You Are Not Less Than Anyone.
How I Deal with Inferiority Complex.
You Are Not Less Than Anyone: How I Deal with Inferiority Complex
In 2015, I was taking an interview, and when I saw the people around me, they were excellent in communication skills and wore excellent attire. Then I looked at myself. There was not even a single thing that I liked about myself. I was not wearing polished clothes, my English was weak, I was underconfident, and I did not have any idea about what the interviewer might ask.
You can guess what may have happened in the interview. You guessed it right — I was not selected because I was feeling inadequate. This all happened because somewhere in my mind, other people were the best, and I did not have any strength to say I was good enough.
That was a lie I told myself, and it cost me a lot. This was a lie because no one in this world is just a zero and no one is a hundred. We all are just in between. We have something that no one else has.
Why do we feel inferior?
This feeling can stem from different causes and vary from person to person. Studies suggest that there are a few reasons we feel inferior, often linked to social and personal experiences.
Origins
- Personal negative experiences that hurt your self-esteem.
- Social interactions where you feel judged or inadequate.
- Relationships where you don’t feel secure.
- Perceived limitations in abilities or physical appearance.
- Focus on external validation.
Comparison
As of now, nothing is easier than comparison.
You can look at people around the world on the internet and feel like you are nothing. But in reality, things are different from what they look like. No one is perfect, and life itself is a set of problems. If you look at someone and think their life is perfect, you are not living in reality.
Comparing to others cannot help until and unless you are learning from them and growing in life.
Self-Perception
How you see yourself is how others see you.
Our perceptions, narratives, and how we interpret experiences influence whether we feel inferior or confident. Negative words, self-talk, and thinking can make us feel inadequate.
When we have a growth mindset, we are more likely to grow in life and learn from experiences instead of focusing and dwelling on negativity.
Why it matters?
Feeling inferior can stop you from living your best life. Mainly, because when we feel inferior, we are not giving our best. We are giving someone else the authority to make us feel less. We feel like we are not enough, not capable of success in life, and we have to live life like we don’t have any other option but to be underconfident. This is a lie we tell ourselves.
Here is how I became more confident and overcame feeling inferior:
We feel inferior when we don’t know about ourselves.
To become less inferior, I tried three things, and they have worked for me wonderfully:
1. Improve your self-talk and self-image
2. Learn about the growth mindset
3. Gain knowledge about the things you are doing
4. Learn how to compare
Improve your self-talk and self-image:
Self-talk seeds the idea of who you are to yourself.
Just think about it — who tells you that you are not good enough? It is you. When someone else tries to tell you something about yourself, you don’t take it seriously until and unless you accept it.
In my experience, how you see yourself is how you act, and that is how people see you. You become unstoppable only when you think you are unstoppable.
Learning about the growth mindset:
You may have heard that the mind is like a parachute — it works when it is open.
The growth mindset is to have an open mindset. When you keep learning, moving, growing, and challenging yourself, you grow. But when you get stuck, thinking that you cannot change is the time when you get into the fixed mindset. Changing your mindset is the only way to move upward.
Knowledge about the things you are doing
You can become the best in your field only when you keep learning about it.
Most of the time, we feel inferior because we think we don’t know something. The best thing to do is prepare for everything. Prepare how to talk in a meeting, prepare to meet people, and prepare for all the questions you think people can ask you in an interview.
“10 hours of preparation for a 10-minute talk can make even a fool look like a genius.” — Alex Hormozi
Learn how to compare
The best way to compare is with yourself.
When you compare yourself with others, you either feel inferior or superior, but when you compare yourself, you grow, learn, and become smart. I compare my past self with my present, and I know that I am better than I was five years ago.
When I compare my future self with my present self, I learn how much I need to learn to reach there. That is the healthiest way to compare. There is only growth.
Conclusion
There are a few things that can change how you feel about yourself:
- Take action for what you want to become and give your 100%. When we give our 100%, we are more likely to get the things we want. Prepare for what you want to become.
- Prepare your mindset to never get stuck and never think that you are stuck in life. There is always a way to get out of the problems and keep going in life.
- Comparison is not bad if it inspires you. The best way to compare is to compare your past, present, and future self and keep working for the life you want to achieve.
- Learn to talk to yourself. This is the best thing you can do for yourself. Start seeing yourself as a winner and keep taking action to improve.
Thanks for reading.
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Hi, I am Sandeep Thakur, I write to help you design your life to live it the way you want to live. You can follow me (Sandeep Thakur)
