Sunday 20 July 2014

On comparing myself to others.



The hoop is a source of such joy for me that I hate negative emotions coming any where near it.

Yet some times the hoop has difficult lessons to teach me, such as uncovering a dark part of my personality. Like … ooh, let’s see, my tendency to compare myself to other hoopers.

Eek.

I’ve written before about comparison and how futile it is. But it seems that learning not to compare myself as a hooper is going to be a long journey for me.

I noticed recently that I had started feeling dissatisfied with my hooping. Winter doesn’t help, but there was more to it than that. It often happened after I had been on Facebook, where my feed was dominated by posts from a very large hoop group. While every person in that group was drawn there by a mutual love of the hoop, I seemed to have very little in common with the majority of them.

I started comparing myself to them. Unfavourably. Because, let’s face it, I’m not a 20 year old in a teeny tiny bikini, doing astonishing things with a teeny tiny hoop after just six months of hooping.

“Well, that’s it. You’re a failure,” says the very nasty voice in my head.

And it doesn’t stop with hooping. A friend posts about her world travels. Another friend is making a decent living as an artist. And I hear about yet another who has just snagged a book deal.

“Look at them. What are YOU doing? You suck,” says that nasty voice again.

Perhaps I should cocoon myself from the world so I don’t ever have any one to compare myself to? Nah. Sounds a bit lonely, doesn’t it?

I did have some thing of a revelation while I was hooping the other day. When I’m comparing myself to some one else I’m thinking about the other person and what they are doing, rather than what I’m doing. I can’t control what other people do. They’re just trucking along, doing their thing.

So may be that’s what I need to learn how to do. I can’t be any body else. I can only be me, in and out of the hoop.

Happy hooping,
Anne-Marie x

2 comments:

  1. Such an important lesson and message Anne-Marie. I struggle with this too.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Brie. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one to struggle with this!

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