“I was comparing myself to everyone and anyone I encountered. If I was making music and met a well-off stockbroker, my mind would ask, ‘Why aren’t you selling stocks?’ When money got better, but I met someone with a beautiful body, I’d ask, ‘Why aren’t you spending more time in the gym?’ I would identify all the gaps in my life on the basis of whomever I crossed paths with. That’s a dangerous thing because everyone we meet will always have something we don’t have.”
Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 121)
Beyond the Quote (77/365)
Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who somebody else is today. As Humble mentions above, you’re going to meet people who have more money; who have more beautiful bodies; who are more popular; who are more intelligent than you. What you can’t do when you meet them is compare where you are on your journey to where they are on their journey.
As tempting as it might be, the mindset of comparison will always leave you short because everyone you meet will ALWAYS have something that you don’t have. And if you play that out over the course of enough interactions, you’ll be left feeling like everybody is better than you—or worse, that you’re not worthy or good enough—and that, just simply, isn’t true.
Let me play that last line for you again, “Everyone [you] meet will always have something [you] don’t have.” This means, coincidingly, that YOU have something that everyone YOU meet doesn’t have. Identifying what it is, however, isn’t as important as learning how to cultivate it and nurture it so that you can grow it to the best it can be. Why? Because trying to identify what you have that everyone you meet doesn’t have is taking you right back to the process of comparison that we are trying to avoid!
You’ll find some things that are better for you and some things that are better for them, but who cares? You can’t control another person’s innate aptitudes, potential, or talent. You can’t control how they decide to cultivate those innate attributes. You can’t take their upbringing from them, learn the lessons they’ve learned, or grasp the concepts that they’ve grasped. These are the things that no one else can teach us and these are the things that only we can learn by living our own lives.
It’s Time To Focus On You.
It’s time to stop comparing yourself to others. Comparing yourself to who you were yesterday should be the only basis of comparison that guides you forward on a daily basis. While this might sound easy enough—in actuality, it’s incredibly hard. You have to be awake and mindful of the content you consume on social networks, the advertisements you see in the media you consume, and the people you surround yourself with and how they interact with you.
Those three components are cornerstone pieces of just about all of our lives and we need to learn how to, not only stop comparing ourselves to what we see (or rather, what we are bombarded with), but even more importantly, we need to be able to consciously recognize that we’re even comparing in the first place! Most of the time when comparison happens, it’s without our conscious thought: we see, we like, we look at ourselves, feelings develop, too late. It happens so quick and most of us don’t even realize it’s ever happening. You need to either disconnect from as many different sources of comparison as you can or learn how to be more mindful of what your mind is doing during those media and social interactions.
My suggestion to you is to start by tripling down on your strengths and building skills of value. Things like writing, drawing, singing, public speaking, instrument playing, computer programing, photography, app designing, video making, constructing, business building, etc. Once you identify your strengths and triple down on the amount of time you spend cultivating them—then the process is simple.
Get 1% better every day and keep the blinders on so that you don’t get distracted on your way. Don’t look at what anyone else is doing; don’t let people make you feel bad about where you are; don’t let people’s compliments stop you from trying to improve. 1% every day. That’s the plan, that’s the formula, that’s the secret, that’s the manifesto.
And FORGET about where anybody else is one their journey. FORGET about it! Period. It doesn’t matter. It’s only going to distract you from your progress. And worst of all, it might frustrate you to the point of quitting. And the only time you should ever quit is if it’s because you changed your mind about your main priorities. Good luck, stay focused, keep the blinders on, and keep moving forward!
This post became the introduction for: 17 Humble the Poet Quotes about Comparing Yourself to Others (and How To Stop)
Don't Let the Motivation Stop There...!
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