Comparison

Message/Experiment of the Week:

Do you compare your worst with the best of others, or vice versa? Great manipulators (politicians, dictators, and con artists) love to do this. Dictators stay in power by constantly highlighting their perceived strengths and showcasing their opponents’ weaknesses (real or not). Comparison with others is often based on false information, and it is rare to find a comparison that is accurate. It is even rarer to find a comparison that is helpful when comparing with other people.

However, one area where comparison can be helpful is when comparing where we are now with where we were in the past. For many of us, where we are now may have been unimaginable ten years ago or even a few years ago. Comparing your past with your present is a great way to appreciate the progress you have made.

For an experiment this week catch yourself when you are comparing yourself with other people and compare where you are at now with where you were at ten years ago. Then write about the experience in your journal.

Quotes of the Week:

“Comparison is the thief of joy.” - Attributed to Theodore Roosevelt

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.” -Theodore Roosevelt, Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

Video of the Week:

Brene Brown | The Most Eye-Opening 14 Minutes of Your Life

Song of the Week:

Lose Yourself by Eminem - Clean Cover by Sparsh Shah

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