Comparison: circular rumination vs expansive reflection

The act of comparing ourselves to others purports as a way to motivate us to achieve our best selves; to instill a healthy competition in the comparing party that can bring a higher level of actualization.?

Yet, how easy is it to get swept away when comparing into feeling bad about ourselves when we see the accomplishments of others on LinkedIn? Or to feel a pang of guilt when we feel we’re not living our lives to the fullest when we see the incredible fun friends are posting about on social media? Or to be in conversation with acquaintances - or even overhear the conversations of strangers, and to suddenly begin to shrink inward mentally as we realize how people around us all seem to have such fascinating, eclectic, and inspiring stories to tell?

In the path to self-actualization, there is actually a way in which a type of observation of the experiences of others can serve us in a healthy, sensible, and productive manner. It all depends on whether or not you are able to bring a conscious awareness into your observation of others.

Conscious awareness refers to a state of mind where your consciousness is not distracted by the past or future, and is able to focus on the present moment; that is, a state of mind that accepts yourself for who you currently are in the here and now, and is not attempting to escape who you are in the here and now by imagining yourself as someone or something else that you used to be in the past or could be in the future.

When your mind is operating with conscious awareness, your comparisons will not actually be the act of comparison, but rather acts of observation. Observing the experiences of others with a conscious awareness can lead to expansive reflection, which is the act of being appreciative of, learning from, inspired by, and informed by what we see in the lives of others. Expansive reflection does not draw us into tighter, loops of reductive and negative thought, but rather opens our minds to wider, tangents of positive and additive thought, where we explore the applications in our own lives, using the observations of the lives of others.

When your mind is operating with a low or no level of conscious awareness, your observations will be drawn to acts of comparison. Comparisons, when performed at a low realm of consciousness where subjectivity reigns supreme, are prone to generating circular rumination, which is the act of becoming upset with, jealous or envious of, afraid of, or dismissive of what we see in the lives of others. Circular rumination is a very powerful mental force that can draw us into tighter, repetitive loops of negative thought, wherein we continually injure our own feelings of self worth by focusing on the areas we see in others that we are lacking or unsure of in ourselves.?

Circular rumination does not usually lead us to higher self-actualization because the mental loop involves continually re-injuring our self-esteem, which drains us of the energy we could otherwise actually put effort into activities that help us self-actualize. For instance, circular rumination may cause us to continue scrolling Instagram and comparing ourselves to more people, whereas expansive reflection may cause us to stop scrolling and instead sign up for a new class or go try a new hobby.

When looking deeper into the act of comparing ourselves to others, we can identify two fatal issues from the outset that render the whole process flawed.

First - our DNA is not the same as anyone else’s (this is true even for identical twins), nor are our upbringings/nurturings, nor our decisions made along the way, or the paths through which we have traveled in life. No matter how many similarities we may think up to file one another into comparable categories, the fact remains that every person is inherently different, which means that there is no possible way we can replicate the lives of anyone else. The word “compare” means to measure the difference between; so if there is inherently a difference, then the act of comparison with the intent to aid one in self-actualizing is, from the start, a flawed task.

Second - the pinholes we see tend not to be the truth of the lives of others, particularly via the media, but rather only curated sound bite, primarily of success. For instance, beyond the pinhole news headline of a successful startup founder whose company grew quickly and raised millions of dollars is likely a growing amount of stress weighing on that founder every day and with each new decision they face. Beyond the pinhole of an influencer post which receives thousands of likes is likely a suffocating amount of pressure to create and constantly maintain the perfect body, status, and personality for the entertainment of others. Beyond the pinhole productions of the actor, musician, writer, or artist who is lauded for their great talent is likely a pervasive and gnawing fear that the creative spirit may disappear suddenly, and with it their success.

There are endless examples of realities that seem perfect from the pinhole views that we can see and feel drawn to compare ourselves to, but do little to illuminate the reality of the full lives of such people. We hardly ever think about reality and the vicissitudes that lurk beyond the pinhole we can see of other peoples’ lives when we do our comparisons; we simply take the rosy picture we each paint for one another as reality, which gives us an unfair comparison of ourselves to others, and we judge ourselves for having struggles, and not having success.

Observation, by contrast, can help us to discover the uplifting from what we can see, without locking us into prejudiced definitions of what we should or shouldn’t be. We can be inspired, not envious of the startup founder whose fundraising success we observe, and try to learn how they did it out of curiosity or to help us in our own path of entrepreneurship. We can be appreciative of, not jealous of the window into the beauty of islands we have yet to visit that an influencer shares with us, and start a savings plan to make it there ourselves one day. We can learn from how artists pursued their passions from their talks and autobiographies, and be galvanized to discover our own passions, rather than made to feel hopeless and lethargic at the so-far lack of passion in our own lives.

Pursue your own path of self-actualization by bringing a conscious awareness to your observations of others. The first step to doing so is to learn to accept where you are in your own life, so that you can be free to observe the lives of others from the present moment, with a mind primed for the inspiration of expansive reflection, rather than liable to succumb to the temptation of circular rumination.