The Biggest Nerd in the Room

Here’s a quick reminder of the futility of comparing yourself to others…

Yesterday I was attending a karate class, and we were going over a locking technique. At one point the instructor teaching the technique pointed out how the hand motion was similar to the hand motion Spiderman makes when shooting his web.

At this point, two or three others started commenting on the Spiderman’s exact hand positioning when he fires off a web. A couple then started making the accompanying “thwip” noise.

I have to say, I was astonished. It is a rare occasion when I find myself not to be the biggest comic book nerd in the room. I am after all the guy who wrote an entire post based on Aquaman. And yet here I stood, with five other black belts, watching and listening to them geek out over Spidey’s web shooters.

The Lesson There is always going to be someone who “exceeds” you. No matter how good you think you are, there will be someone better. If you’re feeling down about how things are going, you can bet there is someone who is doing a lot worse.

Basing your own self-esteem, self-worth, success, or aptitude on comparisons to others is just silly. It’s easy to feel great about yourself by looking at others who are worse. Not a bad thing to do when you feel bad, but continuously comparing yourself to people not as good as you is a great way to lower the bar. And it’s easy to get jealous or feel down when you look at people doing better than you, but you have no idea what’s really going on behind the scenes – they might not even be happy or successful at all!

It’s important to analyze your competition, and there’s nothing wrong with occasional boosting your self-esteem or getting a twinge of motivational jealousy by looking at others, but real growth and mastery comes from comparing yourself to only one thing: how close are you coming to achieving your full potential?

It’s like Spiderman said to Electro in issue #178: “I don’t need to win to sleep well at night. I just need to do the best I can.” (Ok, that’s not a real quote, but I was trying to re-establish myself as top comic book guy in the dojo…)