I’m so excited to be writing today’s post! It’s a continuation of a point that I made in my “20 Things I’ve Learned in 20 Years” post, and it’s all about what I like to call “the abundance mindset” and how I avoid comparison. 

I wanted to write this blog post because very often in my life, I’ve run into a lot of competition. I don’t mean sports or debate teams, I mean competing with others with your life. Oftentimes, I’ll feel as if someone is trying to compete with me, and the funny thing is, I didn’t sign up for a competition. 

Living in an area that highly valued academia, this happened most often through academics and awards in high school. Throughout middle school, it happened through what kind of clothing you wore or who knew who. Now in college, it’s almost an amalgam of all of those things and more. 

And it’s interesting to see who has learned how to get over this behavior and who is still learning. 

How do I spot when someone is trying to compete with me? It usually manifests itself through lots of remarks that elevate oneself, a disregard for my successes, the need to respond to my successes with a success of their own, and overall not feeling good about myself when I’m around that person. 

While it may seem simple to just ignore this or not engage, that’s much easier said than done. For one, when it feels like someone’s putting you down, you are on the losing team if you don’t do something back. And two, some people act in a competitive way without even realizing it… that being said…you and I could be doing it right now without even noticing. 

I think that having a need to compete with other people stems from (1) insecurity in your own life and (2) believing that certain things in life are scarce, when they are in fact not. 

The two most common places that I see this scarcity mindset, and where we can apply a more “abundant mindset” is:

1. Friendship 

As a woman, I have navigated the highs and lows of female friendship. Something that I find to be an unfortunate trend is that women are very territorial over their friends. It seems that people get jealous when you hang out with someone more than they do or some get upset when you seem to know more people than they do. 

This leads to exclusivity, favoritism, bitterness, cliques, gossip, and more.

For some reason, some people believe that when someone else has more friends than them, that invalidates all their friendships and so they need to make more to prove their having friends. Similarly, some people believe that if someone hangs out with their friend then they need to hang out with that friend more so that their friendship is not invalidated by their friend hanging out with someone else.

(clearly I’ve spent some time working out this line of thinking)

However, if we switch the thinking to the abundance mindset, then we’ll find that there’s plenty of friends to go around. More specifically, if I hang out with one girl more than another girl, that doesn’t erase the friendship and bond she has with other people. 

Wouldn’t it be great if all girls understood this? There’s no reason trying to compete with each other because there’s enough of everyone to go around! One might even say there’s an ABUNDANCE of friends, time, and love for everyone!

2. Achievement

Achievement can come in all forms: awards, good grades, friendship, attractiveness, etc. If you have any of the things that I just stated, there is some sort of achievement in your life. And I’ve found that oftentimes people don’t understand that there’s enough opportunity for success in the world for everyone. 

Obviously, if there’s only one job opening at a company there is going to be some sort of competition. I’m talking about competing with others through those successes and other achievements in your life. There’s no need to try and one up your friend by talking about how you got an A on your project after they just told you about their A on their presentation. You can both have good grades! You can both have good GPAs! You can both get an internship for the summer! You can both have long happy and successful lives that don’t need to be compared to one another! 

Comparison really is the thief of joy. I find that competition in terms of achievement affects other people negatively in how it inhibits encouraging one another. In other words, when people are trying to compete with one another they have no desire to compliment or commend other people. If you’re trying to compete with someone, you don’t want to give them praise for “a point scored against you.” 

While this sounds very specific, clear-cut, and a bit ridiculous, like I said before, I often observe this in people who probably don’t even know that they are doing it. For me, in university and when I’m around very insecure people, I find myself fighting a very strong urge to engage in this kind of behavior.

I’ve found that the best way to check myself is making sure that I’m doing these things: 

1. Listening and encouraging people when they share good things in their life!
   • I’m not thinking about what I’m gonna say next. I’m not thinking about how I did something really similar or even better, I’m focused on THEM. And then I proceed to genuinely put myself in their shoes and think about how I would want to be celebrated if I just did what they did… and then I do that!
2. Complimenting others often!
   • The best way to believe that “someone else’s success/beauty does not take away from my own” is by practicing it. When I compliment other people, I acknowedge what’s great about them and prove to myself that it didn’t take anything away from me. 
3. Celebrating my own successes!
   • If I make sure to celebrate my own success, there will be no need for me to rain on someone else’s parade when they have one. I already had my own party for me, I’d love to cheer you on at yours! 
   • To circle back to what I said at the beginning, comparison, competition, and scarcity stems from insecurity. When we’re insecure we believe something that doesn’t allow us to see ourselves for what we are, and then we project that onto other people. If I take the time to celebrate the good things in my life, then I can be secure in knowing their existence in my life and that other people are worthy of good things too. 

So… I’ve learned to love freely, compliment excessively, and stop trying to compete with a competitor that doesn’t even know the rules of the game. 😁

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