In It's All In Your Head (I told you I can't quit reading it), there is a chapter on not comparing yourself to others. It is funny because
the comparisons are things like "not earning more than $100,000 like your friends," and "you haven't made VP as quickly as your peers," and your Lexus SUV doesn’t have the backseat DVD player.
Of course, authors Stephen Pollan and Mark Levine use those examples for comic effect, but there is a lot of truth behind it. Some of us do it all the time. It's like complaining because the chauffer for your Rolls Royce is a little shorter than you would like. But I guess it's all relative. We all have disappointments.
"The issue isn't whether or not someone has a right to be unhappy about themselves or their situation," write Pollan and Levine. "The issue is that no one should be comparing themselves to others. It really doesn't matter whether you perceive yourself coming up short in a vital or frivolous aspect of life. What matters is that despite your uniqueness, you compare yourself to others, judge yourself a failure, lower your self-esteem, and feel unhappy."
Why is the act of comparing oneself to another portrayed as negative? Is the conscious decision to compete (compare) with another human being always detrimental, or can a healthy look at the achievements and failures of another be a source of motivation, inspiration, or possibly enlightenment? The ability to view and understand the other side in order to find a place in which to evaluate oneself is necessary to healthy competition, and the ability to earn how to compete with oneself may give a person the opportunity to compare without self pity.
When a novice swimmer is learning to compete, she learns that the other swimmers in the heat are visible. It is not until the numbers are published and posted on the wall that she realizes that her real competition is the clock. During the first race, her head bobs left and right slowing her pace and increasing the number of seconds on the heat sheet. She practices and improves her speed before the next race.
As she approaches the blocks, she begins to realize that it is the clock she needs to beat. She dives. She swims. She stops bobbing her head to the left and right, tucks her head down, and swims to the goal. It is not until later that she compares herself to the other swimmers, not as a way to evaluate the winners and losers but as a way to find her pace, her motivation, and her place in the pool.
Posted by: Kelly | June 16, 2006 10:00 PM | Permalink to Comment