Comparison is the thief of joy. Whenever we compare ourselves to another person, have you noticed that you rarely come out on top? When you decide you are one-down, you feel negatively about yourself and it creates negative results for you. There is really no upside to doing this.
I think it’s normal to compare ourselves to others since we are a tribal, social species and we care about our standing in the group. For this reason, I don’t think we should judge the fact that we do compare ourselves, we just need to know how to manage it and not make it a bigger issue than it needs to be. I also think that for this reason, we probably will never get rid of it all together.
In this podcast, I talk about the variety of seeds in the world to show you how fruitless it is to compare yourself to another dancer. There literally is no comparison because the variables between you are so plentiful.
When comparison comes up for you, I want you to be able to remind yourself that it’s not relevant to you and be able to dismiss it more readily.
Now, there is one situation in which “comparison” might be ok but we will call it modeling instead. If you can look at another dancer and see what they are doing differently than you, but use it as data, as information, and use it to help inform your dancing and improve it, then have at it! Modeling can exponentially improve your dancing. The key is to not use the information you gather against yourself. If you aren’t able to do that, then, for now, look the other way.
