The Elder Cure for Comparison-itis

There are so many ways we get in our own way

One of those ways, maybe the most obvious, is comparing ourselves to what everyone else is doing. You can’t escape the advertising and social media and constant seduction and desire…And what does that do for your quality of life?

I recently received some great advice from an elder on how to deal with comparing yourself to others..
I recently spoke to Linda Jones, who is 81…her father was Chuck Jones who was one of the creators of Bugs Bunny and many of the Looney Tunes.

Having such a successful father, there was a time when Linda was not feeling like she was keep up…

Linda recalled, “I think I wrote to him and told him how ashamed of myself I was. And he wrote back to me, “‘Linda, get off my fucking mountain’ He said ‘We each have our mountain to climb. I’m climbing mine and you climb yours.’ It was a turning point in my life. He was right. He went on to say that i had my own challenges and adventures and wasting time competing with him was ridiculous. And I did snap out of it!”

“Get off my fucking mountain.” I LOVE THAT!

How often we look around and compare our progress and our lives to others?

I have days where i get down on myself…days where I feel like I’m not doing enough for my kids with my kids…days where i’m getting held under by the giant wave made up of health career marriage parenting…

this morning, i was reading one of my favorite books called Einstein and The Rabbi. It’s written by my rabbi in LA, Naomi Levy. She shares an interview with a guy named Dr. Alan Rabinowitz…one of the world’s most respected zoologists.

He said…while he was a kid he had a terrible stutter and the school system put him in special classes that other kids called retarded classes. So you can imagine how much that bothered him. So he just stopped talking people. He was full of rage and hurt.

But he could talk in full fluent sentences to his pets. He’d take his turtle chameleon hamster and snake into his closet and talk to them. He realized they had no voice either. Animals have feelings and thoughts and yet people treat them as if they have none. So he said “if I ever got my voice back I would use it for the animals!”

He delivered on his promise. He established the world’s first jaguar preserve in Belize and secured the world’s largest tiger reserve in Bumra. And he created a jaguar corridor a giant habitat where jaguars can move freely and it stretches all the way from mex to ARg…

Here you had this guy whose stutter led him down his path…

As my rabbi says, “Your obstacle, that which holds you back, may be the key to your souls mission.”

I invite you right now step back and look at what you feel you are lacking in comparison to the rest of the world. Look at your particular challenge or obstacle……and as you climb your mountain……create a little space to recognize the connection of your challenges to your journey

what is the great challenge you are facing right now?

In what way have you been comparing yourself to others?

How might that be teaching you something, how might that challenge be shaping you…how might it be unlocking some power within you?

if you don’t know…just sit with it…be open to it…

Rabbi levy has a mantra…which we’ll make our centering thought

It’s the word HUSA…

That word means compassion for something thats flawed. It means absence of judgement. She says its the way God loves us even though we’re imperfect. even though we’ve messed things up. It gives you the space to see your challenges differently…to see how they are unlocking you