How Can I Use Comparison To My Benefit?

I think a lot of things can be beneficial if you choose to word them in a way that works for you. Comparison in the sense of looking at the differences between two people, can be harmful. If you look at comparing yourself with other people by looking at everything they have in with everything you lack that does nothing for you. If you use comparison as a way to highlight your short comings that is no way to utilize what could be a tool. 

Using comparison to your benefit can only happen if you look at a bigger picture. Comparison can be a really great teacher, and it can be a really great navigator towards what you want. Using comparison to your benefit can look like seeing something someone has done or has, and using that as an interest to be curious how it was done. 

Comparison also shows you that something can be done. Taking comparison to “sad me, I’m here and they are where I want to be” disconnects you from all the hard work it probably took that person for you to only see the results. Comparison really is comparing is comparing an idea that you have to the result of something somebody has done. 

There’s a whole journey that you’re missing out on when you want to be in a spot somebody else is in currently. It isn’t that you can’t get there, I think we are just using comparison in a way that keeps us stuck. We are wanting to be at the finish line of a race we haven’t trained for. 

In Mel Robbins book, The Let Them Theory” she has a whole chapter dedicated to comparison. The way she described comparison is that it can be used for teacher or torture, and I think that’s the best explanation of comparison that I’ve heard. 

Letting somebody else’s success teach you what success in that area looks like, showing you it’s attainable, and maybe even how to do it is something that’s to your benefit. This way of thinking can get you somewhere, it’s a growth mindset way of thinking, and it’s the starting point to getting to a place you want to be at. 

Torture on the other hand, looks stuck. It is you telling yourself that somebody is there and you are here and you can’t move from here because you are you. I fall victim to this sometimes, but that’s exactly what this is, a victim mindset. There’s no starting point, there’s no trying to understand, it is only you feeling sorry for yourself which tells your mind and your soul that this is all you can attain. 

Nobody is perfect and will choose the teaching mindset all the time, but flirting with this mindset of seeing how the people and things around you can be to your benefit as a blue print on how to get somewhere is far better than feeling sorry for yourself. If you hit a bump on your journey to utilizing comparison, it’s natural to want to feel sorry for yourself and get back in that stuck mindset. However, let it be a bump in the road not a complete stop to getting to where you want to go. 

Comparison is really inspiration in disguise if we look close enough, to start with noticing the differences between two things and then letting inspiration take over to tell yourself I can do it too, I’m capable, and I can learn how to get myself there because you can.