I hope all of you agree with me that we are currently living in a weird world with competition where survival and adaptation are essential key ingredients in the recipe of success. In the mean time, we observe a culture of comparison is dramatically evident with or without our knowledge in many fields of products and services.
Everyone wants to be in the game and their driving force is to be the best among competitors. Even humans as social characters have a trend to compare themselves with other humans to a greater extent.It all begins from our childhood. Nowadays every parent wants their child to be transformed into a particular role model to succeed in life. Most parents use their child as a vehicle to fulfill their dreams and be famous. Some children also have no choice other than accepting the life that the parents want them to live. That is where the comparison comes into the surface. From childhood, the competitive thoughts are pumped into the small heads that they need to follow if they want to win the life. Even the particular exams in educational systems are built in such a way by intensifying the competition.
There is no problem in guiding your child for the success. Yet, the child should not be a pawn of the parents. Actually parents should help the child to unearth the hidden talents while protecting child’s true individuality. Unfortunately what is happening around us is that child is exposed to comparison when he or she is moving with life. If the child fails somehow, the parents tend to compare with another successful child’s story and try to apply the same winning theory to their child. Honestly, this is a fruitless effort.
On the other hand, the winning child is given many other goals to achieve in life to show off the versatile nature of him or her to the society. For example, think of a child who tries to be a good tennis player, violinist, salsa dancer, singer, scout while becoming the first in the class and learning two or three languages at the same time. Being an over qualified person is their desire in life of such children’s minds. These children do not get satisfaction easily in life and are always living in stress to achieve higher targets. In doing so, very few all rounders have succeeded in real life.
Some are child prodigies. They are brilliant creations of nature thanks to the specific genes. Such people sometimes become the victims of star contests where his or her personality is given a massive boost with voters’ support to become a rich celebrity at young age. I feel really sorry for such children as you can see the transformation of adult behaviour and thinking patterns deviating from innocent childhood. These things are clearly evident when they behave in public.
In addition, most of the time we see lot of people, who want to live to impress other people in the society. They try to imitate and compare famous and successful personalities by accent, clothes, make up, accessories, walking style and many more depicting their inferiority complex. I wonder why they cannot build up their own personality by just being themselves, carrying a unique charisma with their preferred tastes and styles. It will be successful if you can be more down to earth, humble and share the same heart beat of people in the society.
It is true that comparison is needed to a certain extent in life. Yet, I believe that we should not promote comparison in our life. Why cannot we understand that everyone is unique? We will run on this rat race of life till we are healthy and strong. We should not be programmed to compare each other all the time. We have our own journey to run at a specific pace. In this game of life, you will be exhausted sooner or later if you have the desire to be better than everyone.
US author Jarod Kintz in his book ‘This Book Is Not FOR SALE’ mentions that,
“Don’t just compare yourself to the best, compare yourself to the average man and also to yourself when you started out. Compare yourself to the best so you have a goal of what to surpass, compare yourself to the average man so you gain confidence in your abilities, and compare yourself to where you were so you can appreciate how far you’ve come—and gauge how far you have to go to be the best and how long it will take.”
I totally agree with him and I guess we must aim ourselves to improve to be in a better position that where we were before. Drive the comparison to your soul to compete with yourself in a less pressurized manner. In short, you are the captain of your ship. That is how I see it folks!
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