There's no world in which you compare yourself with someone else in which you win.
This is Part 4 of Kuku’s Bold and Audacious Playbook series where I teach you how to become not only confident but so bold to chase your dreams that your fears hate to see you coming. (Gosh, that was such a mouthful)
There are two ways we have of comparing ourselves to others. Either we compare Up, or we compare DOWN. What does that mean?
When we compare DOWN, we are holding ourselves up against people who aren't doing as well. That gives us a false sense of superiority and could hinder our desire to keep improving.
On the other hand, when we compare UP, we find someone else who is doing much better than us in a certain area, start a phantom competition with them and when we come up short, we feel bad about ourselves.
Now the problem with this is that we cannot win because when we wish to compare UP we inevitably pick people who are doing better than us. So of course they win.
The playing field was never fair from the start. That's the point of comparing up. They are better than you in the area in question. So it's only normal that when you compare, they win. It’s just a self-defeating cycle. Because if we are being honest with ourselves, the goal of comparing up is never to win, but to feel bad.
I lie?
I remember the year I met my friends in OAU here. Back home I had been somewhat of a writing badass. Nobody else was really interested in writing so I suppose it was easy to be seen as such. I had never gotten any training except the one that came from the compulsive desire I'd had since I was a lirru shide to write down my thoughts.
But I was pretty okay with my writing.
I did lots of prose but sometimes dabbled in poetry and spokenwords but I'd never felt inferior about my ability to put words on paper. Afterall, I had things to say and as long as I said them and people felt the pull to read till the end, I'd accomplished the goal innit?
Then I met Joey the incredible kpoet. One moment of silence for Kuku the poet please. I sha chested it pe i kuku never considered myself a poet anyway. Because this woman writes like you should be reading her inside a world class anthology somewhere and bro I could NEVER!
And then I met Vicky. This one was very much a prose writer like me. For me to describe what reading Vicky is like for me everytime, I'll have to paint a ridiculous picture for you. I just started watching Naruto for the first time recently so that is what comes to mind.
Anyone who has seen it knows that Naruto is fond of running headfirst into battle situations before he fully understands the enemy’s strength and then when they give him a sound thrashing, he gets this enormous look of intense chagrin (That word always makes me laugh).
Take your pick😂😂
But that comical look of shock is what I always get when I read from Vicky. She is like a veteran wordsmith; precise, deeply thoughtful, snarky and has this ability to take your heart and make it feel exactly what she wants you to feel with her words. Within the same period, I met Marcel, another genius of a poet.
You can imagine how much of a blow that would be to anyone, even The Kuku herself. It's bad enough to met ONE great writer. But THREE around the same time? It was either give up writing entirely or nearly kill myself trying to catch up. I did some drastic and foolish kini which I will not be sharing here just now. Thank you.
Point is, it took me a minute to regain my senses and realize that there really is no competition going on.
And that's what Comparison does. It puts you in a competition that is only in your head. There are many reasons why comparison is stupid, some of which include:
I’m not writing to impress anyone. I write to pass my message across to as many as would read. They write for their own reasons.
My mind works differently and I have a different soul to theirs so even if we were writing in the same genre, on the same topic, we could never write the same way because again, writing is an expression of what's inside.
And when it comes to quality, if their writing is more advanced than mine whether from natural talent or better training, the solution would not be to give up and feel inferior. The wise thing to do would either be to use them as inspiration to get training, practice more and stop being a bloody perpetual beginner or really just face my work.
What I learned in the end is that your position in relation to others does not invalidate the value of what you are trying to build. What you've already built so far. As long as you’re faithfully giving your pursuit what it takes (Notice I din say your best. We will talk more about the difference in another GM) you are doing perfectly.
There's no need for comparison. Take your edge and sharpen it. Take your purpose and pursue it. And if there’s a place for looking at other people. It is for learning from and being inspired by them. You could never be them even if you tried for tati yias and conversely, they could NEVER be you either.
Now that you know this,
Congratulations.
Now get back to living.
I recently joined a community of writers and all I could say was DAMN!
Every prompt was interpreted uniquely and differently and told so perfectly well that I felt smaller than them.
But then again, I realised that we're all here telling our stories and if I wrote like them, what would be unique about me?
On Comparison and what it does
I feel like while it seems a lot of people tend to paint comparison in a negative light and bias, comparison in itself is nothing but a tool and like all tools when one doesn't understand the tool it will definitely be misused.
but in certain context comparison is actually a good thing/tool because it allows one to see just how far the distance between your current postion and your destination(clarity of distance)....this can serve as a reminder of the journey needed and also serve to measure your efforts and how to either redouble or reaffirm your actions(Acting as a Benchmark for growth and motivation)....also comparison helps your identify your own unique strength and highlights your weakness too, it does this when you compare and then self reflect on why your own journey seems to be this way and through this you'd understand more about yourself(self awreness) just like Kuku did when she met the other 3 badass writers 😹
So if one uses Comparison as a reference and not as rivals then comparison is very important.