Dear Meli,
My best friend is a writer. She has had a really successful career. She doesn’t do anything to provoke this, but I often find myself comparing myself to her. I haven’t focused on my career at all in this lifetime. I have a steady job, but it’s mostly to pay the bills. I’m not ambitious. I love my life, but sometimes I feel like I haven’t done enough. Any thoughts about this?
Anything But Ambitious
Dear Anything But Ambitious,
Thank you for writing. Unfortunately, I am very familiar with the pitfall (or, dare I call it a “learning opportunity?”) of comparison and inner competition. Excruciating. And always tempting.
The problem with comparing ourselves with others is that we do so in a non-totalitarian manner. What I mean is, when we compare, we tend to imagine someone else is better, or not as good as us, in one area. Rarely do we look at the entire lifetime and compare their lives with ours.
I believe we have freedom of choice and will. But I also believe that we have primary areas of learning in our lifetime. For some of us, that might be learning by loving and serving others. For others, it may be the growth that comes from focusing on a career.
But there is no such thing as one life that is more or less valuable, or important, than another. Our media can tempt us into thinking we’re “less than” if we don’t have certain things, or look a certain way. But that’s all made up. It is not “true!”
If we compare ourselves to others, we’ll always be losing or winning. Beating someone else at this game, however, is not a winning proposition. Because pretending we’re better than someone else not only feels bad (because believing a lie always feels bad!), it also sets us up for continuing to live in the illusion that we can know how well we’re doing by looking outside ourselves. We will always lose at this game!
To complicate matters, your best and most right choices (for your greatest alignment with your own soul) will change during the course of your life. What was the perfect choice for you in your 20’s is usually not going to be the best choice for you when you’re in your 50’s.
Every single life is evolving all the time. It’s simply way too complicated to think we can take any kind of measure of ourselves by looking outside. Unless! Unless you’re looking “outside” to a younger version of yourself. Or you’re looking ahead to who you intend to become in the future. Those are not bad places to focus on to see how you’re doing at any given moment.
We’re all growing in our own perfect ways. Some of us do so in ways that are more outwardly evident. Others are learning to surrender, or other similar paths that don’t have big external cues.
Here’s a practice to try when you catch yourself playing the comparison game: Notice when you’re feeling like someone is better than you. Then ask yourself, “What is it they’re exhibiting that I want to exhibit?” And then “How might I best apply that to my own life?”
Sometimes there is something there for us. Sometimes not. It depends on which part of your inner psyche is doing the comparison.
In general, paying careful attention to the inner workings of your mind, including when and with whom you’re comparing yourself, can be helpful. Awareness is key. By observing your thinking, you can see what it is you’re saying to yourself about yourself as you compare. Then, you can learn to gently release the grip of comparison thinking. You can remind yourself that we are all walking our own paths, with our own stories and learning. Comparing lifetimes is far too complicated for you and I to successfully manage!
Your Presence here, on earth, in your life, with your loved ones, is enough. You are enough. Because you are here, doing your best. Persevering. Learning and growing. Loving. And you are Divine Love Itself. As is your friend! Allow that reality to cleanse the mind of the temptation to compare.
Freedom and joy and peace await you there.
Blessings and Love to you in all you do!
In Joy,
Melissa
What is your experience with ambition and comparison? Share your comments below!
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I’m not sure whether my comment relates to your advice, but it is on my mind presently, so here goes: lately I have been obsessively working on a piece of music, it is a song that is personal to me, but not in any way a “standard song“. And probably only a few other people would really appreciate it. And yet, I get a great amount of satisfaction, perfecting this song, and I also want to connect with those few people in the world who would really appreciate it. And this is greatly frustrating, because every time I try to promote my music, I seem to come off in some egotistical way, but I’m not writing music because of my ego. I’m writing music because it just comes to me in a spiritual way. How do I communicate this to people in general?
Hi Ernie! It’s really lovely and fun to hear form you!
I can certainly relate to creating music as a spiritual/devotional act! That’s my experience as well. In fact, in the Universe’s divine perfection, Z and I were just talking about this this morning, on our walk! How we really would love more people to connect to our work, get to hear and see it. But that also we’re not creating it for that at all!
Promotion is an odd and complicated one, especially when promoting one’s own work! I can’t say that I have much “wisdom” to share on this. I think it all really depends on where the promo is going (platform etc) and how it’s presented, too.
But you did communicate to me perfectly well in this note. So you could start there, I think. And also generously share your work so that people can listen at will and share when they love it and think of another person who might too. I don’t know if that works for your situation. But that’s what we do.
And, of course, the very most important thing is that you know who you are! You know why you create, and “from where” your creations come. So I would lean heavily into this knowing as you share with others about it. Trust your own joy of creating. And you knowing your own heart. Allowing that to be enough is challenging, but the best (and only fully complete) solution, I think.
Blessings to you in and through the process, my friend! And thank you again for connecting here!