Step Three for an Extraordinary Life: Stop Comparing

In the book The Mermaid of Brooklyn by Amy Shearn the rusalka admonishes Jenny:

Why does something good happening to someone else bother you?

I read that and the world stopped spinning. Because in just a few brief words, the mermaid spirit nailed it.  She told Jenny, a mother of two languishing after her husband abandoned them,

to stop comparing.

Stop comparing.  This is one tall order.  Today’s world is submerged in a “sizing up” mentality.  Advertisements promote this-or-that over the other, we scroll through albums of friends’ cherubic children and fabulous beach vacations on social media, and not go any farther than up our driveway to see our neighbor polishing his new sports car.  Our world is ripe with opportunities to compare.

And judge.  Comparing and judging go hand-in-hand.  When we evaluate two of anything side-by-side, we deem one better, or more flawed, than the other.  It doesn’t matter so much when we are talking toothpaste, but it is downright toxic when it comes to other people, ourselves, and the choices we make.

So I struggled with this part of the journey towards an extraordinary life.  I suppose that is a good thing.  Anything worth having takes investment, soul-searching and change.  And it takes more than a month to make a shift away from an ingrained, reflexive habit like not comparing.  Even the experts struggle with this, just ask thought leader and author Gabrielle Bernstein.***  But to freely admit this hard-to-break habit takes real courage and is the first step to making a real change.

Honestly, that’s all the farther I got last month in the stop-comparing department but it’s a start.

We all compare. We all judge. We alternately feel superior, and then inferior, depending on the time, place and circumstances.  That’s why the rusalka’s words from Mermaid resonated so clearly with me when I read them.  Why are we bothered by the good in someone else’s life?  Why do we feel personally slighted when, for example, the neighbor girl gets named to the honor roll and our child does not?  It really is a waste of time and energy.  And has nothing to do with us.  We can’t live our most extraordinary lives by getting caught up in someone else’s.  We can’t reflect on where we’ve been and where we want to go if we ruminate over a work colleague’s new McMansion.  Think of stop comparing as a spring house cleaning for the mind; clearing out what doesn’t serve so in order to focus on what does.  But it’s a practice, a practice toward progress, not perfection.  And that’s a good thing.  Working daily toward shedding the comparisons and judgement reminds us of the importance of living our own (not someone else’s) extraordinary life.

***Gabrielle Bernstein is the author of The Universe Has Your Back and Judgement Detox, and several other books.  I can honestly say her advice has changed my life.  (I get no kickbacks for saying so.)