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The Comparison Game

Houston tennis lesson

Happy Thursday! I skipped blogging yesterday because I was up late the night before for my first ever tennis lesson. As soon as I parked my car in the driveway, we had a nasty storm come through, so I just didn’t sleep all that well. Ya win some, ya lose some. When I started blogging again last year, I wanted the blog to have some substance – mixed in with some of the fun posts, like Exhibit A. Because that’s life, right? A lot of the serious stuff, mixed with, hopefully, a lot of the fun stuff. I’m headed somewhere with this, I promise.

Houston tennis lesson

My friend, Mariam, and I started tennis lessons on Tuesday. Mariam called me one day out of the blue and asked if I wanted to give tennis a shot, and it sounded like fun. And before I knew it, we had all new tennis outfits and were ready to go. Fastforward to Tuesday, and we met with our instructor for our first-ever lesson. I think it’s going to be really fun, but it got me thinking.

Not all of us are great at everything. We don’t all have the same strengths, skillsets and talents, but that’s what makes us so unique. God created us all with our own sets of different strengths, different skills and different gifts, and we should celebrate those differences.

Is social media to blame?

I was a freshman in college when Facebook first came out. I remember sitting in my dorm room with my roommate freshman year, and we each made a Facebook account. I can’t remember what I posted – or even the subsequent posts that would follow. What I didn’t realize, is where social media would take us as a society. I’m so thankful to have lived out my high school years without the pressure of needing to live out my life on a platform for the world to see. And I worry about the next generation who will feel that pressure.

Teddy Roosevelt has a famous quote: Comparison is the thief of all joy. We’ve all been guilty of it….

She’s more successful than I am….

They have a bigger house than I do….

Her hair is nicer than mine….

All these thoughts do – is leave us feeling less than. Instead of focusing on the here and the now – and all of the things we do have to be thankful for – we focus on the things we don’t have. I’ve caught myself doing it before, and I’ve been the recipient of acquaintances who can’t celebrate the wins with you because they are focused on all the wrong things.

Competition is innate. We all probably have memories of when we were children, and we compared our test grades with one another. A little bit of healthy competition is okay if you use it for fun. My tennis lessons with Mariam were fun – because we are both learning. I want her to succeed – and vice versa. But when you find yourself constantly keeping score with other people, you are sabotaging your own happiness.

Finding happiness

So, I hope you can find several things about your own life that you are proud of – and we all have them. Whether it’s the fact that you work a job that pays your bills and supports your family, maybe it’s the fact that you are working out more and you feel strong and healthy, or maybe you are a great mom to your kids. Whatever it is, you should be proud of yourself.

This little blog doesn’t always show the perfect. I don’t take perfect pictures (and I’ll be the first to admit that), my house doesn’t always look perfect (and it rarely will – because ya girl works a lot), and I can’t blog an entire week straight to save my life (again: that whole work/life balance thing).

So, why don’t we start living for ourselves? And stop living for the highlight reels? Let’s appreciate the beauty of our own lives that we created (and we should be darn proud of ourselves for doing so)!

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