How can I stop comparing myself to others?

Comparing yourself to others is a challenging behaviour to stop completely as I think it is a normal part of human behaviour that we all do at times. The realities of our world; competition, social class, and hierarchical structures, naturally cause people to judge themselves in relation to others. The idea that we can escape this entirely does not seem realistic without resorting to extreme measures such as living in the wilderness and detaching from modern society.

This raises the difficult question of what amount of comparison is healthy and to this, I would say that it depends primarily upon the individual. Your phrasing of your question suggests that for you this behaviour is both frequent and high in intensity to the point that it is causing you a number of problems in your life. If these are dominant thoughts of yours I wonder what positive aspects of your life you may be overlooking or missing out on as a result.

To answer the question of what you can do about it, I think recognising that these are negative automatic thoughts and doing what you can to increase your awareness and understanding of these thoughts; what they say, when they strike, how they affect you and your life and others around you as a consequence is the first step towards changing them. Strategies from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy including thought record forms and cognitive restructuring should prove useful in helping you with this and in finding exceptions or flaws in the thinking.

You state that these thoughts have existed for a very long time, since preschool, and imply that a core belief of yours is "I'm inferior and that's that." I would encourage you to try to understand this belief and how it formed for you in your life and this may involve exploration of your early experiences. If you can amend this belief, find exceptions, and form new positive beliefs about yourself I suspect that the comparing behaviours that seem to be having a significant negative impact in your life will reduce in both frequency and intensity over time.

There are other ways to approach this problem and what works for one person is different for another so I encourage you to keep being proactive and find what works for you, good luck!