Mirror Magazine

If you can’t stop comparing yourself and your life to other people, and if you’re fanatical in wanting to be the best of everything and everyone, you have a monkey mind. How so, you ask? Smriti Daniel has more

It’s a warm summer day, and Maneka is doing Priyani's hair. They’re just getting comfortable, when along comes Ameena, a mutual acquaintance. Now Ameena is as close as you can get to perfect – she has a great body, beautiful, well-behaved children and primo social status. Watching her walk by, Priyani inspects and admires Ameena’s beauty, then relaxes into the pleasant sensation of Maneka’s hands arranging her hair.

Maneka, by contrast, nearly explodes with jealousy and competitiveness. Her teeth and stomach clench, as she watches Ameena flaunt her long limbs, thick hair, and – most enviable of all – her hugely swollen, rose-red rump. Yes, Maneka, Priyani and Ameena are baboons, social primates, who share around 95 percent of our DNA (and a lot of our psychological traits). Studies have shown that some baboons (like Maneka) are extremely competitive, while others (like Priyani) are more laid-back and consequently less worried about measuring up. The more rank-conscious baboons suffer higher blood pressure – a stress-related condition that’s common amongst the more driven, competitive Homo Sapiens.

Monkey mind
No wonder, people who think like this – obsessed with comparisons and relative ‘rankings’ – are sometimes said to be afflicted with the ‘monkey mind.’ Humour aside, constantly measuring ourselves against others sours and shortens our lives, robbing us of the very things we think it will bring: prosperity, love, inner peace, and most crucially – the knowledge that we're good enough. Thankfully, we’re one up on the baboons… You see, we can spot the moment when we lapse into monkey mind, and we can think our way out of it.

It must be admitted at this point that comparing, measuring and contrasting are all valuable and necessary skills – and not just during high school examinations. These abilities help us make choices, and select our priorities. The matter only becomes problematic, when comparing is the only way we know of evaluating anything. Every party, every meeting, every friendship is reduced to a stressful contest. We begin making minute comparisons about everything from who has the bigger office to the smaller waist. You end up asking yourself – will I ‘win’ in this situation, or will someone else turn out to be prettier, smarter, richer, thinner… in a word, better, that I?

In the famous work Desiderata, Max Erhman says, “If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.” Now ain’t that the truth! On any given day, there will always be someone around, who is smarter, richer or more graceful than you are.

A waste of time
This way of thinking is simply a waste of time. In fact, if you really consider it, the concept of all round ‘better’ is rather meaningless. Don’t know what I mean? Try this: Get out there and find me (excuse my grammar) the bestest leaf ever. Do you find the very idea ridiculous? I do. What does one mean by the bestest leaf? For doing what? For decoration? For cooking? For medicine? It quickly becomes obvious that a leaf that fits the bill for one purpose might be entirely useless for another.

Constant comparison is really something you and I can live without – it’s so entirely pointless. You just gotta face it. Even if you somehow managed to be best in the world at one thing, you'll be the worst in the world at something else. It’s a given that sumo wrestlers make bad prima ballerinas; Tarzan may be the king of the jungle, but he’s just plain weird when in New York; Bill Gates would make a rotten plumber, and so on and so forth, until the end of time. If you’re into comparing yourself, and hate being less than the best at anything and everything, you’ll always lose. Always. That endless quest for acceptance, security, recognition, love and self-esteem will invariably end in self-rejection, failure, insecurity, and self-hatred.

The diagnosis
The good news is that you can learn to watch for monkey mind to appear, to notice when it starts polluting your life and happiness. Though it may sneak up on you unexpectedly, you'll be able to spot some symptoms. Here are a few telltale diagnostics:

The treatment
When we compare ourselves to others, we give away a small part of our uniqueness, taking away from our own gifts and talents. No other person has our unique qualities. No one else has ever gone through the exact same circumstances, or has had the precise physical characteristics or thoughts we have.

Try doing a few simple things your inner baboon would never even consider.

1. Celebrate failure
Sounds strange? Not really. Haven’t you personally enjoyed having someone telling you how they messed up royally, but lived to tell the tale? Looking at your ‘failures’ through humour-coloured glasses helps turn monkey mind off. You realise that what you are in, not what you have or have not achieved; instead it is how you choose to live. Don’t try to hide your mistakes. Instead, let shame go out the window. As you tell your stories with gusto, you’ll notice that the very confessions you thought would humiliate you, actually boost your confidence.

2. Your greatest asset is you!
When you catch yourself focusing too much on others, remember that your greatest challenge is to focus more on your own work. Remember to accept and value yourself and your unique contributions. Don’t let your inner critical voice take control. Forgive yourself, when you don’t accomplish all you had hoped for.

We all know that a healthy sense of self-worth comes from things such as being given positive attention, being praised, being listened to and being respected. It is always good to provide these things to others. However, we must remember that our lives at work will go so much better, if we take care to give the very same things to ourselves.

3. Compliment your rivals
When you're in comparing mode, the last thing you want to do is praise anyone else. That's just handing over the laurels, isn't it? Think of someone who has ‘beat’ you. Is there anything about this person you genuinely, even if grudgingly, admire? Then say it. Out loud.

4. The evaluation that counts
It is easy to think that if you had her eyes, his house, her job or his money, that you'd be truly happy. Your value as a person has little to do with what you look like or what you possess, and comparing yourself to someone else denies your own wonderful gifts and talents. Everyone has worth, but the source of that worth is individual. Learning to stop comparing yourself to others begins with accepting your worth, because your own acceptance is the most important.

In 1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion.”