"Never compare your insides to everyone else's outsides."
— Anne Lamott
I wrote about perfectionism earlier, and I realize that the perfectionism phenomenon seems to be a direct result of comparisons. We compare ourselves to others without knowing anything of depth about their lives. We want their car, their boyfriend, their dog, their jeans, their salary. And suddenly it's the me vs you vs me debacle.
Me vs You : you are competing with a total stranger - determining who's life is more idyllic, more trendy, more exciting.
You vs Me : you assume that if given the chance the other person would look at your life and determine that they get to check the "super sick-nasty cool life" box and you don't.
What I've realized : you miss out on how phenomenal your life is by focusing on how fantastic you think someone else's might be.
We could be so happy and thankful for our lives if there weren't other humans walking around with their cool selves and their cool stuff out in plain view.
I'm going to work on looking, admiring and moving on. Maybe we all would benefit from such an approach.
This is so true - everyone else always seems to have it all together until you get close enough to them to notice that they have their own flaws just like we do. I think it's easier to deal with comparing our lives to others when we take the time to really appreciate the things we love about our lives. Then we can celebrate other's awesome lives right along with our own.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Anne Lamott is kind of our guru, huh? I love the quotes of hers you've been sharing lately.
Anne Lamott is a substitute bible for me. And her quotes are easier to memorize than Jesus'.
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