Living On Purpose

Comparing yourself to others gets to be a slippery slope for your own morale. My painting teacher complemented my first painting, though I really didn’t like how it turned out because I was comparing myself to accomplished painters like him. He said once I practice a little and get the right type of paper and brushes, I’d “dazzle” everybody with portraits, to which another student said, “just great, so we can all hang our heads in shame.” I countered, “That’s not what it’s all about!” She insisted, “yes, it is.” She compared her talents to my talents and ended up feeling badly.

She revealed her own self-manufactured world of feelings of inadequacy right there. During my childhood, I learned how to dim my own light because of comments like hers. I got negative feedback on my flexibility, intelligence, creativity, dancing, and I ended up quitting many things I was good at with this rationale: “I don’t want to make others feel bad, so I’ll stop doing what I do naturally.” According to Gay Hendricks, that attitude is adopted by most of us during our childhood, as we test our behavior on others to see their reaction. It seems like my entire childhood and adolescence centered around me reacting to what others thought of me. They provided feedback, I reacted with either withdrawal or defiance. This is a normal pattern.

If we continue to dull our own talents due to fear of negative feedback well into our adulthood, however, our spirit suffers and we may or may not feel regret. Be sure not to blame others when you look at your life after dimming your own light!

And likewise if we continue to compare ourselves to others, creating feelings of inadequacy well into our adulthood, we are setting our own trap and stunting our own progress with the cyclical nature of self criticism.

Beliefs of inadequacy can be eliminated by using Morty Lefkoe’s Who Am I Really Process. I have not gone through his entire program, but go ahead and read the blog in the link above and you’ll find a free trial of his belief eliminating process. After working with his clients, he has found that replacing a negative belief with its corresponding positive belief does not always work. Find out why at his blog.

How a person expresses their ego has a lot to do with what kind of feedback they’re getting from others. Negative feedback could result from someone  showing off too much and being too eager to tell others about how great one is. Whether you’re getting negative feedback because you are gifted and others feel self-conscious around you or because you’re egocentric and you drive others away,  Big Mind process can help isolate and pinpoint your own motivations. From the web site linked above, “Big Mind Big Heart is not someone else’s interpretation of who you should be and how you should live but rather a way you can come to your own deep understandings, and directly experience your life, your relationships and the world at large in a new and rich way.” I have attended a Big Mind event and I can attest that if you work through it with a facilitator, you’ll see benefits.

Comparing a short person to a tall person or an accountant to an artist is hardly fruitful. Compare yourself to you at an earlier time to celebrate your progress. See how far you’ve come?

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