When You Compare Yourself To Others …

If we have a product, service, or opportunity to offer, we can often psych ourselves out by predetermining whether someone will want what we have to offer.  You know the self-talk.  I don’t want to be pushy, what are they going to think, they are too busy for this, they wouldn’t be interested in what I have to offer.  They already have everything they need … and on and on it goes.

I have been guilty of this on several occasions, especially when I first started my business.  I was so afraid to talk to people and ask them to work with me and would prejudge and assume they wouldn’t be interested.

Have you ever been guilty of this self-talk?  Two things happen when you do this:

1. You give yourself an out to not to show up and make a difference, and
2. You make a decision for someone that they may not have made for themselves. You take away the chance for them to benefit from what you have to offer.

“Why do I do this to myself?”

What I have found, is that when we start the self talk and prejudge, we do this because we think we are different, and we start to compare ourselves to others.  The problem with this is when we compare ourselves to someone else, we are comparing their outside to our ooey-gooey inside.  This never turns out well.  We never know what is going on for someone inside.  They may look like they have it all together, but on the inside they are shaking in their boots.  This was me 27 years ago when I first started in network marketing.  I looked like I had it all together, but the truth was, I was scared to death.  I could put together a killer, confident outside but inside I was a mess of insecurity and doubt.

Then we start to think we are different from everyone else.  Know one else feels like we do, we are all alone and no one would understand.  Yes, we are a little different. Thank goodness.  We all have different talents, gifts, and personalities and opinions. These differences make things interesting and need to be honored.  But, what I know is:

We are far more alike than we are different …

You and I – we want to matter, we want to be seen, we want to heard, we want to be appreciated. We want to be successful, and we want to make a difference.  We want people to be compassionate towards us and support us.  We want to be included and feel like we are part of something. We want happiness and to feel joy.  We want our children to be safe and happy. We want health for our families and ourselves. We want to be fully expressed. We want to be accepted for who we are – the good, bad, and the ugly. We want to be loved.

When remember this the next time you go to a networking event, you have a booth, you see someone at the grocery store you want to talk to, you get a referral and when you get on the phone to follow-up, it will make connecting with others so much easier.

Ask yourself:

1. What if my product, service, or opportunity is the solution to a problem or challenge they have been looking for?
2. What if they just really need someone to notice them?
3. What if they are as scared to talk to someone as I am?
4. What if my product, service, or opportunity is exactly what this person needs to make her dreams happen?

I love the “what if” questions.  They put you into curiosity, which is fun, and takes your attention off yourself.  If you think about it, when you hesitate to talk to someone and you start the self-talk of what will they think of you … and you make the decision for them, it’s pretty selfish. Let the person you want to talk to decide for themselves.

You never know who might need you or who you might change their life if you just ask.

Remember asking people to work with you is just about having a conversation and building a relationship.

We are more alike then we are different.