Comparisons

Suzanne Mercier - Tuesday, March 09, 2010

I was reading through the e-book "What matters now" released by Seth Godin and contributed to by many authors.  Hugh MacLeod of Gaping Void wrote his page on "Meaning" and instead of a short article, he presented a series of seemingly random thoughts that all related to meaning.  Two of his almost 40 random thoughts really resonated. 

The first one was "Never compare your inside with somebody else's outside".  The simple wisdom in this offering is fabulous.  So many of us have totally distorted views of who we are and what we are capable of.  We compare that distorted self-view to the mask that another person puts on to interact with the world.  We have no idea what's actually going on inside someone else's head - all we can do is look at the behaviour and draw our conclusions.  Many people we encounter on a daily basis exemplify "fake it til you make it".  If we compare ourselves to the very carefully constructed or at least controlled persona, we're comparing our distorted self-view to something that isn't necessarily real.  All that does is cause us to feel small.

I'll cover the second aha tomorrow.

What do you think.  I'd love to hear.
All the very best
Suzanne