Here is a picture of not you.
Stop comparing yourself to other people. Stop trying to be him. He isn’t even human. He isn’t even real.
Remember how when you were a kid and a sadistic weasel of a child made fun of your stupid glasses and your dad assured you that bullies were just weak-minded people projecting their own insecurities onto you? Some burly boy installs you into a locker to confirm a soothing comparison – his body is better than your body, his power is greater than your power. Bullies hurtfully contest with their victims in arenas they know they can win.
Fearful people invert this as they advance to ages where there is a lot to be scared of. They bully themselves by comparing themselves to others in arenas where they know they will lose. The fearful are in a state of perpetual contrived accountability where someone else’s success provokes not inspiration but resentment and inadequacy.
This is so, so bad. Fear.less contributor Robert Thurman points out that if you set yourself apart from the universe, it will consume you. This seems pretty intuitive. It is huge and you are so, so small. Instead, recognizing one’s unity with the universe (a tenet of very many religions) is the way to go, for it diminishes fear because there is nothing for you to feel antagonistic toward if you are one with everything.
But even though you are just a cosmological cog like everyone else, you are a different cog. You are not everyone else. You have different innate qualities and life experiences. It doesn’t make sense to evaluate yourself on criteria that you didn’t invent, that everyone else finds more convenient. If you do, you may find yourself ashamed of your relative inefficacy as a person and too fearful to appreciate yourself as a vessel of value.
The Fear.less contributors are impressive people and when we introduce them to you in the opening paragraph of their stories, we go on about how great they are and what they’ve accomplished. But they’re not better people than you, and you are not incapable of reaching your potential just because you’re not as educated or as eloquent or as lucky as them. They’re not aliens, and they agreed to do this to help you (and them.)
When you read Fear.less and learn these people’s lessons, use them to win at life more than the person you were yesterday, not more than anyone else. As Danielle LaPorte says, “rock”. Keep improving yourself and ignore the background noise. Like Pema Chodron advises, become your own friend. The corollary is stop being your own bully, because pitting yourself in a battle against the world is far more awful than getting mugged for your lunch money.
Tags: bullies, comparison, robert thurman, superman
I like the idea at the end there of making progress. Trying to do a little better today than yesterday is more doable than trying to pull of something huge. Being an advocate of yourself and sticking up for yourself is something I need to do more of.