It's not about them

It’s an action that occurs more often than we like to admit. It’s often triggered by a competitive environment or simply our own insecurities. It’s something we like to do in our absolute worst times and is often the reason our best times feel short-lived.

It is comparison. 

In some cases, it’s almost unavoidable- all thanks to our lovely education system. I keenly remember having this realization freshman year of college when I was taking General Chemistry. My high school was rigorous and yes, competitive, but I often felt like my classmates and I were a family.

So, when I came to college the cut-throat attitudes came as a stark and rude awakening. Some students were giving out wrong information or answers to quizzes to purposefully confuse others. Some students refused to study with others in fears that they would give away their priceless knowledge. 

And, to an extent, I couldn’t really blame these kids - the system is tough, General Chemistry, often called  a “weed out course”, was tough, and it's not easy to perform well academically at BU. Above all, we were all medical applicants so that meant...we were all competitors. 

So that’s when my habit started to really blossom- everything I did, every score I recieved, every relationship I built with my professors was compared to the person who did it all better. 

Academics aside, this unfortunate habit has transcended into many other aspects of our lives; How attractive we think we are, how successful we think we are, how popular we think we are, even how nice we think we are. We feel like we look pretty good until we see pictures of insanely beautiful people on instagram, we remain confident that the path to our future career is starting to unfold until we find out that one of our classmates got into med school, we think we have enough friends until we see one of our classmates with double the size. 

We make it about us. We make it personal- what others are doing, how others are doing is a direct indication of how we’re doing. 

For example, say you get a 90 on a test. You’ve worked hard, you studied hard, and you are truly proud. And it is ~ as per my previous blogs~ of course the hard work that you should be celebrating, but you also happen to be very pleased with these results. 

Then you look over and find that your classmate’s exam reads “100” and almost without thought, the pride you feel about your score and part of your self-esteem declines. You made this score of this other person who is living their completely own life directly and whole-heartedly impact your own.

And the worst part is comparison becomes particularly common when people are scared.

Take me, a nervous but passionate pre-med student applying for medical school right now. I have been eager to become a doctor for the past 10 years and there is absolutely nothing more I’d rather do. Yet this passion is often accompanied by fear because to quote Grey’s Anatomy ( yes the ever-dramatic Grey’s Anatomy &  yes watching this show is my current guilty-pleasure), “being scared is good because it means you have something to lose.”

So, as I have been completing the application, trying to create my best personal statement, and market myself the best, I have been pretty scared. 

And what did my mind decide to do to make it "all better"?

Compare. Look up stories of successful doctors' perfect scores, learn of classmates who got into the medical schools of their dreams, and think about the other “successful” people I know with their careers secured, jobs set, and hearts happy. 

One second I was excited to finally be reaching the step I had been dreaming of for years- the day I started filling out an application to become a doctor! The next second I’m freaking out thinking about how much I love it and how crushed I’ll be if I get rejected. And then, I decided to look at all the people who have what I want. 

It’s this third step that really breaks you - because it’s no longer about you, it’s about you relative to the rest of the world. 

It is one of the toughest habits to break and, clearly, I’m still struggling with it. 

But one, ostensibly simple, method of combating this addiction to comparison is remembering whose life it is- it’s not the life of you and all the classmates who scored better than you on a test, of you and your 50 models that you follow on instagram, of you and and all pre-med students in your school. It’s just yours.

It’s your life. 

If it’s your life, then your passions, your fears, your scores, ALL of it is a reflection of who you are and what work you put it in. Comparing all of these to the rest of the worlds’ doesn’t change the fact that you did how you did. 

You can consume yourself with these thoughts of others, constantly analyzing how your results or life compares to another, but every time you do this you are taking more attention away from the FACT that your life is only lived by you and is only yours to live. If you get a 90 on a test, it doesn’t matter if your classmate gets a 50 or 100. You did how you did. 

So, even when it gets hard, really hard, to get your mind off of thinking about how the rest of the world did, try and remind yourself that really and truly, no good comes out of it- there is no benefit of knowing how the rest of the world did. There is, however, benefit in knowing how you did. You know your flaws, your strengths, you know that if you change the way you approach things, you can change how you perform. 

Sure, at times competition is a good thing. Learning of a brilliant classmate or playing against a top-tier athlete can push you to your potential, but who allows yourself to use that competition to drive you? Not your competition, it’s you. Something in you decides to use this “threat” as fuel to push yourself. 

The skills that you develop, that’s you. The passion you develop, that’s within you. The desire to beat your last record, that’s all 100% you. 

The best advice I’ve gotten, particularly in regards to navigating my way through my career, is to “run my own race.” It seems easy, it seems clear, but getting rid of the habit of comparison is more difficult than we think. But with the reminder that only your actions, your performances, your thoughts impact you, it seems almost silly, nonsensical to focus your attention elsewhere.

When you get scared and your mind starts creating a venn diagram with everyone around you, drown the noise of your racing head out and remember that it’s your life; it’s all about you.