Don't compare yourself with others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
– Regina Brett
Yesterday, I shared a story in the group about how growing up, I was so competitive, I would compete with people who didn't even know I exist and who weren't even in the competition with me.
I attended a government (public) school, and back in the day, we always trekked miles from school to where we'd get a vehicle that would convey us to our respective homes. Sometimes, we'll go in groups, and sometimes, I'd be alone on my path because I would have stayed back at school long after closing periods for extracurricular activities.
And so, on days when I'm alone, I'd create competitions in my head with people ahead of me. I'd locate some innocent victim who's minding his business and walking ahead on his own, and make him my target to surpass.
The motive was noble, as it was a tactic to help me walk faster and just generally keep me engaged, which worked. It was noble, but it wasn't brilliant. It was noble, but it was stupid, and it was there because I had no content.
Many times during the course of the competition I had made up in my head, even before I got to the person, they'd have turned in another direction, completely different from that which I was on in the first place. I noticed some people will even stop; they had already reached their own destination. Some people were rich, they'd hail a bus and get on. Some people, I surpassed and felt a fleeting joy that faded immediately because I would locate another person immediately to vanquish. And some others were always ahead, no matter how I tried.
It was so foolish of me to be competing with people who weren't aware I even existed, people who were on a different path than I was, people who had a different destination from me, and who had built much more capacity than me and will always be ahead.
I focused on the competition so much that it was impossible to focus on myself. I distracted myself a lot from the emptiness and lack of purpose within me by chasing after the wind, chasing people who didn't even know they were being chased.
We compete because we are trying to distract ourselves from the emptiness and lack of purpose within us.
And that is how many of us are in life today. All our lives, we compete with friends, family, neighbours, friends of neighbors, colleagues, course mates, age mates, church members, club members, and the list keeps growing.
We spend all our lives competing with people who are on different paths, different timezones, people who have different aspirations in life, people whose destinations are completely different from ours.
We compete sternly with people who define success as something different from us. People who are simply okay with what we want to surpass, and people who do things we'd never do just to stay ahead. We compete with people who are on different assignments. How foolish!
The funny thing is, we know how unsustainable this is. We know how foolish it is, but we keep doing it anyway, and we have no idea why. I know why.
It is because we try to distract ourselves from the inner emptiness and lack of purpose that is our lives. We don't have content, so we strive to best other people just to feel like we do. We don't have an accurate sense of where we are going, and so we distract ourselves by chasing after other people.
Many people don't have content, so they strive to best other people just to feel like they do.
If you understand your purpose, if you have a clear sense of your WHY, of your values, and of your work, competing won't make a lot of sense to you.
Let me share another short story. It was told by Pastor Sam Adeyemi in one of his sessions.
He told of how after waiting for several minutes in traffic, a man spotted a danfo (Yellow Lagos bus) turning into a corner and decided to follow him. He thought, "These danfo drivers know all the shortcuts in Lagos, let me follow him." And on they went. Turned into different roads for about 45 minutes, only to realize, after the dango driver parked in front of a house, that he was going to his own house all along.
This is the system many of us use to play life. We follow people who we think are going in the same direction, only to end up somewhere we never wanted to go.
We compare ourselves with people who have different goals, different values, different beliefs, and in a few years, we look at ourselves in the mirror and can't even recognise who we are. Sad story, but this is easily the story of more than 50% of people on earth today.
We play life following people who we think are going in the same direction as us, only to end up somewhere we never wanted to go.
Even the Apostle of old in the Holy book emphasised, "they that compare themselves with themselves are fools!"
They are fools because they are completely distracted from the only thing that matters; themselves. They are fools because they aren't paying attention to their own path and purpose. Do you fit the profile? Are you a fool?
WHAT IS THE REMEDY?
The simple remedy of this is to define who you are, the values you have, the boundaries you have drawn, the capacity you have, and the lessons you want your life to teach.
We must turn from competition and comparison to building a clarity of our own purpose, building capacity for our own business. Nobody is like us. Competing and comparing will only limit us or cause us frustration and depression.
We must turn from competition and comparison to building a clarity of our own purpose and capacity for our own business.
The only person you should ever compare yourself with, the only person you should ever compete with, is the person you were yesterday. That's how to measure growth.
To your growth,
Abiola Okunsanya,
Handzinspired. ✨
Comparison is a thief of joy and sense of self. Thank you for sharing this sir.
Thank you sir for sharing this insightful post!!! 👏🏾💯