Theodore Roosevelt famously said that “Comparison is the thief of joy.” Comparison truly is the thief of joy and opportunity. Every single day I find myself comparing my body, my brain, my faith, and my personality to people I see on TV, social media, or at school and in the real world. Most days, I am able to talk myself out of tearing myself down, but often I cannot. On the days when it's hard, I feel worthless and exhausted.

I know that comparing myself to others only causes unhappiness, and yet I continue to do it. We all continue to do it. At the end of so many great days, we make mental lists of why we aren’t worthy of happiness and set out to destroy our confidence.

You are wonderful. You have so many incredible talents. You are unique. Comparing ourselves to others is a waste of the energy we should be committing to making the difference we were born to make in this world. The beautiful truth is no matter how smart, pretty, or funny someone else is, you are still smart, pretty, and funny. There is not a limited amount of talent that can go around in the world. Opportunity for you is always boundless.

I could write hundreds of thousands of eloquent words about why you don’t need to compare yourself to others. But the only person that can change your life is you. Take responsibility for your own happiness. Einstein attested that “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” Continuing to compare yourself to others and expecting it to stop hurting only perpetuates the pain. No matter what the media says about your beauty or lack thereof, in the end, you decide what to believe about yourself.

So what’s the point of recognizing your true worth? The point is that no one ever got anywhere from believing they weren’t good enough. If you go into something, whether it be a scholarship application or a job interview, believing that you aren’t good enough is setting yourself up to fail. The first step in getting anywhere is having the confidence in yourself. If you don’t believe that you’re good enough, it’s gonna be a lot harder to convince someone else that you are. You can’t go into life with a losing attitude, because then you’ll definitely lose.