PERSONAL SPECIAL .....................................STOP COMPARING & FEELING BAD

STOP COMPARING & FEELING BAD





Maintain the stability of your identity as you attempt to benefit from the fluidity of a comparison

Comparisons, it is said, are odious. And yet this is the criterion we use to judge every aspect of our lives. We keep in mind a frame of reference for almost everything ­ happiness, success, peace, pleasure, pain, accolades and yes, even loving. You may be successful, but another's greater success makes you uncomfortable. The mind has an inbuilt comparative calculator.

You are good only so long as you are not pitched against someone better. And bad, till someone worse comes along. Your child's 97 per cent marks are celebrated till you realise another classmate scored 97.5 per cent. The focus now shifts to the half percentage more the child could have achieved.

Comparisons are at the heart of sibling rivalry.Parents pitch children against each other in a bid to push them. This creates feelings of inadequacy and a lifelong habit of focusing on others, rather than bettering your own lot. Work culture is vitiated by comparisons of salary, perks, bonus and allocation of work.

How sad is it that in order to get an idea of your own worth, you look towards others. So your friend's revelations about her husband's romantic moves set the benchmark for your love life. Your children's worth is decided by whether your neighbours' kids got into an IIT or IIM. Your pride in the lady on your arm fades if a friend walks in with a sexier woman.Your car is dictated by the size and swankiness of the cars that drop off others at a party, and a favourite meal lasts only till a better one comes along.

Comparisons indeed make choices and aspirations fickle. They set the pace of your life, your benchmarks and aspirations. It's the way we all are brought up and choose to remain.

And to make matters worse, our comparative canvas increased manifold with social media. People post pictures of holidays, their emotional states and the euphoria of their love lives. And invariably they put up the happy stuff, giving us all unrealistic benchmarks. Psychological studies reveal that people are more likely to share positive rather than negative emotions, and that we all overestimate the positive states of others and fail to detect negativity. Put the two together, and you realise what an unrealistic picture we are presented with ­ a doctored reality, a morphed picture! And it is against this unrealistic image that we pitch our own life's reality. Result? An unrealistic aspiration and guaranteed frustration.

Remember Guy de Maupassant's story with his trademark twist-in-the-tale, The Diamond Necklace?
This is what we do to ourselves every day of our lives. We sell our all in an effort to chase what we ultimately discover was but a mirage.

Of course, comparisons can be used to motivate you too. Used intelligently, comparisons can lead to a greater intellectual effort and stimulation of mental and physical prowess. It is only by comparison that you arrive at a process of selection that leaves you with the best, doing away with the not so good. To give a simple example from everyday life ­ when you buy vegetables and fruits, you go for the best, but how do you establish the best? By comparing one to another.

That is the basis for Natural Selection too. The comparatively stronger survive, thus ensuring the species evolve and get healthier as time goes by. The problem, however, is that comparisons are hardly ever made apple to apple; mostly it is lemons and oranges that we compare. Is it surprising then that this leads to highly frustrated states? Compare yourself to the incomparable and you have a recipe for disaster.Comparisons can be a critical trigger for growth and motivation, but the danger is they can also cast us into depression and demotivate us with self-doubt.

It is important to maintain the stability of your own identity, even as you attempt to benefit from the fluidity of a comparison. A knowledge based on such evolved criteria for comparison would be more sophisticated and progressive than blind comparisons with anyone in sight. As Einstein said, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.“

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