Don’t compete or compare yourself with anyone

Do not compete or compare yourself with anyone, admire others and learn from them, that’s my advice. It is said that, in 1709, in the palace of Cardinal Ottoboni, a musical tournament took place between Georg Friedrich Handel and Domenico Scarlatti. They were 24 years old and had unique weapons: a harpsichord and an organ.

The two remained even but in the end the organ tipped the balance in Handel’s favor. The rivalry continued, but they never stopped admiring each other. Scarlatti always crossed himself when Handel was mentioned as a sign of respect.

The anecdote of Handel and Scarlatti shows us that although there is a certain rivalry between the two musicians, it did not mean that they were both excellent in their fields and professed mutual admiration. It’s a matter of loving yourself and having enough humility to admire other people who have extraordinary abilities worthy of recognition.

Don’t compete with anyone, it’s not necessary

In today’s society we are taught from childhood to compete. It seems that the important thing is to surpass the other and not do it well. Competitiveness is present in many areas, not only in sports., we compete to get a job, to get a promotion, to have more friends or to be among the best in performing some activity. Contests and competitions are continually created to find the best in some field.

But, For some time now, there have been studies that maintain that collaboration obtains better results than competition., because a group of people who work together and united can achieve greater goals than a single person. But, to be able to work with a group of people we must control our ego and that is something that sometimes requires effort and a great exercise in humility.

Competitiveness can exist even with ourselves, that is, we can be competitive to try to improve ourselves and achieve our goals. But in this sense, we must also act with caution because Excessive competitiveness can cause frustration.

We have the mistaken belief that we need to be recognized to be loved, and we think that if we are the best at something we will achieve that recognition and love. However, this belief is false, because winning does not mean achieving love. Winning is something ephemeral, what stays with us is what we learned while and when we achieved it.

Therefore, Don’t compete with anyone, collaborate with someone. And be careful of competing with yourself because doing it too much leads to loss of self-confidence and frustration.

Comparison and self-esteem

Comparison at a certain moment can increase our self-esteem, but it is usually the way to do it that has the most side effects. Taking this habit places our attention away from the task itself, minimizing the intrinsic motivation it may give us.

For example, if we focus on reading more books than our coworker and we like to read, probably the fact of entering a competition and starting to read almost out of obligation will make us start to hate opening a book. Remember, don’t compete with someone even in what you like the most because you may end up hating them…

The important thing to avoid comparisons that harm us is to increase our self-esteem and understand that all people are unique. and different, because our circumstances are also different. Being mortified because another person has obtained a better home than ours, a better job, makes us lose perspective. Our life has different objectives from that of others, based on what we want and not on what other people have achieved.

If we properly manage our self-esteem, we can see the positive side of comparisons and use their motivating power. for those tasks that we have to do and that we don’t like at all. However, you have to be careful, because the line that divides positive comparison from negative comparison is very fine, and it is necessary not to cross it in pursuit of extreme perfectionism.

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