Quit with the comparisonitis
Jumping right in with a message: Stop with the comparisonitis!
Let me explain.
I was having a conversation with a friend this week who said they could never make the meals that I make.
I love to cook, which is not true for everyone. I grew up cooking with my grandma and my mom. I got to spend time and connect with them, which is my love language.
Today, it is how I show love to my family and friends and is one of my creative outlets.
Once I started cooking, I never stopped. However, what I cook today looks different from what I cooked ten years ago.
A quick glimpse into my life ten years ago: Parker was a toddler, I had a rigorous teaching schedule, I was battling autoimmune diseases, running around to playdates, deep in my people-pleasing phase, and doing all the other daily tasks so I could take care of my family and household.
When I think back to that time, I was exhausted—the kind of exhausted where you wake up feeling as tired as when you went to sleep.
I needed quick and easy recipes—things a toddler would eat that didn't require me to spend hours in the kitchen with a million different ingredients. I didn't have the time or the bandwidth.
I had no desire to experiment with recipes. The same meals were on repeat because I didn't have the mental energy to research, shop, and prepare new ones.
Over the years, life has shifted, and so have I.
It started when my family got sick of eating the same things each week. I would look for a new, easy recipe to add to the rotation.
When P got older, she wanted to help in the kitchen; I consolidated my teaching schedule, my autoimmune diseases were under control, I created clear boundaries that kept my people-pleasing tendencies in check, and I had more time and energy to get creative with our meals.
The changes started slowly, and I knew I always had my staple recipes to fall back on when life got lifey.
The creative outlet I found in the kitchen brought a lot of joy into my days. It was fun to express myself through food (but more fun when it was delicious and everyone liked it).
As the years passed, things kept changing. Recipes I used to look at and think were too complicated or had too many ingredients started to excite me, and I couldn't wait to experiment with them and try out new ingredients.
I also reached the point where I could look at a recipe and know exactly how to tweak it to make it taste how my family and I wanted it to.
There are things I make now that I would have looked at, laughed at, and not even considered making ten years ago. They would not have brought me joy; they would have overwhelmed me.
People see what I do now and think they could never make the recipes I’m making. But when they look at what I do now, they haven’t seen the process and the years it has taken me to get here; they only see the outcome.
They compare themselves to my years of effort and feel like they are not good enough.
This isn't just with cooking; you can insert any habit into this equation.
Some people don't like to cook. They don't want my habit of making homemade meals. So why make yourself feel bad about something you don’t want to do?
Instead of wishing you were better at something you don't want to do, your time would be better spent working on a habit you actually want to have.
Comparisonitis makes us feel bad about ourselves and keeps us from getting into action; it becomes an excuse for us not to do the thing.
It's easy to look at other people's habits and feel envy or jealousy. It's a whole heck of a lot harder to do something about it.
Instead of comparing yourself to people with your desired habits, see them as an inspiration to get started or keep going.
You can have what you want if you're willing to do the work.
The moral of the story is to keep your eyes on your own paper, get into action, and go after what you want.