It was December 2019 and many of the leaders from my organization were getting ready to start their 2 week long vacation for celebrating Christmas and New Year’s.  Many were planning to be gone for 3 weeks returning back 2nd week of January. As they were planning to finish off any pending work and wrapping up any outstanding emails, a system generated automatic email hit the inboxes of all the leaders, and it stated “Employee Performance Ratings due in system by xx date“. Being one of the leaders in the organization, I was the recipient of this email too.  Since I wasn’t getting ready to go on week/2-week/3-week long vacation, I had a bit more time to ponder over this email.  The email had multiple links incorporated which when clicked took us to the company web page that had dedicated resources to help leaders evaluate one’s performance.  There wasn’t much there that I honestly thought would help me with the performance evaluation process so I decided to not focus on it then, rather come back to it the next day. 

The following day after accomplishing my other work, I circled back to the email and the resource page to look at it from fresh perspective and see if I could perhaps grasp more information than the day before.  Unfortunately that didn’t make a difference so I decided to think this through from a completely different perspective. 

As part of the performance rating exercise, employees are asked to reflect upon the year that just passed and note down their accomplishments, developments, etc.  This then gets turned over to the leaders to complete their assessments from their perspective and assign a particular rating.  Having managed employees for a long time now, I have often heard many employees comparing themselves to their peers or colleagues, often stating how the work they did is more meaningful and important, and what they bring to the table is often so much more than their colleague or peer.  Comparing ourselves to others is so ingrained into us that we cannot help but do it on a regular consistent basis within professional world as well as within our personal life.  This brings us to the important question – Why do people compare themselves to others?  And should we be doing it?  Let’s tackle these one by one:

Why do people compare themselves to others:  Based on my research and observations there are 2 reasons people compare themselves:

1. To stroke their own ego/self-image:  Often, people think they have full understanding of their own self (which isn’t necessarily the case, it is more their perception of themselves they are attuned to, not the reality) and they will compare themselves to someone they think is within their own realm of similar abilities, skills, etc. or someone less fortunate than them in one way or another and hence by comparing themselves to others, people want to enhance and feel good about their own self-image.  Most of the comparisons that people do these days are for fulfilling their own sense of elevated self-image. 
2. To get motivated to achieve more:  Sometimes people compare themselves to those that may be considered ideal or great achievers or the most successful.  The reason people get into this type of comparison is to motivate themselves to do more, to achieve more, to be more by pushing the boundaries and inching towards bigger, better, more successful version of themselves. 

Neither of these reasons are particularly helpful in the long run.  Let’s unpack what I mean by this:

If you are more concerned about stroking your own ego and enhancing your self-image in your own eyes, you will often end up comparing yourself to someone less fortunate than you so you can boost about everything that YOU HAVE that THEY DON’T.  While this may help you feel good superficially for sometime, eventually deep down you will cringe and your heart will pain every time you start going down this path.  Or you may end up comparing yourself to someone with your equal ability and skills, but is able to achieve something slightly more than you in one particular area.  In this situation, you may end up feeling extremely jealous or envious towards that person and may end up isolating yourself from others since your jealousy will manifest itself into something more destructive or harmful overtime.  In either of these situations, at the end you will find yourself lonely and helpless with a more and more self-loathing feelings filling your mind and more negativity seeping through every single cell of your body. 

If you are more focused on improving yourself, motivating yourself by looking at some more successful people, essentially pioneers in their fields/professions, as long as you are purely using these role models for ongoing motivation and for learning and growing slowly and steadily, it is healthy.  However, the downside of this can be seen when after a while you think that the progress you have made hasn’t still brought you any closer to these pioneers and that no matter how much effort you put in, you will never reach the place these successful people have reached.  So you either end up beating yourself and getting exhausted in the pursuit of getting to the same exact measure where these pioneers are, or you may end up completely dejected and quit.  Neither is helpful since no long term success comes overnight.  Every good thing takes a while to turn itself into a huge, long lasting success. 

The lesson learned from this is that “You are your own best comparator”.  Every day of your life, focus on striving and doing your best so you can be a better version of yourself today than you were yesterday.  These days there are “benchmarks” that are established in every single industry, job, profession or personal life.  Your focus should be to know and understand those benchmarks and motivate yourself to either reach those benchmarks or work in a way that will help you surpass them with accolades.  However know that if you don’t come close to that benchmark, don’t give up or feel jealous or dejected.  Keep putting your best foot forward and the invisible laws of this world will help propel you forward towards a more meaningful, peaceful and successful life. Your vision could be limited, but the possibilities offered up to you are endless!

This is exactly the type of conversation I have with my 12 year old, who certainly gave me the suggestion of writing about this topic! This is the conversation every parent should have with their kid too – Comparing can be healthy only when practiced within appropriate limits and with complete understanding.

Our Holy Quran has numerous examples of Prophets that all had different lives and different circumstances and situations they had to deal with.  Musa AS, after being found by Firawn’s wife, lived the life of a wealthy person all throughout his growing years while Yusuf AS after being thrown into the well by his brothers and rescued by a caravan and being sold to the king of Egypt, lived the life of slave through his growing years.  They each had different lives and different circumstances, however they each progressed through their lives to achieve the higher goal. 

Remember:

Never measure your progress using someone else’s ruler!

The potential within you is greater than the obstacles around you!