Why should you stop comparing yourself to others?

Hello friends!

Imagine that you have a twin brother (or a twin sister). You were born from the same egg, you are identical twins, you have an identical genetic load. Did you imagine? Do you think that because you have a body copy of each other you will be the same? Totally the same? With the same personality traits?

Evidently not. Anyone who has a twin will tell you the truth that, although they are the same in appearance, since they were little, each one has its own characteristics, a unique psyche.

And even in cases where every day all environments are shared, as is the rare case of conjoined twins who manage to survive their first years (and are not separated by surgery), it is also notable that each one has a personality.

Now, if even with twins, and even with Siamese twins – who have not only one body, the same body, but also the same environment – ​​we can notice different characteristics, how can we compare two people who not only did not share the same environment and much less a genetic one?

For example, I was born into a home where culture has always been highly valued. My father built a giant library over the years and since I was a little boy I was encouraged to read, write, study languages. My environment helped me to enjoy studying, to enjoy learning and then to enjoy teaching as well. How can this environment be compared with someone born in a region where there is neither a school nor a book and parents are illiterate?

Can’t compare. Just as you can’t compare my environment to a billionaire who studied in a Swiss school and learned five foreign languages ​​in kindergarten. Comparing the history of either an environment (more unfavorable) or an environment (more favorable) makes no sense. Would it make sense for me to say that I’m smarter than a person who never had the opportunity to study? Would it make sense to compare what I’ve learned so far with someone who’s been to full-time school their whole life and consider myself dumber?

In fact, it makes no sense to compare your story and personality with anyone else. This is because not only the physiology, the body, the genetics, the history of creation, the personality, the psyche were different. But it also doesn’t make sense to compare because it won’t accomplish anything, especially the way most people do it.

I can compare myself with those who had better material and study conditions than mine and I can feel inferior and create a harmful low self-esteem. And I can create a feeling of superiority and arrogance if I compare myself to people who had less conditions, which is not going to be useful anyway because it will just distance me from the people I could help.

If you use comparison with another person, whether with a brother or sister, friend or friend, wife or husband, girlfriend or boyfriend, classmate or workmate, it is highly recommended that you stop doing this as soon as possible.

As I said, comparing yourself will only create a feeling, illusory mind you, that you are inferior or superior. In either case, this kind of comparison feeling doesn’t accomplish anything in the long run.

Now, if you observe another person’s behavior and you can observe that this other person has a skill that you don’t have, you can accept the fact (without creating a feeling of inferiority) and start learning from him.

In the video below, in which I talk about NLP and how people have different mental “programs”, I show how NLP uses these individual differences to our advantage by allowing us to model the behavior (internal and external) of people who have high skills.

For example, let’s say I know a person who can speed read and read a page of a book in seconds. I could compare myself and feel bad. But what good would that do me?

Instead, I can find out how this person developed this skill. I can ask and find out that she has taken courses, read books, trained in this and that way and then I will have managed to obtain useful information and even improve my reading ability.

An example that I see a lot here on the site is about the feeling of inferiority of the student in front of the vast knowledge of the teacher. It would be as if you entered this site and saw that I have already published more than 700 psychology texts, I teach courses in psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, NLP, neurosciences, cognitive psychology and others. Why, again and again, all comparison is useless.

If you’ve never studied psychology or if you’re just starting out, there’s no way to compare the fact that I’ve been studying for 12 years at an excellent university (UFSJ), then postgraduate, master’s, doctorate… it would be so useless if I compared myself with someone who has been studying for 40 years…

Now, we can learn from each other, of course. I can get information from professionals who are more experienced than I am, just as you can get information from me if you are starting to study psychology.

Conclusion

All comparison is useless. It will only create a feeling of inferiority or superiority (make no mistake: feeling superior does nothing) and it will be a pure waste of time and an illusion because you will be comparing two life stories that cannot be compared. It would be like comparing an orange to an apple. They are fruits, but they are so different, they have such different characteristics, that you can’t really compare.

In addition to the impossibility of comparing and the uselessness of doing so, when comparing you will fall into the so-called inferiority complex. I said that even the feeling of superiority is harmful because everything is included in the inferiority complex. A person needs to feel superior because he, deep down, feels inferior…

Therefore, always try to get out of these useless comparisons. If it’s to compare, at most, allow yourself to compare with yourself. With what you can do today, with your life experience, with your past. But even in this it is important to be careful and know how to recognize that time causes situations that do not always allow for this type of comparison.

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