Rob Dial Argues Against Comparing Oneself to Others

On his Mindset Mentor podcast today, personal development coach Rob Dial discussed how people tend to compare themselves...usually unfavorably...to others.  He says we're naturally wired into doing this assessing the relative social positions of ourselves against others, but it's not a good way to live out the day.  Folks like to scroll Facebook and other social media, but they tend to see what others post...which is usually the peak-best of what they are and do...and take it in as how they ordinarily live their lives.  I've seen this with the Canadian brothers' YouTube running channel, in which the two come off sounding awfully elitist about their chosen sport and tend to put down others that they don't see measuring up.  Well, it doesn't ruin my day to watch them, so let it be if that's how they want to present themselves...I'm still feeling fine.  My problem with others is in ordinary public conversation when they...usually it's men...go about, with false modesty, bragging about their own accomplishments and social standing.  I guess their expectation is for me to immediately defer to them as my superiors, but my reaction is usually one of aversion, wanting to put distance between them and me. This Parkrun experience I have habituated myself to partake of weekly is an example of the leaders openly stressing that it is NOT a competition...and then running in it like it IS. Rob Dial says that the only person you should be comparing yourself to is you, and whether or not you're improving over that past version of yourself.  That's how I see Parkruns and other races: how am I getting through the race and does my finishing time meet with the standards I set in past performances?  That's how I get myself looking forward each week to going down there and giving it another go.  For example, this coming Saturday morning I plan to try out the West End Community Parkrun for the third time, running it this time and seeing if I can't beat my initial finishing time there.  In the final analysis, whether I succeed in that is secondary to the main thing, which is showing up in the first place.  In any event, I'm sure there will be some annoying people who will try to make it all a personal contest between us...I say let them do that if that's how they want to limit themselves...