It’s 3:45 am, I just finished my breakfast ( some oatmeal with blue and blackberries ) and now I’m sipping away on some fresh ground coffee, ready to finish my data visualization project from FCC ( freeCodeCamp.org ). However, I wanted to write a blog post about something that many, if not all ( myself included ) people go through —- comparing yourself to others.
If you’re learning something new, and your struggling, you can’t help but compare yourself to those who “know more” than you do. I did this quite often throughout my years as a child, your know; looking at other kids who had more expensive shoes or clothing, etc. The comparison-flu didn’t come around often; because as a kid more often than not, I didn’t care what people thought of me…but every-so-often, the comparison-flu would come around and I would end sick for about a few minutes.
Let us pause for a bit and acknowledge this:
Just because you catch the comparison-flu, for one thing, doesn’t mean you will catch it for others. Here is a short explanation. Let us say you’re new to.. I dunno…boxing. You’re a complete noob ( you can barely make a proper fist). Let’s also say you’re a professional photographer with 10+ years of experience; people come to you for advice regularly.
Now, with that said, are you more than likely to compare yourself with other boxers or other photographers? My guess is that your answer will be “with other boxers”. Now does this mean you will never compare yourself to other photographers? No, but the chances that happening decreases.
Now, when I first started coding, I must have spent 90% of the time looking at countless apps and admiring the work my eyes landed on; taking WAAAY too many notes on the type of applications that I would LIKE to build…I was on an endless window-shopping excursion.
What do you think happened? From spending too many times window-shopping? I became overwhelmed, anxiety set in and I started comparing myself to the individuals (authors) who wrote the apps I was examining; which was ridiculous because I had NOTHING to compare…I was a complete noobie! ( I think back on it now and I laugh as I complete this sentence ).
Other times I would read articles from others who shared their experiences when they first started, and what do you think I did? I started comparing their experiences with mine; ridiculous….human? Yes, but still ridiculous.
Somewhere in my adult-hood, something happened….my perception of how I viewed people, their status and their experiences changed. Instead of comparing myself to others…I saw them as people who I aspired to be like and or better. I’m not quite sure how or why that happened, so I’m sorry I can’t tell you. I’ll think about it some more and if it comes to mine I’ll update this blog post.
Once I started doing this, my attention on the status of people and experiences diminished, dramatically. I was goal-driven. I knew what I needed to do to get to my destination. I didn’t have time to stop and smell other people’s roses, I was too busy trying to build my own garden. Does it work all the time, nope, but I can honestly say that, for me, it works about 85% to 90% of the time. Where did I get that number from? I dunno, that’s just my way of expressing how well it works.
So If you leave away with something after reading this post, leave with this. If you catch the comparison-flu, accept the fact that you’re human and that it’s going to happen; a little hard to accept that fact when you’re in the moment, but you know what I mean. After you’ve accepted it, then tell yourself that you’re the Sh!t, Why? Because you are, simple as that.
Take a step back and set little goals to achieve. Hit the mark on each of them. Do this until you surpass whatever it is you’re comparing yourself to….actually I regress that last state… most people say “go, until“, “Do this until“, “push ahead, until“…screw that, keep going. Period.
I hope you found this post helpful.