Self-Esteem: What About Social Comparison?

Many of my clients are staying connected to staff, customers, or members, by hiring me to deliver virtual presentations.

I provide high-impact and high-content virtual presentations through Engagez, GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, Google Meet, Hopin, Loom, Meetview, Microsoft Teams, StreamYard, Webex, and Zoom.

Sometimes we feel like winners and sometimes we feel like losers.  Sometimes we compare our progress, personally and professionally, to others and feel awful.  We start beating ourselves up, judging our weaknesses, and start feeling bad about ourselves.  Comparing ourselves against our friends and rivals can affect our self-concept and self-esteem.

This process of social comparison, evaluating ourselves in terms of how you compare with others, personally and professionally, can lead to a negative appraisal of yourself.  Are you attractive or ugly?  Are you a success or a failure? Are you smart or are you stupid?  It probably depends on who you measure yourself against.   We often make the mistake of comparing ourselves to others.

You might feel ordinary, average, or inferior in terms of talent, skill, or attractiveness if you compare yourself to an inappropriate reference group.  For instance, studies show that men who compare themselves to media-idealized male physiques, evaluate their body negatively.  Young women face the same pressure and stress when comparing themselves to fashion and media models.

Besides that, researchers have found that people who spent significant time viewing photos of Facebook friends later reported reduced self-esteem.

The good news is as we grow older we tend to develop a clearer and steadfast sense of who we are, and we aren’t quite as concerned about other people’s opinions of us.

I still get requests from clients for my seminar on responding nondefensively to criticism, packed with strategies for preserving self-confidence and accepting professional feedback gracefully.

Yes, social comparison can have a negative impact on our self-esteem; if we let it.  It is naturally for us to compare ourselves to others.  Try to resist the tendency.  If you can’t stop yourself, at least take some control of whom you compare yourself to and seek out people whom you compare favorably, then your self-concept may be more realistic and your self-esteem more positive.

Contact me at kit@welchlin.com and I will provide a presentation that will bolster self-esteem.

If you need to find a keynote speaker, plenary speaker, breakout speaker, concurrent session speaker, seminar leader, or workshop facilitator who can deliver in-person, virtually, or via prerecorded session, Kit Welchlin, M.A., CSP, CVP, is a nationally recognized professional motivational speaker and author and can be found at www.welchlin.com or www.SeminarsOnStress.com.