LED BY PURPOSE, OR DRIVEN BY COMPARISON?

We have all, to some degree, compared ourselves to others.  The worst thing about this is that you can never do a very good job of being someone else. 

The reality is we weren’t made to be someone else. You were made to be you – and here comes the good news - you can do an incredible job of being you. In fact you will do a better job of it than anyone else…100% of the time.

Happiness begins where comparison ends, so why do we compare ourselves to

others? Sometimes we do it to gauge where we are in what we perceive as success or failure. Sometimes we think it brings us a comfort to think we’re better, but more o
ften than not it just makes us feel like we’re not meeting a standard.

One of the main influencers of comparison is media pressure. We are constantly bombarded with images of what we’re told we should look like in advertisements and through various forms of marketing. We all know what these are, we don’t have to look far to see them. They tell us how we achieve happiness– which is usually through buying their product. But, actually, this is a lie.

Whether or not I buy a new car fundamentally won’t change my happiness one iota. I might enjoy having a new car for a while. But once the novelty wears off all I’m left with is a dent in my finances and something shiny sitting in my drive. 

Sooner or later we notice someone else has an even newer car. So where do we stop? Do we carry on getting newer and newer cars or do we say – “stuff isn’t going to make me happy and comparing who I am to other people isn’t going to make me happy.”

One thing I find healthier than comparing myself to someone else is comparing myself to where my life was and asking myself, “am I improving?” Or comparing myself to where I’d like it to be, and asking myself “am I moving in the right direction?” 

One of the other areas I find fascinating when it comes to comparison, is asking, “What can I do today that is different to what I was able to do 5 or 10 years ago?” It’s amazing how my ability, my scope and my breadth of being able to hold things together has grown and expanded. 

If I looked back, and saw my ability and skillset reducing then I would think “I need to change that”, then that’s a type of healthy comparison that would lead me to create change.

 

As a result, I have ended up being led more by purpose than driven by comparison. 

In other words, I guess we are all on a journey with the opportunity of becoming a better version of ourselves. It’s the journey that counts. 

How much do we compare ourselves to an 'ideal beauty' in magazines?

As a dad of 2 beautiful teenage girls, I feel particularly strongly about the pressure placed on them by the ‘beauty’ industry. This pressure drives young people to want to look different and encourages them to compare themselves to a hungry, airbrushed, photo shopped model on a screen or magazine. 

 My kids, beautiful as they are, I hope realise that like their dad they are not blemish free, we’re normal people. We’re not super anything. We’re ordinary and we don’t want to compare ourselves to superheroes, the super ordinary, or the supermodels. We’re just us. If they compare themselves to that picture the danger is that little girls are not going to get the pleasure of being little girls.

That, after all, is what they were meant to be at this stage in their lives - innocent little girls and not driven to look like someone else.

As Michelangelo said – “every block of stone has a statue inside it and it’s the task of the sculptor to discover it.”  So my challenge to you this week – if you think you are faced with a block of stone, try to look at it from a different perspective. 

Sculpt away so that other eyes apart from yours see the beauty of the sculpture within.  And one other thing…it doesn’t matter what others are doing with their block, because believe me everyone’s got one in front of them.

Michelangelo's 'David', was once nothing more than a block of stone