Today while working out at the Gym, I saw a
solitary shaker bottle placed on the floor near the squat rack. The bottle had a yellow lid and a message inscribed boldly on the body- “Look in the
mirror, that’s your competition.” The message struck me as I pondered on the
simplicity of the statement and yet its deep connotation.
Social media is all over and every person has an
infinite influence stream sitting in their pockets at all times. People are
influenced by the media and want their lives to be just like the ones portrayed
on social media sites. Often, these are exaggerated realities.
What happens when all day you receive feeds of the
perfect bodies, perfect hair, flawless skin, million-dollar earnings, partying
on yachts, luxury cars, designer clothes, and other endless influences? You
start to question your worth through the gap between your reality and the things
being portrayed. You set the wrong benchmarks while setting your ambition and
goals.
Let’s assume you are a fitness enthusiast who is working
hard to get a particular physique. You have people around in the gym who have
toned muscular bodies. You also see a ton of feeds on your Instagram or YouTube
where fitness influencers display their chiseled bodies. You feel that they are
working hard and building muscles whereas there is something wrong with you if
you are not getting results.
We tend to ignore the fact that the other person has a
different genetic makeup, a different muscle reactance to load, and may even be
using steroids to uplift his muscle-building game. You only place stress on the
way he/she looks in the pics or videos and you too want to have that physique.
This leads to unrealistic expectations and a desire to look perfect while
disregarding the progress one has made from the day one started.
The act of comparison begins in the family itself. The
performance of the kids in school is compared to the other kids. Often, this
leads to infusing an unhealthy sense of competition in kids. Parents approve of
their kids if they get good grades or if they are able to beat the kid next
door in a competition at school.
The kid grows up assuming the world to be a competitive
place where it is important to win at any cost. The kid feels free to use
devious means to get ahead. This also impacts their mental health as the race
to outperform stresses them often ending in breakdowns. The suicides by
students failing to score well or get through into good colleges are common
news we hear.
This trend continues in the life of the kid after he
grows up as an adult. He now competes in the professional world for better
paychecks and recognition. The battles for power, prestige, and money get
intense and the focus is on projecting a grandiose image of oneself. The comparison
in terms of the type of car, the size of the house, and the number of assets
owned become an instrument to gauge one’s position in the social hierarchy. Wealth
becomes the metric to measure happiness in life. In order to earn more than the
competitor the person loses a night’s sleep, loses quality time with family,
becomes distant from kids, and in the end with himself.
This act of constant comparison only leads to
distraught in life. In the book ‘The Almanack of Naval Ravikant’ the author
points out that desire is a contract of unhappiness. Till the time you have achieved
that goal, you decide to be unhappy as the absence of that thing keeps you
wanting it more.
The desire to be like someone is an ever-changing concept.
Once you succeed at a given goal, the goal shifts. The achieved goal becomes a
new constant and the desire to achieve the next goal takes center stage. In his
podcast, Morgan Housel says that when you don’t want something and you don’t
have it, it does not matter to you; when you want something and have it, you
feel ok or maybe great for some time, but when you want something and can’t
have it, you go mad. This is a never-ending loop you get trapped in.
So, what is an ideal approach to setting goals? Instead
of constantly comparing oneself to others and striving to outperform them, the
emphasis should be on self-reflection, self-awareness, and self-improvement.
The ultimate goal should be to become the best version of oneself, continually
pushing boundaries, setting new goals, and surpassing previous achievements.
There will always be someone who would be doing better than you, be it in any
domain. So, ditch the habit of always competing and comparing, it may ever keep you unhappy.
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