Would you remain motivated if you stopped comparing your progress with others’??

Comparing ourselves with others is a thought pattern most of us had developed at early age. It is the voice in our heads that forces us to measure our personal traits against those of others, a mental habit that most had been trained to have while they were being raised.

Either indirectly, through the threat of losing their parents’ love, affection, care, appreciation, and attention to children who are doing better than them, or directly through explicit comparison parents do as means of motivation or punishment, the child acquires the habit of determining his self-worth based on where he stands in relation to others and perceives anyone’s being better than him as threat.

Today, we collectively participate in pushing people harder and harder to compare themselves to others. As attention, likeness, admiration followed by money, fame and power are dedicated to people with certain occupations or skills, many have no clue but to compare themselves to and follow the steps of those socially admired individuals to have an acknowledged place in society.

What is wrong with comparison?

Comparison is always unfair and subjective. Without taking into account all involved personal and social factors that positively and negatively affected someone’s position, objective comparison with someone else can’t be established.

It distorts our unique energy patterns. It makes us forget our uniqueness, look over our originality, forget our inherited capabilities and wasting our energy trying to acquire abilities that is not ours in the first place. Even if it worked it would leave us no more than copies from others.
The comparison always done in a manner that keeps us within the emotional states we used to. Usually sustains the impressions we used to have about ourselves with bias to reach the same conclusion each time.

It is addictive. When we become addicted to comparison there become an infinite number of people with infinite number of fields to compare ourselves in. No matter what is the result of the last comparison we will always find new people and new fields to compare ourselves in.

Extremists:

Some had gone to the extreme that they can’t be motivated unless there is an opponent to compare themselves with, otherwise any endeavor feels cold and lifeless, they literally would have nothing to live for if they stopped comparing themselves to others.

Success:

Success isn’t achievable through comparison as many believe. Successful people never distract themselves with comparison to others. They don’t waste time caring what other’s do. They focus their energy in aligning with their goals. They evaluate their progress according to objective benchmarks. They are aware of their strengths and building their success upon them, aiming at scoring higher every time they shot. Thy simply never been trained on comparing themselves to others, and never felt the threat of losing because of others success.