Why would you do this to yourself....?

I'm going to talk about comparison, and why you would do it to yourself. I had a client who was a Harvard graduate. And he came to me feeling like he was a failure. by a lot of people's standards, he was doing very well, but compared to some of his peer group that graduated with him from Harvard, he felt like he was falling behind. And that, you know, he wasn't achieving all these amazing things that some of his colleagues seem to be achieving. So I asked him this question, how much do you actually know about your your previous University colleagues? Do you know them very, very well? And he said, Well, I mean, obviously, at university, I knew them well. But now, yeah, you know, follow them on social media, sometimes have the odd conversation with them. And it seems like, you know, most of them are doing way better than I am. And I don't know what's wrong with me. And I said, Well, do you know what their relationships are like with their family? Do you know what their relationships are like with their colleagues? Do you know how popular they are with their colleagues? Do you know whether there are good at their jobs, actually, or whether the her they're great politicians? What do you really know about them? And the answers were very thin, very little. So basically, he was comparing himself to myths, he didn't actually know, you know, how wonderful or not their lives were. And the thing about comparison is, everybody's got stones in their shoes, everybody's got problems. And actually, we are best placed to solve our own problems. And therefore, comparing ourselves to others means that we think that their problems are less than ours, or somewhat, are somehow easier to solve than ours are. And we actually don't know that a good thing to think of is, would you really swap your problems for someone else's problems, without knowing what they were? I doubt that, because that would be very, very dangerous, he would not know health wise, you know, in in all sorts of different areas, that they might have problems that are, you know, far worse than yours, but on the surface, you would never know it. So, to wrap up, comparison, is a waste of energy, and also can make you feel awful. And it's based on assumptions, that these myths that you create in your own head, are actually true. And based on no reality, or fact. Now, if you know somebody even extremely well, you don't know their deepest and darkest, because that is something that we all hold within ourselves. And it's very rare for people to share absolutely everything about themselves. So even if you know someone well comparing yourself to them, is, is a dodgy business. Because you really don't know what goes on in their heads, or in their deepest lives, actually. So that's it for today. Stay away from comparison, apart from comparing yourself to yourself. If you're doing better today than yesterday, that's a win, you're doing great. So that is the healthiest comparison you can have with yourself, rather than with other people, allow everybody to live and do well or do badly or whatever happens. And you just can take care of your own lane, because that's the most important lane to take care of.