a friend's home for the first time and immediately felt envious? Have you eyed a completely put-together woman with her immaculate child politely walking next to her, and wondered why you're not as put-together as her? When reading a blog, have you ever thought, "Wow, I wish I could do that?" It's the comparison trap.

I've been thinking a lot about this lately, about how we as women tend to compare ourselves to other women and ultimately judge how we're measuring up by these perceived standards. When we size up the other women to see how we fare, one of two things happen. We either deem ourselves inferior or we conclude that we are superior. Neither one feels very good to the soul.

I remembered reading about just this thing recently and I finally dug it back up. Stephanie at Stephmodo so eloquently wrote about this topic here and posted a follow-up here. Both of her entries are so worth the time. 

I like that she hits upon blogging in her follow up entry. She states that "judging a person by his/her blog is even more inaccurate... remember a blog shares edited information". This is so true. 

It's good to remember that age old saying, "you can't judge a book by it's cover". There's always more to the story. At the same time as we are allowing ourselves to pale in comparison to someone else, another person could be elevating you in their eyes. Let's even the playing field and see our own worth. It's huge.