As you might have noticed, last week I missed an entry. Since starting this forum, I haven’t missed a single Sunday until now. Recently I spent an excellent time away in Queenstown with my better half. I decided to focus on enjoying my time away, rather than stressing over another entry, taking away from the time I get to spend with her. In this time I had to face an important question to answer I sought to answer in my time away: Am I controlling the newsletter, or is it controlling me?
I hope you understand.
I love the Olympics. Not only for the showcase of the very zenith of athletic ability, but the unwavering pride the athletes show in representing their nations at the highest level. However, there is a very small part of me that admittedly remains a bit resentful, maybe even disappointed. After playing hockey for so long, it’s always great to watch the Black Sticks compete at the games. It’s just that this time around, much of the team is made up of some of the guys I competed against in school. What does that say about my achievements? While I’m skulking about an office there are kids no older than 12 competing in the skateboarding event, and a bunch of carvers from my school days, representing New Zealand in the game I love the most.
When it comes to aiming upwards, it never feels as though we’re ahead of everyone else. No matter how much effort we put in, people just always have it better. In the age before phones (I don’t actually know, I only became conscious a few years ago) the population of who you could compare your life to was mostly limited to your immediate environment. The people you grew up with, the town you grew up in, the school you attended and the job you got made up the majority of your reference points when comparing your life to other people. You could peer into the lives of famous people in movies and magazines, but the connection was vague and insubstantial. Nowadays we have a window into anyone and everyone who has a phone, internet and a desirable characteristic of their life.
This is completely dangerous. Content online is curated carefully, designed to show only the best of everyone’s lives. The envy that is born from comparison causes us to condemn our own conditions, wishing for things to be better. The competition and guilt that erupts from comparison is self-sabotaging.
No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is within their power not to want what they don’t have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have — Seneca
Internal Progress
If you find that you are constantly comparing yourself to other people, envious of their progress and disdainful of your own consider that you might simply be missing the point. Aiming upwards in it’s most fundamental form isn’t a race or competition with others. It is to measure yourself against your own progress and growth. Instead of worrying about what everyone else is doing, focus on what you are doing. Ask yourself: what am I doing it for? Fame, praise and admiration? The attention that comes from being known? There is nothing less impressive than putting on airs of your own progress. Real, determined progress is derived from your own innate desire to pursue and conquer.
No, I wasn’t born into inherent Olympic opportunity. I was not born with extraordinary athleticism. I may fall short in the scope of my colleagues, measured by endorsements at college or results at university. But, when I compare my life, my opportunities and the support that I have to most other people, It’s pretty obvious how lucky I’ve been and how much progress I’ve been making. For every person with a desirable life there is 10,000 people with lives that you aren’t. Standardised measures of your wellbeing and progress against other people do not exist. It is like comparing apples and oranges.
Never depend on the admiration of others. There is no strength in it. Personal merit cannot be derived from an external source — Epictetus
When we focus on ourselves, the progress of others isn’t ignored. We don’t hide away from the world, brooding only over our own progress and abilities. It’s just that what happens to other people: what genetics they’re born with, the money they’re born into, the benefits they’ve gained from social climbing, or the gains they’re making in the gym will have little impact on our well-being. We begin to value the contribution of the opportunities we’re given on the outcomes we create, and we bask in the conditions set forth for us in our desire to be better then we were yesterday, not against who other people are today.
There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will — Epictetus
Deal with what you can, and take the rest as it comes. Are you focusing on yourself?
Just Something To Consider.
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