A peek behind the curtains of anyone’s life would reveal a truth that most wouldn’t care to admit; that pretty much no one has it all figured out.
We, as humans, have a comparison problem. We are bombarded with comparisons from the minute we wake up to the minute we fall back into our regularly too short and restless sleep.
I don’t know statistics and I don’t care to make them up and add to the bullshit but it’s clearly a deep issue of the modern world. I know because I am part of it and fall prey to it regularly.
Am I doing enough?
Why aren’t I where that other person is yet?
Why is their life so amazing?
Why is mine not?
These questions seem ridiculous yeah?
My life IS amazing. Is there stuff that I still want to accomplish? Sure, but I most certainly can not be ungrateful for the life I have.
Though still, that knowledge does little to slay the dragon when it swoops, it’s fire so intense that it singes my mind.
I live the mental rollercoaster as much as anyone, heck that’s the reason that I love studying this stuff so much.
So why do I, and maybe we all, still fall victim to this line of questioning so often?
This thought has been a constant in my mind lately, just ticking away in the background.
Here’s what I have come up with so far, take it for what you will:
We are force fed a world that shows that success is a cure, a world of façade that we compare our own reality to.
That if you succeed in whatever medium of your choosing, that happiness and satisfaction will follow. This is almost never true. Happiness and satisfaction are much more deeply tied to who you are every day than moments of ‘success’.
Each and every day we are consuming a façade by the world, it’s best moments, it’s most successful moments, its most beautiful moments. Smiles, money, happiness…. the dream.
Sure, this is broken up occasionally by something real and raw, but not enough.
And that’s not to say that we shouldn’t share the great times in our lives with our friends and loved ones, but there also needs to be a sense of awareness that we certainly rarely share the bad.
Again, this isn’t a cry to go and only share the bad parts of your lives, or solely your struggles etc. I’m not a psychologist and I don’t even know if that would work. It’s just an acknowledgment of the reality of what most of us compare ourselves to.
As can be seen quite quickly, our biggest stars, athletes, business people, all have the exact same struggle we do. Success doesn’t fix that, though as a by-product of being ‘successful’ it can look as though it does.
Each time that I find someone that I respect and want to emulate, I start to deep dive into all of the media that they may have put out; podcasts, articles, interviews, blogs, books, etc.
What quickly presents itself is just another human. Someone with all the same insecurities and fears as myself. Someone who I think has it made and who they themselves feel like they haven’t even started.
They are themselves usually looking up to someone the same way that I am looking up to them. The eternal climb continues. Though, there is often a difference between myself and the person I am looking up to and that is usually just a higher percentage of discipline at the end of the day.
The people that I am looking up to have ‘made it’ in a sense, have usually done so through hard work and discipline, the ones who haven’t I have no interest in anyway.
So it’s really a reframing of the question that will help the most, I don’t think we can just stop our comparisons completely. If the person is someone that genuinely deserves my attention then instead of asking “why aren’t I where they are?” I need to change it to “what discipline did they enact to get where they are?” and “is the success I’m comparing to actually happiness?”
Comparison can be healthy if we ask the right questions.
Inspired Lion 
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