Without a doubt, as you have grown up, you have been told not to compare yourself to others. This is something that is strongly preached within society, and for good reason, because if you’re engaging with it in the traditional sense of the word, it’s probably not a good thing for your self-esteem. Comparison can tamper with feelings of worthiness, induce depression and even stir up other emotions such as jealousy and anger.
This would be a trap of comparison. See more blogs about traps here.
Comparison, like so many things in existence, can become another trap, or it can be leveraged in surprising ways and become a tool and a stepping stone to your higher vision. This is key to realise.
“Is this a tool, or a trap, or could it be potentially both depending on how I use it?” — A powerful question to ask yourself in any of your explorations.
What are the flaws of comparison used incorrectly?
Comparison done in the common way is built on certain premises that aren’t true, and so you end up wasting so much time engaging with something that is flawed to begin with. Why is this so?
1 — Self worth does not exist.
Worth is a second order projection people make based on their own constructed value systems. No amount of material accumulation or accomplishment ever gives you worth. Question what worth is and who determines what is worth more in reality? What makes one thing worth more than another thing? Is this completely perspectival?
When you feel you aren’t worthy, you become a slave to other people’s value assignments. You feel like you aren’t worthy because another has a large amount of something they value, let’s say money. That doesn’t now mean you are less worthy if you have less. Observe things literally — if you have less money than another person, you simply and literally just have less money than them, it doesn’t involve worth.
Everyone is enough. As you are. From the start. It’s not a matter of worth. Worth isn’t real. It’s about developing an authentic and powerful life. You will always have more than some and less than others no matter what you do.
2 — Human beings are too complex to compare.
We have all lived very different existences, in extremely unique ways, down to micro factors that we will never be able to consider. All these intricacies have shaped us in ways that make comparison almost redundant. We are constantly seeing one aspect of someone and comparatively feeling less worthy, when in truth, that individual is far more intricate than meets the eye. You can rarely make a binary comparison between two people because there are so many complex factors at play.
You can never know if you truly want to be somebody else or have their life because of all the things behind the scenes that you are not aware of. You may want the life of that wealthy man you see driving down the street, but maybe he has a toxic relationship with his family that haunts him daily, or maybe he struggles with health problems that you aren’t aware of — issues that he created through an imbalanced 3 decades of hard work which took its physical toll on his body.
Wanting to be someone else is not a good use of your time. Especially when the comparison lowers your feelings of worthiness or gratitude for what you currently have.
The Power of Comparison
Now to discuss what we came for.
What if I told you that you can completely recontextualize the act of comparison and create a powerful ally out of it. It can become a mental tool that you use on your way to your highest vision. Comparison has a dual power hidden within it. You can flip comparison on its head and use it to level up. It just depends to what end you use it.
Here are the two ways in which you can use comparison to your advantage:
1. Comparing yourself to those less developed than you in some area — for your development.
2. Comparing yourself to those more developed than you in some area — for your vision.
Let’s open these up a bit…
Comparing Yourself To Those Less Developed
Watch other people’s behaviour and when you see something distasteful, unconscious or something you want to judge, use this as an immediate trigger to look and see if there is any part of you that still embodies what you have witnessed in the other.
Question: “Is there any part of me that contains that trait that I am feeling inclined to judge?”
If you practice this correctly what ends up happening is that you stop judging people as much, as well as constantly working to weed out your unconscious behaviours. Double benefit. Don’t underestimate how much of what you see in people less developed than you, is still somewhat hiding inside of you. This practice will now help clean that up — provided you approach it with honest introspection.
Use other people’s lack of development as a reminder to keep improving your own.
The trick in life is not to judge other people’s level of development. Human development is a very complex beast. Often people haven’t had the type of conditions needed to develop in certain ways. So do not judge, but rather leverage that. Instead of only learning from it, if you have capacity, even use it as an opportunity to help actively teach or help them
Summary of this method of comparison:
- Notice something in someone else that is of low maturity, low development or an unconscious nature.
- Acknowledge it fully as part of their current level of development so as not to fall into a space of judgement.
- Ask yourself — Is there any part of me that still embodies what I have just witnessed? — spend time in honest introspection so as not to rush over the question and just answer no.
Comparing Yourself To Those More Developed
Do not think it impossible just because it is hard. If a task is humanly possible, consider it within your reach.
The main idea here is the following:
Use other people to gauge what is possible to achieve. If you see it and you connect with it, add it to your own vision.
You want a formula that will change your entire life?
- See someone perform an intricate skill, earn a certain level of money, craft a high quality relationship, embody a powerful characteristic, solve a valuable problem etc.
- Compare yourself to them and see where you are and where they have moved themselves — do this without engaging with feelings of unworthiness. This is about pure observation and analysis of the mechanics of reality.
- Contemplate deeply the element you are comparing, and observe the fact that as a mere human, they have achieved this through their own efforts.
- If you desire to, decide to add this to your vision of what you might want to build into your life.
- Repeat for anything and everything you see.
People become evidence of what reality can offer you if you choose to put in the time and effort to go after it. Please consider the significance of that.
What ends up happening is that you will realise that you are not here to compare yourself to others and make judgements about being better or worse, but you are here, firstly, to learn from others and secondly, use what you learn to craft an authentic life for yourself.
Write this down: You are here to explore reality in the most deeply authentic way you possibly can.
In the above blog, I have presented a powerful reframing of comparison for you —
Instead of judging unconscious people, you now comparatively learn from them. Secondly, the comparison with “better” people that used to get you down, now becomes a game of figuring out more exciting and deeper ways to create your own existence. Other’s lives become a menu of new ideas of how to live. This is so fucking powerful. This methodology can now be used with every story you hear about another, every documentary you watch, every biography you read, every individual you engage with and so on. This one game makes life so much more exciting.
Happy reality exploring!
#8
