20: Comparison Kills

Comparing ourselves to ourselves is a common thing and it can be a bit of a grey area, because there are times that comparing our growth or our production from one week to the next can be helpful to gauge where we’re at - what we’re doing well, and what we need to do differently. But then there’s this other facet of comparison to ourselves that isn’t useful. It’s where you take something you’ve done well or are capable of doing well and you take that good thing or that potential to do good and use it as a weapon against a less productive, or less successful experience.

Stimuli comes in, the brain figures out where to put it, makes connections to other pieces of similar information, and before you realize it you’ve made a comparison - drawn a conclusion - about yourself or someone else in relation to yourself or someone else.

So if you notice that happening, you notice yourself observing and then thinking on something that smells like comparison, you can - if you want to - simply acknowledge the thought and then direct your brain to do another activity. It will respond to your direction.