Stop comparing yourself to others | Don’t compare yourself to others | Don’t compare with others | Do not compare yourself to others | Don’t compare me to others.
A crow lived in the forest and was absolutely satisfied in life. But one day he saw a swan. “This swan is so white,” he thought, “and I am so black. This swan must be the happiest bird in the world.”
He expressed his thoughts to the swan. “Actually,” the swan replied, “I was feeling that I was the happiest bird around until I saw a parrot, which has two colors. I now think the parrot is the happiest bird in creation.” The crow then approached the parrot.
The parrot explained, “I lived a very happy life—until I saw a peacock. I have only two colors, but the peacock has multiple colors.” The crow then visited a peacock in the zoo and saw that hundreds of people had gathered to see him.
After the people had left, the crow approached the peacock. “Dear peacock,” the crow said, “you are so beautiful. Every day thousands of people come to see you. When people see me, they immediately shoo me away. I think you are the happiest bird on the planet.”
The peacock replied, “I always thought that I was the most beautiful and happy bird on the planet. But because of my beauty, I am entrapped in this zoo. I have examined the zoo very carefully, and I have realized that the crow is the only bird not kept in a cage. So for the past few days, I have been thinking that if I were a crow, I could happily roam everywhere.”
Moral of the story
That’s our problem too. We make unnecessarity compare ourselves with others and create our own well of sadness. We don’t value what has God given us. This all leads to a vicious cycle of unhappiness. Value the things God has given us. Learn the secret of being happy and discard the comparison which leads only to unhappiness.
We can value what we have by thinking positively about ourselves and about our belongings. We must not allow any negative thoughts to come into our minds about ourselves.
We are born in such a great nature which is full of positive energy and each living being is created with equal opportunities and abilities. Each one of us has our own skills, nature, beauty, energy, and purpose. We need to understand the truth and accept and recognize what gift we have given. I mean we are not less than anyone else as well as not greater than any others – we are all equal.
For instance, we think others are so happy because they are rich but we don’t know what deepest sorrow they are carrying inside. They are just not showing to the outside world or you know them from far. Maybe what we have currently maynot be with them even though they have all the wealth in the world. So try to be greateful for the good health we have and the safety environment that we have got to live in.
DO NOT COMPARE YOURSELF TO OTHERS
The world we live in today is full of people who fail at some tasks and responsibilities and who find success at some tasks and responsibilities that they have been trusted with respectively. Don’t you think that both of these groups are the same? Yes, they are.
This is the shortest way in which the crux of the topic can be conveyed to the reader. We are often encountering a situation in which we are comparing ourselves with other people because of one failure that we have faced and that particular person has excelled in the same domain. Failure and success are not dependent on the variables and circumstances of a given instance, they are the bitter and sweet dishes that are cooked over a period by two different people, the one who gets the wrong ingredients cooks the bitter dish and the one who gets the ingredients correct is the one we all designate as a “successful” person.
The reason readers saw the word successful in double inverted commas will be clear to them by the end of the article. Comparing ourselves to others may seem justifiable at a given point in time but what we all forget is the presence of a countless number of factors that determine the success and failure of a person in his/her life. When we resort to comparing, these factors cannot be put in parity with each other and thus the result is guaranteed to be inaccurate.
When we fail at a particular test or task, we are expected to do a critical analysis of our performance, and when we come out as a successful person in the same, the second step would be the same. This is another corroboration to the view that success and failure are made distinct by the people who perceive their performance in two broad monolithic categories.
- COMPARISONS ARE REGRESSIVE
When the reader goes through the above heading, it is expected that he/she would be puzzled but that will not be the case at the end of the description. Let us be honest with ourselves here, how many times have comparisons with other people yielded a positive result for us? Less than 1% and this means that in the rest of 99% of the instances either the person would be left without a conclusion or being bogged down with the pressure of other individual’s success.
What happens post this comparison, is that the person will lose the unique ability to soar to new heights in contributing towards achieving his/her dreams. When we compare ourselves with a random person who is the “happiest” person on earth, we pave the path towards self-degradation. Some people get so stuck down in the dark well of this comparison, that they give up on their dreams and passion and start to pursue a more banal path in their lives.
Comparisons are, by their construct, regressive and they are highly inclined toward making us believe that our capabilities and strengths have either vanished in the air or are of no use from the given point in time. Such realizations, however flawed, appear to be the ultimate truth for us and we descend into the endless loop of self-criticism and loss of confidence. Remember whenever the situation tempts us to compare ourselves to a group of people or an individual, we should remember that a particular factor may appear to be against us but others are not even being accounted for at the given instance.
- WHAT IS THE PRIORITY?
Sometimes a majority of the people we see around us, are comparing themselves to select people day and night, again and again, and in doing so, they forget one of the most crucial parts of making decisions in our life-determining our priority. It does not matter at what age the readers are reading the given article, all of them have a priority that keeps changing in different phases of life but there is one ultimate priority that guides the movement of other priority decisions and the course of actions that we take in the future.
The ultimate priority that we hold is us. We are the biggest and the most important part of our lives and therefore the ultimate priority for us should be ourselves. Now that we know the most important part of our life, is it rational to compare ourselves to other people? No, because there is no use in abasing the most important part of your life. The only thing we are expected to do after a failure is to analyze our performance and remind ourselves at the end of it that we are capable of bouncing back and can improve our performance when given a new opportunity.
It is very crucial to get hold of the priority we are talking about here because the closer we stand to reality, the closer we are to achieving our dream. When we get a clear picture of what priority is, the task of making decisions and steering through tough phases is made easy.
- NO SUCCESS AND NO FAILURE
The concepts of success and failure are constructed by no one but some people among us. This should not come as a shock to the readers that one’s failure can be seen as a success by another person. This happens because there is no definitive explanation of the two words and one can come across hundred explanations of the words when asked from hundred people. Success and failure can only be perceived by us and people around us, it can not be defined in concrete words that may come out to be the guiding texts for the future generation.
The definitions alter with the altering circumstances and situations, we have to focus on the perception that we have to build for our journey in life.
Consider the following words and be the judge thereafter to frame your opinion on the matter. Even if we “succeed” at a task or test, can we rest after our performance indefinitely? Can we ignore the preparation for the next test or competition? No. Even if we succeed, we have to note the strengths and weaknesses that surfaced while we competed so that we can score better in the subsequent competitions.
On the other hand, if we lose, we have to do the same i.e., analyze our performance from start to the end of the performance and draw out our mistakes and where we were contributing satisfactorily to the competition. Here we can see that there can be no difference between success and failure and thus a differentiation between the two is never going to be fruitful for any of us.
- TIME IS A GREAT LEVELER
Whenever we are facing bad weather in our life, we are constantly facing failures and getting no positive direction about how to reconstruct our lives, we should not forget that hard work is not a sprint but is a marathon and if we don’t quit that marathon, our sweet days are not distant.
Some of the greatest philosophers in the history of humans on earth have conveyed the idea of time being one of the greatest forces on earth and capable of turning people’s lives upside down. There is a possibility that the reader might think the article drifting towards spiritualism but in effect, it is not the case.
Consider an example to understand the above-mentioned thought. There is an investment banker who has just started the practice of investing funds in the stock market. On realizing that the market trends are pointing towards stronger growth in profits of the stocks, he invested all of his reserve funds in the respective stocks. On the same day, hours after his move, there comes an announcement by the country’s military commandant that the country has been attacked by the enemy forces.
Since the country has waged war, the economic pointers turned red and the investors started pulling out their investments. The person now was left with bare minimum selling prices for the stocks he purchased in thousands of rupees. In the given example, the force of time is seen in action and the wealthy and happy investment banker suffers a humongous loss just hours after his expensive move.
CONCLUSION
At the end of the discussion, we need to revise all the pointers discussed in the whole article. We need to start judging ourselves from the eyes of another person, the performance that we have given is our prize as well as responsibility also at the same time and thus has nothing to do with what others think of it.
We need to trust our strengths and capabilities and keep reviewing our performances keeping in mind the several variables and factors that might play a role in the outcome of the hard work that we have committed ourselves to for our complete life, some of these factors will not be under our control but this should not stop us from viewing ourselves as a single unique unit in this world.
If you want to learn how to be always positive then you can watch my video “How to remain always happy” and “How to handle negative people” on YouTube.
I have learned this from one famous book by John Maxwell “winning with people” you can buy that book at Winning with people.
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