If you're anything like me, you might find yourself falling into the trap of comparing yourself to other women. With the eruption of social media, women and girls have much easier access to outlets upon which to compare themselves to. This makes it especially important to stop using our bodies as benchmarks, and think about all the downsides of pitting people up against each other in a win-lose situation.

It's damaging to your self-esteem to compare yourself to others, or to be compared to anyone else. Research has found that comparing oneself to someone else breeds feelings of envy, low-self confidence and depression. It's harmful to your entire being to not love yourself. There's such a high form of competition, and that competition is dangerous. It requires you to rejoice in the failure of others in order to feel adequate, which can be incredibly harmful. It can bring on hatred-fueled competition, and jealousy versus togetherness. You, as a woman, should push other women and girls to be their best, instead of celebrating failures. When comparing leads you to devalue yourself or others, you’ve entered dangerous territory. I am a proud supporter of girls uplifting girls. Instead of celebrating defeats, celebrate successes made by other women. Be proud of their accomplishments!

I'm sure you've seen this picture, or one similar, on social media:

This really steams my broccoli, and here's why. The problem with popular pictures like this Diana vs. Kardashians image is that they’re created even more competition between women and girls. They pit women against each other in a superficial way, when what we should be doing is supporting one another. Just because the Kardashians are self-made businesswomen who branched out their empire following Kim's sex tape, which was released without her knowledge and completely against her will. Kim has fully recovered from her scandal, except for the few insensitive people who still bring it up. She's taken a negative thing in her life and turned it into something that made her a household name. Frankly, Princess Diana would probably be horrified to see her image bearing these hateful words; her mission was love and acceptance, after all.

If you've kept up with recent trends, you've probably heard of the A4 challenge. If you've not heard of it, here's the gist: if your waist is the same size or smaller than a piece of A4 white copy paper, you were good to go. Comparing yourself to paper is so unhealthy, and these trends are tearing down girls' self-esteems from a very young age. Don't get me wrong, skinny-shaming is just as bad as fat-shaming. To the naturally thin girls: you are so beautiful that I can't put it into words. But the minute that having a waist as thin as paper becomes the desirable effect for impressionable young girls whose body type does not allow them to have that waist size is when it becomes unhealthy. Instagram user be.arum posted this picture in response to the challenge:

When I first decided to become more fit and healthy, a family friend told me "Don't let someone else's Chapter 20 distract you from writing your Chapter 1", which meant to not compare your progress to the progress of someone who has been working towards their goal longer than you have. As Steve Furtick explains, “The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel".

Comparing yourself to others, or comparing two people against each other, will never achieve your goals. It will do nothing more than hold you back. Once you start loving your body and what it's capable of, you won't get anywhere. As far as I'm concerned, it's a losing battle. If comparison is how you evaluate your worth, you will never win. Instead of trying to be as good as or better than others, focus your energy on being the very best version of yourself.

Remember, in a world full of Kardashians, be whatever kind of woman you want to be.