The Buddha Mind And The Curse Of Comparison
“Comparison is the thief of joy.” – Theodore Roosevelt.
It is rightly said that if you wish to be unhappy in your life, compare your life with that of the others around you, especially those who are much more successful than you. You will find a sense of dissatisfaction in your life and feel anxious about getting to “somewhere” where you will be eternally happy. We have all been through this experience and have lived the pain of experiencing this state. In this post, I contemplate the idea of “The Buddha Mind” and analyze it from the lens of detachment and indifference towards the world. Here is a set of tactics that the enlightened mind can strive to adopt to overcome the urge of comparison.
I) Happiness and peace of mind are constant work
I used to believe that you can attain sustained peace and happiness by understanding the root cause of unhappiness. The demons in our minds are always trying to find the opening of sadness. Happiness is a skill, and we need to exercise it consciously every day. The skill is similar to body-building. Those who work out regularly and exercise their muscles tend to have healthier bodies.
II) Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind
We live in a world where we project lives on social media. The trouble with Social Media tends to be that we get biased in our opinions about others. Social Media tends to glorify the outliers and suppress the average. Let’s unpack this. If you’ve been on Instagram, you would know this. People usually project a happy-go-lucky image of themselves on Social Media. Unfortunately, reality tends to be far from that. Most of us live our lives through pain and suffering. It gets hard for us to be vulnerable on Social Media owing to the judgments of others. My tactic is plain and simple. I unfollow friends on social media. If you are out of sight, you will remain out of mind. My rationale is as follows: If you get to know about the success of someone ONLY through social media, maybe they don't matter in your life as much. While this may not be an all-encompassing strategy, it does help you reduce the chatter on Social Media and help you focus on only the lives of those whom you value in your life.?
III) Life is not a rat-race
It is an age-old adage that life is not a rat race, and yet we live it like one. We believe that we are born into the world and need to outrun others: money, status, success, social and political influence. This creates significant pressure, given that the outcomes across industries and professions are not uniform. So, a researcher may take multiple decades before breaking into a specific area, while an entrepreneur may be able to create immense impact within a span of a few years. While it is good to compete, it is not beneficial to run the same race. We are unique, born with different abilities, have different genetic setups, and come up with different visions in the world. Run your race. Better still, live your race, and you shall be more fulfilled.?
IV) The Magic Of Compounding
The great Albert Einstein once said, “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it earns it; he who doesn't pays it.” Success compounds as well. The precursor to successful outcomes tends to be a significant investment into an idea. The investments may be physical, emotional, capital, or social. Ideas that start slow grow fast once they find the right builders and adopters. They spread like fire. Furthermore, a slow start can lead to stable, massive wins. Quick successes tend to be unstable, and the wins wither away as soon as they come in.
V) Stand On The Shoulders Of The Giants
Read books. Read more of them. Books (especially autobiographies) are windows into the past. They broaden your perspective. The stories can be unique windows into the lives of those who struggled through several decades of pain and suffering to get to success. I love the idea of thinking of books as an opportunity to talk to the most intelligent writers thought leaders of the past — many of whom are not alive anymore. It is a privilege and honor to engage in a discourse with such great minds. They tend to have a clear and philosophical view of the world. Their writings contain many of the philosophies distilled through years of experience. Some of my favorite books are those biographies and autobiographies of scientists and inventors. These include Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, The Wright Brothers, Sir James Dyson, Jennifer Doudna — to name a few. I have added a list of my favorite reads towards the end of this blog post.
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VI) We Are But Specks In The Sands Of Time
I believe that meditating on our mortality is a powerful tool. We are specks in the sands of time. The universe is (nearly) 14 billion years old. Human life is a maximum of 100 years. Consider the universe's age mapped to a single year to understand this magnitude. If the Big Bang (the event that marks the universe's origin) were at second 0, our lifespan would account for just 3 seconds in the year. Those three seconds describe your entire life — i.e., your birth as a child, your adolescence, your marriage, the birth of your child, the death of your near and dear ones, your adulthood, old age, and death. Three seconds is all that you got. Would you want to spend those three seconds on the things that you care about the most or on comparing yourself with others and burning in flames of jealously? I would instead focus this time on productive enterprises and building a better world.
VII) The End Goal Is Peace
I genuinely believe that one of the fundamental goals of life is to live it happily and calmly. We believe that money will solve all our problems and that fame and status will bring joys that we always aspire to. Unfortunately, it turns out to be not entirely true. Money can solve money problems. Yes, that is a significant chunk of problems that we face in our lives. Yet, it cannot solve ALL the problems. It cannot bring you deep, social connections. It will not bring you social good. We are communal beings (most of us are certainly). We need to be able to associate with others get the trust and love of others. We need to spend time without the pressures of ever-increasing professional goals that keep us awake at night. We need to tend to our spouse, children, parents, siblings, and closest friends. Amongst all that, money starts to wane out and lose its importance and charm. Go after money, but just not money alone.?
VIII) Compare Up, Compare Down
Often, I get into the rut of comparing myself “up.” What do we mean by comparing up? Let us plot the whole of humanity on a graph. Let the Y-Axis represent the percentile rank (by Human Development Index as the metric) of each human on earth. Let the X-Axis represent a unique identifier for each human being. If you are reading this article, I am sure you are somewhere in the metric's top 10 percent of Earth. It means that you are better than 90% of the world, i.e., better than 7 Billion People. This is quite an astounding figure. Yet, we live our lives as being victims of a conspiracy. We believe that the success of those around us is inhibiting our success. It is essential to realize that the world has a lot of suffering. For every successful person out in the world, hundreds are still struggling. What we may consider a failure for ourselves is success for millions of humans living in abject poverty, war-zone countries, under dictatorship, and in areas going through mass genocide. If we think about their pain and suffering, we will be in a much better position to appreciate the wealth of peace and happiness we have in our lives.
IX) Life Is Not A Zero-Sum Game
The human brain is wired to see the potential suffering of the self but not of others. The Darwinian evolution trained us to avoid paths that endanger our existence. Therefore, we tend to suffer more in our imagination than in reality. We tend to see life as a zero-sum game. The fight for resources tends to become a fight for survival. Our thought process leads us to believe that we need to be at the top of the social hierarchy otherwise our lives are worthless or much worse endangered. This is the default mindset that we are programmed with. While this would have made sense for the neolithic hunter-gatherer who was always starved for resources and on the edge of survival, it doesn’t hold water today (for most of the world). We have advanced significantly in terms of economic development over the last 2000 years. Even more so, the development rate has been growing exponentially. Here is a report of the World GDP growth rate over the last 2000 years by Jan Erik Horgen, a leading finance specialist, and consultant.??His report states: “While it took us roughly 1870 years from year 1 to increase global GDP by 10 times, it only took 200 years, from 1820 until today, to increase global GDP from the 1820-level by 100 times! Simply put, the economy is growing 10 times faster in just the last 200 years than it did in all the 1800 years before.” [Link to the post by Jan Erik Horgen that outlines his work]
X) Hard Work Is Done In Silence, Noise Is For Froth
Last but not least we should remember that most of the hard work is done in silence. Often people who make the most noise tend to have the least amount of substance in their work, albeit in certain professions (such as Marketers and Influencers).?
My Favorite Biographies/Auto-biographies