Growing up, it was easy to find myself making comparisons between everyone who had a place in my life. It didn’t help that competition among siblings shot like an arrow through all generations of my family, or that grading systems at school convinced me that anything below an A would land me a job flipping burgers at McDonald’s. It doesn’t help to learn that competition plays a key role in our economy, or that the lowest university acceptance rate is just 5.7%.
The truth is, life is too short to spend your energy “one-upping” each person you encounter. In high school, I could easily pretend I sat on a pedestal of success, living in ignorant bliss with the belief that my stellar report card was the golden ticket to a bright future. When I first arrived at McGill, I felt as though my pedestal had been rudely seized from beneath me, and subsequently smashed into countless fragile pieces. I remember thinking, “How am I possibly supposed to compete with all of these people?” During my time at McGill so far, I have met fantastic, self-driven and hard-working people who indeed challenge me to develop as a person. Yet, comparing my accomplishments to those of the people I’ve met has merely lowered my self-esteem.
Every individual has a different perception of happiness, and each has a different set of goals to achieve what he or she deems an accomplishment. How can we make stark comparisons between others and ourselves if we each have different goals and challenges sitting in our paths? Ultimately, I think comparisons stem from fear of failure. If we can convince ourselves we performed better than at least one other person, we automatically have a nice, fluffy, safety cushion to fall back on. Having this safety cushion doesn’t lead to happiness. It expends your mental energy and wastes your time working towards a goal that doesn’t even hold a sincere place in your heart.
Don’t get me wrong; competition can be a healthy force driving motivation. Competition can challenge us to adapt, grow and discover our individual capabilities. It’s when you deviate from your personal goals to accomplish the goals of another, solely to prove that you can better succeed, that this constant comparison becomes unhealthy.
We must have confidence that no matter where we are in life, we have the capacity to actualize our visions. We must accept that the choices we make for the betterment of ourselves may be different from the choices that others have made. Recognize that although you may not be the best at everything, nobody can imitate your character or unique ‘brand’. Lastly, no matter how much you compare yourself to others, genuine happiness will only emanate from true meaning.
Images obtained from:
http://allthingsd.com/20120822/competing-views-of-competition-in-apple-s…