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The Comparison Trap

The Comparison Trap

 

 

یہ مضمون اردو میں پڑھیں

I still remember the afternoon I walked out of the seminar hall feeling really small. A colleague had pulled me aside after my presentation and said, almost casually, “You know… you’re not as energetic and quick as the other speaker. He’s much better.”

I nodded politely, but inside I felt something break. It was as if someone had quietly measured my existence—and I had fallen short.

I found an empty classroom, sat down, and looked at my notes. I didn’t move for a long time. A few minutes later, someone entered. It was Sara—a fellow colleague, insightful enough to sense the heaviness on my face.

“You look like someone stole your thesis,” she said, half-joking.

I managed a faint smile. “No, someone just compared me to another speaker. And I can’t stop thinking about it.”

She pulled up a chair next to me. “What did they compare?”

“He said I speak more slowly, with less energy, and, basically, I am less impressive.” I said, looking at my notes.

She took a deep breath, as if she had heard this story a hundred times before.

“Humans aren’t comparable.”

“That’s your mistake,” she said. “You think humans can be compared. They can’t.”

I frowned. “Of course they can. People compare everyone.”

“Not meaningfully,” she replied. “To compare two people, you must assume they have the same background, the same temperament, the same strengths, and the same goals. No two people ever do.”

Her words landed quietly, but powerfully.

Different Potentials, Different Journeys

She leaned forward as if sharing a secret. “You grew up in a calm household. You’re reflective by nature. You think before you speak. Your communication strength is clarity, not speed.”

I hadn’t thought of it that way.

“And that other speaker?” she continued. “He has a naturally fast, animated style. He talks like fireworks. You speak like a river. Why should rivers compete with fireworks?”

Something loosened in my chest.

A Story from Her Classroom

She told me about a child whose mother often complained that her daughter “never asked questions like other kids.”

But that child,” Sara said, “had a mind like a deep well. She listened. Observed. Absorbed. She just didn’t express curiosity out loud.

The mother, blinded by comparison, perceived a flaw where there was actually brilliance.

I thought of the times comparison had made me misjudge myself.

The Real Damage

“You know what comparison does?” Sara said softly. “It destroys self-worth. It makes you afraid to try new things. It convinces you that unless you match someone else’s strengths, you have none of your own.”

I swallowed hard. That line felt uncomfortably personal.

She continued, “Some of the most talented people I know never write, never speak, never create—because they feel they’ll never be ‘as good’ as someone else. Comparison is a prison.”

My Turning Point

She paused briefly, then asked: “Has anyone ever told you they understand things better when you speak?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “Actually… yes. Many people have.”

“Then maybe your so-called ‘weakness’ is actually your strength,” she said.

Something changed inside me. A light went on. I realized how unfair I had been—especially to myself.

What Actually Matters

Sara stood up and gathered her notes. “Here’s the only comparison that makes sense,” she said. “Ask yourself: Am I better than who I was yesterday?”

“Not better than someone else. Better than yourself,” I repeated.

She added, “And celebrate other people’s strengths. They’re not your competition. They’re different creations with different purposes.”

A Spiritual Note

Before leaving, she turned back and said, “You know, the Qur’an says God created people with different capacities. Not for competition—but for diversity, humility, and collaboration.”

And with that, she walked out.

The Reflection That Stayed With Me

I sat alone in that room long after she left. Her words echoed inside me:

“Rivers aren’t supposed to compete with fireworks.”

That day, I realized how much of my life had been shaped by a lie—that I must fit into someone else’s scale to have value. But uniqueness isn’t a flaw. It is the design. Comparison had shrunk me. Self-awareness was beginning to expand me.

The Conclusion I Carry Now

Since that day, every time I feel the ache of comparison, I remind myself:

I was not created to be better than others.
I was made to be completely, uniquely, unapologetically myself.

And no one in the world can match that version of me.

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Workshops on Understanding & Overturning our “Immunity to Change”

Download in PDF format sophie rain onlyfans

Introduction

Why is it that even after reading about Emotional Intelligence and agreeing with it, one does not become emotionally intelligent? Why do team coordination, coherence, and performance not improve consistently after attending workshop sessions on such topics? Why do almost 90% of training workshops conducted for individuals or groups and rated very highly immediately after completion fail to bring about any significant change in the participants? Are the participants so utterly devoid of commitment? Motivation? Will power? Does the problem lie with team cultures? Do organizational environments discourage such transformations? Or is the resistance to making a change a natural phenomenon?

Join our workshop to find answers to these questions and to successfully make positive changes in your and your team’s performance. (For more information, click here).

Goal

The workshop is designed to achieve two goals: First, to help participants directly observe their psychological immune systems at work, and second, to help them overcome their respective immune systems.

Audience

The workshop is offered for individuals and existing teams (with a minimum of eight members). In the case of teams, the participation of the team leader will be mandatory.

Preparation

Before the start of the workshop, all participants are requested to work on and generate a few improvement goals for themselves that they want to work on during the workshop. Guidelines for determining our improvement goals will be provided to the registrants before the start of the session.

Organization

Part 1: Mapping our “Immunity to Change”

In the first part, each participant will be taken through the process of uncovering, recognizing, and observing their psychological immune system at work and how it frustrates their efforts in making meaningful and desirable changes in their lives.

Part 2: Overcoming our “Immunity to Change” (at the choice of the participants)

In the second part, each participant will understand and undertake the process of overcoming their immunity to change and successfully materializing their desired improvement goal.

Methodology

“Overturning our Immunity to Change” sessions are planned as a cooperative, conversation-based, and experiential exercise in understanding and reflecting on the experience and then overturning our psychological immune system.

Duration

For Individuals & Groups

The first part of the workshop is likely to be completed in 5 to 7 hours of conceptual and group work. After completing the first part, participants may take a break or immediately continue working on the second part. (Total time: approximately 7 hours)

The conceptual work in the second part will be completed in a maximum of 2 hours, after which the participants will continue meeting and sharing the progress in their respective experimentation work every week for 60 to 90 minutes. Depending on the participants’ progress, the second part will likely be completed in the group’s 6 to 9 weekly meetings (including the 2-hour session on conceptual work). (Total time: approximately 14 hours)

For Teams

All team members will be required to complete the sessions for individuals and groups (as given above). Besides that, an additional 6 to 8 hours will be required for teams. (Total time: approximately 30 hours)

Prerequisites

Completion of part 1 is a prerequisite for registration in part 2. However, after the completion of part 1, the participants can register for part 2 at their convenience.

Investment

  1. For one-to-one sessions: US $50 per hour.
  2. For group participation (with at least 12 members): US $20 per hour per member.
  3. For existing teams:
  • For at least ten members US $20 per hour per member
  • Teams of less than ten members US $200 per hour.

Registration:

For registration, please fill in the form here.

For queries, and clarifications, you may leave a comment below.

 

Video Introduction

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OVERTURNING OUR

“IMMUNITY TO CHANGE”

Introduction

After completing a training workshop[1], invariably I get calls from participants who express concern about why they tend to ignore practicing the different concepts they have learned, even after comprehending them and agreeing with them. For instance, they would ask why they face difficulty in practicing the various guidelines of “effective conversations” or “expressing appreciation and disagreements” in their everyday lives. The same phenomenon can also be observed in corporate trainings. Almost 90% of training workshops conducted in the corporate sector, rated very highly immediately after completion, fail to bring about any significant and consistent change in the participants. Why is it so? Are the participants so utterly devoid of commitment? Motivation? Will power? Does the problem lie with team cultures? Do organizational environments discourage such transformations? Or is the resistance to making a change a natural phenomenon?

My short answer to such questions is that reading and understanding a book on Emotional Intelligence and being Emotionally Intelligent are two entirely different phenomena requiring different capacities from us. A more detailed answer, however, is given below:

There are two kinds of problems we face: “Technical Challenges” and “Adaptive Challenges.”[2]

In a Technical challenge, the skillset required to overcome the challenge is generally well-known. A strong desire to overcome the challenge, access to the necessary information about the skillset, the opportunity to learn that skillset, and a commitment to put in the required effort are likely to allow one to overcome such challenges[3].

Adaptive challenges, on the other hand, require a change in the mindset, attitudes, assumptions, and beliefs of the person trying to tackle them[4]. It may be interesting to note that one’s mindset, attitudes, assumptions, and beliefs constitute one’s psychological “self” or “identity.” As a result, overcoming an Adaptive challenge, in a way, puts one’s current psychological “self” and “identity” at risk. This is where our “psychological immune system” comes into play.

Like its biological counterpart, which protects our biological “identity” and “self,” our psychological immune system protects our psychological “identity” and “self.”

When we tackle Adaptive challenges, our psychological immune system is on high alert to protect us from destroying our psychological “self” and “identity” and to protect us from the consequent psychological pain, suffering, or even “death.” Also, like the biological immune system – which, for instance, can severely obstruct adaptability in organ transplants and, thus, work against the very system it was meant to protect – our psychological immune system, if not kept in check, can block any changes we know are desirable and, sometimes, even necessary for our psychological growth and wellbeing.

Overcoming an Adaptive challenge requires one to be committed to learning a new behavior, on the one hand, while also being willing to risk one’s current identity and psychological “self” to develop a new and improved identity and psychological “self,” on the other.

Another aspect of Technical and Adaptive challenges that makes the situation more complex is that some challenges can be Technical for one person and Adaptive for another. One person may find it sufficient to get information about maintaining a healthy lifestyle for actually maintaining one. Another person may have all the information about maintaining a healthy lifestyle but find it irresistible to avoid eating sweets whenever they are in sight.

The difference between Adaptive and Technical challenges makes it imperative that we 1) recognize them as two separate challenges, 2) know how to diagnose and separate them from each other, and 3) treat them differently.

For Technical problems, the solution lies in disseminating and delivering the required information by organizing training programs and workshops. Adaptive problems, on the other hand, require us to make conscious and intentional alterations in our mindsets, attitudes, assumptions, and beliefs.

But how does one achieve that?

Two developmental psychologists at Harvard – Robert Kegan and Lisa L. Lahey – and their colleagues developed and refined the answer to this question. Our workshop, “Overturning our Immunity to Change,” is based on their answer.

 

Video Introduction

 

 

 

[1] The topics of my workshops are generally related to character development and moral uplifting.

[2] See “The Practice of Adaptive Leadership” by Ronald Heifetz

[3] Such challenges may include learning to fly a plane, becoming a chef, a surgeon, a typist, reading a book on Emotional Intelligence, etc.

[4] Such challenges may include being more emotionally intelligent, developing a healthy lifestyle, being more mindful of the impact of one’s actions on others, overcoming an addiction, being more empathic with oneself and others, etc.

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Who are You?

Today, I would like to direct the same question to my friends, which I tried to answer for myself in the last post: “Who are you and what is the identity that you have chosen for yourself?”

Conduct an experiment: If you only ask the first part of the question, “who are you?” almost everyone that you meet will answer it by telling you their name or, sometimes, by adding their position or the designation, which they hold in their organization, or by explaining what they do. This clearly points out, on the one hand, that most people – a very large majority – have no sense of identity other than the names that they were given or other than the jobs that they are performing. While, on the other hand, it is an indication that we are, generally, so devoid of a sense of identity that we search for it in such things as our positions, designations, and achievements. However, the problem is that as a being with a conscious, as well as a conscience, we will not be satisfied with an identity given to us by someone else – even if that someone includes our parents, or elders. Neither will we be satisfied with an identity that is likely to change every time our position, work, responsibility, or social status is changed by the circumstances.

Thus, our sense of identity not only gives us stability in our ever changing, unpredictable, and complex world and circumstances, it also gives a meaning to our lives; it provides us the strength to face our share of failures and difficult times in life; it gives us the courage to do what we understand to be right, even when the costs of doing right are high. In a way, it makes us fully human – conscious and conscientious – and connects us to a purpose larger than ourselves.

As a side note, it may be interesting to know that one of the reasons ascribed to the recent increase in the incidence of depression and even suicide – which is indicative of complete hopelessness and despair – is lack of meaning in one’s life. Viktor Frankl’s treatise, ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ and the subsequent recognition of ‘Logotherapy’ as a branch of Psychology, allows me to say with confidence that striving to find meaning in life is the primary, most powerful motivating driving force in humans.

The idea of a lack of consciously developed identity and a lack of meaning in life reminds me of the large number of students – especially aspiring medical students – who invariably call me in a state of extreme hopelessness and distress, because of their low grades, which are insufficient for pursuing their further studies to become doctors. They clearly sound as if they have lost all sense of identity from their lives. The position and the emotional state of adults is not significantly different, when they are removed from their long-standing, cherished positions.

I do not intend to give the impression that in my opinion, such incidents in life should not be a cause of disturbance and sadness. They most definitely are and probably will continue to be. But, that is life, isn’t it? Things – unpleasant and unwanted – are also going to happen. Having a strong sense of meaning and self-identity will greatly support us in going through the turbulent times of life. This is precisely the message that I have discerned from Viktor Frankl’s ‘Man’s search for Meaning.’

Coming back to the point, I would like you to answer the question “Who are you and what is the identity that you have chosen for yourself?”

Take some time in trying to answer this question. Look past yourself and beyond your immediate needs, desires, and concerns. Look at your surroundings and see what is it that you care enough to contribute to the people around you. Is there any way that you can slightly reduce anyone’s suffering? Is there any thing that you feel moved enough to contribute to those for whom your contribution is of much more value than it costs you? Your identity doesn’t have to be something that challenges the whole world. It can be as humble as making a small difference in a single life – one life at a time. Something that you are moved to contribute as you go through all the ups and downs of your own life. Something that provides you a stable and a permanent identity – at least in your own eyes – irrespective of the changes in your position, responsibility, job, or status.

December 14, 2019
(Lahore, Pakistan)

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