You are Enough

I like to exercise outdoors at my neighborhood park.  This particular park has a 5K jogging trail loop that sees a lot of foot traffic.   The first time I walked this trail was in 2010 when I started training for my first 5K fun run.  Being on the track for the first time was overwhelming.  I was not an avid runner (or jogger…or walker), as most of my workouts occurred inside with stationary machines. 

I used one of those couch to 5K running plans.  When I first started training, I would get so sad when people would pass me (rather quickly) on the trail. As my breathing and body conditioning improved, I started passing other people. In some ways that became a measure of my success- a comparison game.  When someone passed me on the trail, I analyzed and compared their physique, jogging form, and any other perceived jogging attributes to mine.  The same comparative analysis occurred when I would pass someone on the trail.  The more people I passed that day, the better I felt about my training. Conversely, the more people who passed me that day, the worse I felt about my training.  In six weeks, I went from being unable to jog for one minute to jogging for thirty minutes without stopping.  It was such an accomplishment; however, I do not think it really sank in as it should.

Looking back on those moments made me realize that we (myself included) tend to compare ourselves to other people in many aspects of life.  We get into a habit of basing our successes (or perceived lack of) on whether we are doing better or worse than other people are.  

“Sure I have a nice house, but look at Jim’s place.  He has a pool and a hot tub.”

“Yes, I have a nice job, but my cousin is constantly receiving a promotion. He is doing so much better than me.”

“I may be only middle management, but Sue has been unemployed for over a year. I got it made!”

 The comparisons keep continuing. 

We should not base our success on how better or worse we have it than someone else does.   My Sunday school teacher would always say, “Not only does God love us all but He loves us each.”   We have to realize that each one of us has our own journey.  We will get to our destination in due time.  When you compare yourself to others, you are focusing on someone else’s life instead of your own.  You are robbing yourself of joy and satisfaction while bestowing upon yourself bitterness, jealousy, and possibly anger.  Had you not compared your home to Jim’s house, you would have been over-the-moon excited about your home.  Instead, you are upset because you believe the house that you worked and saved up the money to buy is simply not good enough.  That is no way to live.

 Furthermore, what you are doing is comparing apples to oranges.  You do not know where the comparative person is in their journey- whether it is their beginning, middle, or end.  What if the company based your cousin’s promotion on twenty-five years of hard work and loyalty- a promotion that came in due time.  It is part of their journey.  What would you find if you focused on your own journey? 

Your life journey will be full of high and low points.  However, the main point is that it is your journey.  It does not belong to Jim, Sue, or anybody else.  If you do not like something in your life, change it.  Just do it for the right reason- not because compared to Jane Doe- anything is better.

See you next time.