Beware of the Comparison Trap

We live in a very competitive society.  We are taught to compete with each other from an early age.  We run races in gym class and compete for the competitive spot of Valedictorian.  The tendency to look at others, compare ourselves and try to do better does not stop in school.  When we get older we compare ourselves to our neighbors, people we work with and characters that we see on television or in the movies.

It has become second nature to compare yourself to others.  This is especially true in groups of affluent and talented people.  These are people who are often driven to be the best.  Perhaps it is this striving to be the best that brought them success in the first place.

Compare Yourself to Yourself

There is nothing wrong with having a competitive spirit if you could keep it along the lines of healthful competition.  Most people don’t, however.  Most people compare themselves to others and lose every time.  In the rare case that they should win they become arrogant.  It is much more healthful to compare yourself to yourself. 

“Compare yourself to yourself” is the advice that is often freely given.  This advice is easily given but not so easily taken.  We live in a world that defines the winning spot as the spot that belongs to the best and there is usually only room for one.  The one that is at the very top.  We tend to look at that person and make comparisons to ourself.

Making it to the top becomes an all-encompassing obsession with many of us.  To compare yourself with yourself never enters your mind because we are taught to compare ourselves with those that are “better” than we are.  We compare ourselves to that person and worry ourselves silly if we don’t take that number one spot.  What’s worse is we convey these feelings to those who are our dependents.

It rarely dawns on us that more than one can be the winner.  The objective seems to always be to take the number one spot.  This puts you under the constant stress that someone is going to be better than you are.

We are all at varying stages of our development.  The problem with comparing yourself with others is you tend to compare your parts that aren’t so developed with the very developed parts of another.  This is why you lose every time.  This is exactly why you should only compare yourself with yourself.  When you compare yourself with yourself you compare yourself to your own varying stages and are able to gauge how to realistically do better.

There Are Ways to Escape the Comparison Trap

Everybody that I know does the best that they can do.  However, this does not stop them from playing the comparison game.  If you find that you are playing the comparison game there are several steps that you can take to stop this horrible habit.

Put Your Well Being First

When you compare yourself to others who you think are doing better you hack away at your own self esteem.  Discontinue this negative self-talk.  Whenever you find that you are comparing yourself to another replace the negative self-talk with a positive statement about yourself.  You can choose what you say to yourself.  Choose to say things that will make you feel happy not things that will make you feel inferior.

Learn from the Past Mistakes

If you think that your performance has not been as good as your peers don’t let this railroad you into the comparison trap.  Take note of the things that you think you did not do as well as you could and learn from those experiences.  This is the only way you will know what you can do better next time around.

Refuse to Live With Guilt

Guilt shackles us to the past as we dwell on all of the things that we did wrong.  Learn to forgive yourself and to start anew.  Don’t compare your wrongs with what someone else is doing right.  Besides, who’s to say that they, themselves, have some things that they have done wrong that you have done right.

Conclusion

The comparison game is a trap.  Learn to recognize when you are comparing yourself to others and stop the harmful behavior immediately.  Learn to only compare yourself to yourself.  This way you can healthily gauge where you were and become better than you have been

If you learned anything new from this article then please leave a comment.

How Do You Define Success in Your Life

Wednesday’s Wisdom:  When determining success, look within yourself and evaluate your own goals and abilities and gauge what would be success.  Don’t worry about what others do or have.  Compete only with yourself.

Most people prefer success.  In fact, if you went to any busy street, a subway or a mall and took a survey that asked if you would rather be a success or a failure, you would get an overwhelming response of people who prefer success.  What varies is not that most would prefer to be successful.  What varies is how success is defined.

How Do You Define Success

Success is a relative term.  What is considered success by one may not be considered success at all by another.  Success could be attaining a high academic achievement, finishing college, landing a dream job, becoming financially wealthy, marrying the perfect partner or having the perfect body.  How success is determined varies from individual to individual.  For this reason it would be difficult to disagree with my next point.

When determining if you are successful, you should not look to the left or right to compare your achievements to another.  What happens far too often is people take a look at what is shown them on television or the movies and base their perception of success accordingly.  They apply these values to themselves and to others.  The problem with determining success this way is much of what is seen on television and the movies is fantasy.  Sometimes the only way to reach the level of ‘success’ that is seen on television or the movies is to go and live on television or in the movies.

Compare Yourself to Yourself

How beautiful the day would be if we only compared ourselves to ourselves.  Seeing an opportunity in each day to be better than we were the day before.  Refusing to try and fit into a mold that was made for another.  Determining to follow our own dreams.  “Imagine the stress that would be lifted from us and the anxiety that would be eliminated if the only levels of success that we reached for were made from what we ourselves determine from evaluating our own performance and what we can realistically attain.”

Don’t misunderstand.  It is important that you reach for the very best in everything that you do.  It is also important that you attribute the title of success to the very best that you can do not what someone else can do.

Conclusion

It is easy to eliminate the anxiety of reaching for success.  Realize that you are a unique individual with a unique set of goals.  Know what it is that you actually want from life and make it a point to pursue those goals.  Avoid comparing yourself to others at all costs.  “It is very easy to compare yourself to others and decide that you are not successful only to one day realize that you have missed the mark.  Not because you did not accomplish what they accomplished.  But because you were so busy watching others that you did not do the things that really make you happy.”

If you learned anything new from this article then please leave a comment.