More about comparing yourself

Stephanie visited the offices today - it was nice to have someone from the outside world visit, now that the release of the new site is so close, and I'm working almost around the clock with Rydeman. Steph is really nice, reminds be a bit of my godmother, actually, but Steph's laugh is a lot less scary!

Not much has happened in my life lately, other than work, work, work and insane work. 13 hours today. Stephanies arrival, and her sudden "takeover" of Fredriks life has made me think a bit more about comparing yourself to others. When someone else enters the life of someone close to you, it's quite easy to become a bit jealous and threatened - after all, it always sucks when you realize that you are, in fact, not the center of the universe, and not even in the universe of your friends and family. And it's okay to be a little jealous - it's a healthy emotion to have, it means that you love your close ones and that your brain is functioning normally. Jealousy towards another person is, to me, equal to the fear of losing someone (in some way).

Like any kind of fear, it's there to keep you on your toes. In the case of my business, my fear of tax collectors and competitors is there there to keep me from slacking off and becoming too comfortable. In the case of relationships, it's there to keep you from taking the your loved ones for granted. Fear of heights is there to reduce the chances that you fall of a cliff and go splat.

However, all kinds of fear go bad when you give it too much legitimacy. Fear is an indicator of when you should be extra careful, extra loving or work a little extra - but if you let if influence your behaviour more than that, you are giving it way too much credit. If you fret too much about whether you are a more interesting friend than someone else, or whether your bookkeeping is messier or tidier than your competitors, you have a problem.

As I've touched on yesterday, comparing yourself with others is meaningless. As their preconditions and position are so vastly different from yours, a comparison is completely pointless. Unless you have a twin sister/brother, just refrain from it - just ask yourself - am I a better person than I was last week, and leave it at that. You won't become a better person faster just because you compare yourselves with people who seem a lot more impressive than yourself.