“A flower doesn’t think of the competing with the flower next to it. It just blooms”. In the same way, we want the world saying “A human doesn’t think of competing with the human next to it. It just lives.”
We got this comparing attitude since childhood, so it’s tough to change it in one go. Let’s see some points which may help us to change our perception.
First-class vs the First rank:
The first-ever comparison for most of the people starts from school life. Some students compare their marks with the others, some students don’t but their parents do. In this regard, I’m fortunate that my father always wants me to get first-class marks but not the first rank in the class. It made me not to compare my marks with others but compare it with some standard limit. It has helped me to have different perception over the marks at such an early stage of my life. So the effective way is setting the goal and comparing our progress with that goal and not with others’ progress.
Everyone’s life is very diversified:
Everyone is not playing the same game. You cannot compare your life with your colleague's life just by the numbers on their payslip.
He may be spending the majority of his time in the Gym and aiming for the six-pack. And meanwhile, you may be testing your luck in the creative field. One major step towards stop comparing ourselves with others is finding our multiple interests and spending some quality time to fulfil them.
A diversified portfolio prevents us hitting from the severe losses when one asset is not performing well. In the same way, diversified life helps us moving forward when we aren’t doing well in one aspect of our life.
Numbers are just the numbers:
The comparison need not be with others whereas Some people will compare their progress with the numbers and forget to enjoy the process. Even though we should have some measure for our progress, it doesn’t mean we should always keep an eye on that number. One of the famous examples is we tend to check the likes very often as soon as we post something in social media. Happiness shouldn’t be derived from the number of likes/followers. It should be derived from the quality time you spent during the work.
Be happy for others’ happiness:
The only way to keep yourself happy forever is being happy for others’ happiness too. When someone you know has achieved something, speak to them, congratulate them, understand how much big that achievement for them. Eventually, we will also be very happy for their happiness.
The bottom line is to compare your results with your efforts and not with others’ results.