Your Greatest Thief

Before I give report cards to my kids, I give them the schpeel.  (Insert teacher voice) “Avoid sharing and comparing your grades.  Some of you are fast runners, some of you are fast at math facts.  If we were all the same it would be … ?”  And they yell, “Boring.”

Yet it’s so damn hard. As we grow up, we are taught to measure just about everything. And as we enter adulthood, we are told that our goal setting should be measured (I have never met a SMART goal in my life). We measure this and we measure that and soon we are measuring how many Facebook friends we have compared to someone else (or am I the only person who has done this?) We stop looking in the mirror the same way. We stop seeing the person we are.  Instead we see the person we’re not. I am speaking of comparison, folks.  

When we use other people as benchmarks as to where we should (I hate that word) be, we lose. Period.  There is no winner. (Check out Sam in the pic above - rockstar)

I have been doing a lot of this recently. I see young 20-something women starting new businesses, becoming greatly successful, and I still have debt. I see fitness models with 6-packs and I can’t seem to plank for one minute a day. I see people writing, and writing, and writing, and every time I start to do the same, I think, f*%k it, no one wants to read that. I am in the comparison vortex. And it sucks.

When I look back on my life – even in the past year, I am really proud of the things I have accomplished.  And the year ahead is promising too. So why this struggle?  It’s what I am doing with my present (the majority of it) that is sucking me farther in. I am logged into the edited social media world – and I believe it to be real.  It’s not. Or at least it’s not the full monty. It’s all edited.  I am even backspacing and editing right now so that this sounds right – for you.  

So, getting back to what’s real.  Be curious about that.

I challenge you (and myself)  – just for this moment, right now – to drop comparison.  You can do that by telling yourself three things you love about yourself.  If you feel so inclined, share these in the comments.

I am grateful for inspiration (mine, yours, ours), for my body that has carried me this far, and for my ability to paint a bike, a Buddha and a zebra. (Coming soon)

Comparison stinks. So stop doing it.

Cheers.