The world and humans for students and their parents

Comparisons

From the book by Andrey Sokolov and Tatiana Sokolova "The world and humans for students and their parents".

Comparisons.

The habit of comparing yourself to other people can ruin your life greatly and even turn you into a chronic failure.

Comparing your own achievements with the successes of other people in the overwhelming majority of cases leads to low self-esteem. In addition, such people begin to painfully depend on other people's opinions. And it ends with neuroses, depression and just hellish of life, a real ulcer that destroys a person from the inside.

If people who depend on the assessment of others are praised, then they feel omnipotent, but if you make a remark to them, they immediately fall to the very bottom.

And it all begins in childhood.

"Look how your brother writes diligently, and you are like a chicken with a paw."

"Your sister dances and paints, but what are you?"

"Everyone has children like children, and mine is a real punishment!"

"Why can't you, like others ..."

Parents say: "We are from noble motives, we want the children to be better!"

And in fact…

Let's figure out what actually happens when a child is compared and set as an example of another person.

The emphasis is on the fact that the child is not good enough, and, in order to be loved, he must reach a certain level. And the level rises all the time and remains out of reach.

And it turns out that it is impossible to earn love. An attitude towards oneself is formed: “bad boy” (or girl), “worthless loser”. The child decides that he will never be able to become worthy, equal to the one whom they lead to as an example. He stops trying to change something and falls into apathy. Grows up an unhappy person.

The other extreme is a keen desire to prove one's worth. An endless race and rivalry begins. A person realizes other people's goals, striving to surpass the one with whom he is compared. There is aggression ... and neurosis.

In these two cases, unhappy people turn out who do not know how to build a life without regard to what others think of them. They live in eternal fear, as there is always someone who is better, more talented, richer, more successful. And so on ad infinitum.

There is a third option - "since I am bad, then i shouldn't even try, I will be bad to the fullest" with the outcome of vandalism, drunkenness, fights and crime.

Comparison is a manipulation when someone forcibly imposes on someone their goals and ideas about how it should be.

But this path is wrong and unfair. How can you compare one child, who has the same genes and abilities, with a completely different person?

Manipulation, comparison and forcible imposition of other people's goals are ways of destroying the personality. They are used in authoritarian and slave-owning societies when it is required to educate an obedient servant who clearly follows instructions.

In such a relationship, there is no respect, acceptance of individual characteristics. Instead of an independent whole person, something arithmetic is obtained, a vinaigrette from a mixture of the attitudes of grandparents, models of behavior of fathers and mothers and the requirements of educational institutions.

It turns out a person without his own “I”, who is ready to live and work “for the common good”, but who does not know and does not love himself.

Such people are also called “cogs of the system”. They fit well, screw in. Raised on manipulation, they lend themselves well to training - like donkeys, they go for a carrot and are afraid of the whip.

What to do? What are the alternatives?

First you need to formulate a goal. Your own purpose. Describe clearly and specifically what is important to you and what exactly you want to achieve.

And rejoice in everyone, even the smallest success on the way to the goal. Praise yourself for your hard work and dedication. And move on.