---
title: On comparing yourself and what to do instead
description: Comparison is the thief of joy — but pretending it doesn't exist isn't the answer.
---

[Smart & Pretty Blog](https://www.thesmartandpretty.com/blogs)

# [On comparing yourself and what to do instead](https://www.thesmartandpretty.com/blogs/on-comparing-yourself-and-on)

 Written by [Cristina Sacco](https://www.thesmartandpretty.com/blogs/author/cristina-sacco) | May 30, 2026 1:36:53 PM

 

> I used to walk into every room already apologising for taking up space. Then one day — a completely ordinary Tuesday — I decided to just... stop. What happened next surprised me more than anything.

 

For years I told myself that playing small was a form of humility. That staying quiet in meetings, deflecting compliments, and shrinking my ambitions to fit other people's comfort zones was somehow gracious. It wasn't. It was fear wearing a polite face.

The turning point wasn't dramatic. No single moment of lightning-bolt clarity. It was just a morning where I read back through my own journal and barely recognised the person writing it — someone constantly minimising herself, constantly making herself smaller, constantly asking for permission to exist fully.

## What **actually** changed

The first thing I did was stop over-explaining myself. Not cold or dismissive — just clean. "I disagree" instead of "I might be wrong but..." "I can't do that" instead of a paragraph of apology. Small language shifts that started feeling enormous within weeks.

> You are not responsible for making other people comfortable with how much space you take up.

I also started noticing who in my life made me feel like I needed to earn the right to exist fully. That was a harder audit. Some of those relationships got restructured. Some ended. And the grief of that was real — but so was the relief.

 The version of me that walks into rooms differently now. Shot by \[photographer\].

## What it meant for **my business**

Here's what nobody tells you: playing small is expensive. Not metaphorically — actually expensive. I had been undercharging for years. I had been deferring to clients who respected me less because I'd trained them to. I had been saying yes to projects that drained me because I didn't trust that better ones would come.

Within six months of changing my posture — literally and figuratively — my average project value went up. The right clients started finding me because I was no longer making myself invisible to them.

Want the full breakdown of how I restructured my client process? I wrote about it exclusively in the newsletter.

**[Get it in the newsletter →](https://www.thesmartandpretty.com/newsletter?hsLang=en)**

## The personal stuff, **honestly**

This part is harder to write. The personal toll of years of self-minimising isn't something that reverses in a Tuesday morning decision. It's slow. Some days I still catch myself defaulting to the smaller version. But I notice it now. And noticing is everything.

If you're reading this and recognising yourself in any of it — I see you. And I want you to know that the discomfort of taking up more space is temporary. The alternative is permanent.

### Three things that helped me most

- Journaling specifically about where I'd shrunk myself that day — not to punish, just to see patterns
- Finding one person in my life who'd never seen me small and spending more time with them
- Reading back through old client emails and spotting the over-apologising language I'd normalised

None of this is revolutionary. But it was revolutionary for me.

[View full post](https://www.thesmartandpretty.com/blogs/on-comparing-yourself-and-on)

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