Comparing yourself to others is arguably one
of the most damaging habits an individual can form. Deborah Fike of The
Change Blog shares a story about comparing ourselves to others that will
hopefully change your perspective:
A friend of mine, Karen*, is one of those
people who seems to have it all. She graduated at the top of her MBA
class. She holds a high level job at a prestigious Fortune 500
company. She maintains a rigorous exercise regimen, a reminder of her
collegiate rowing days. She’s happily married and had a child about a
year ago. There’s not much in life that Karen doesn’t do well.
Except, she doesn’t feel that she’s doing
well. It’s not that Karen does not enjoy her life. Quite the opposite:
she loves all the elements of her life. She struggles with work-life
balance, something which I relate to being a new mother myself. She
recently read an article in a sports magazine about five women who have
serious careers, are committed to their families, and are going semi-pro
in their chosen athletic field. Compared to them, she feels that she
is “a big fat arse.”
It’s very easy to compare ourselves to others
in order to gauge our own lives. Like Karen, I often find myself
looking at how other parents juggle their careers, family commitments,
and passions. Then I get nervous that I’m doing something wrong. It’s
times like these that I have to force myself to stop the comparisons,
for several good reasons:
If you often find yourself lacking, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
Constantly judging your achievements against
successful superstars often leads to low self-esteem. In life, there is
always going to be someone subjectively “doing better” than you, and if
you judge yourself by those standards, you’re never going to feel good
about yourself. This can lead into a downward spiral of giving up on
goals because you feel you can never measure up.
If you usually feel superior to others, you’re ignoring areas that you could improve on.
You might think that comparing yourself to
people who are “beneath you” will help you achieve goals. While it may
help your self-esteem, people who belittle others often become too
egotistical. I’ve seen this played out again and again with start-up
video game companies. Whenever faced with genuine criticism of their
games – whether that be from customers or developer peers – they lash
out that people just “don’t understand the vision” of their game. In
the same breath, they don’t understand why their game doesn’t sell. In
order to improve in a skill, you have to be able to take critical
feedback and turn it into something you can use to improve yourself.
This gets lost if you think you’re better than everyone else.
Comparisons don’t take into account our differences.
Ultimately, comparisons generally don’t take
into account the many differences individuals may encounter. First, the
successfu” person is often portrayed as an overnight sensation when, in
fact, this almost never happens. Successful people work hard, and
their setbacks are rarely celebrated. This makes the successful person
appear lucky when they are not. Second, there are no true one-to-one
comparisons. People will encounter different obstacles on their path to
success, and you can’t truly judge your own worth by looking at someone
leading a completely different life than your own.
The only real measurement of success is yours.
Ultimately, success isn’t about someone
else’s life. It’s about your life and your outlook about it. For
example, let’s say you are an aspiring children’s author, and your book
gets picked up by a local press. That, in turn, gets you more writing
gigs and you eventually make a decent living in your region. If you
compared your body of work to Dr. Seuss in terms of profitability and
fame, you would appear wanting. But making any living out of writing
children’s books is nothing to sneeze at. Letting go of comparisons can
help you define success for yourself.
If I were to compare myself to Karen, she
would blow me out of the water in many ways. Since the day we graduated
together, she has gone on to have a more high profile career. She
always has and still does run circles around my modest exercise
routine. And she’s managed to do this while having a family. But my
life is not hers, and I would not want to compare myself to her. We
have found our own paths, each with its own merits. I’m happy for her,
and I hope by sharing this article, she can become a little happier
about her life without all the comparisons.
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