Who’s Yardstick Are You Using?

If you did not have anyone else to measure yourself against, what would you use as your yardstick? How would you know how far to raise the bar?

Many people live there life’s striving to measure up to someone else’s achievements or expectations. Some people grow up measuring their success against the success of their parents, i.e. when they have reached a point in their life when they have more income, a better house or car, they feel they have achieved a level of accomplishment because they have exceeded the lifestyle of their parents. Many people also use people in the media as a yardstick for measuring their success in life. On a closer level people often measure themselves against their peers, their co-workers, their neighbors (keeping up with the Jones’s), etc.

Imagine however that you did not have anyone else to measure yourself against. What then? How would you know if you were successful, how would you know if you were achieving? If you had no one to measure yourself against would you still be motivated to achieve and to grow?

Some people are so addicted to being competitive in the way they approach their personal growth and achievements that if you took them out of a competitive environment, they would lose their drive, they would lose their desire to move forward because they would have a difficult time of seeing why they should continue to grow if there was no “winning” involved in their efforts.

Even people who are consciously on a spiritual path often find themselves checking how enlightened they are against someone else who the believe is more enlightened.  Even as we strive to be spirit centric, our ego still attempts to influence our thinking and tries to get us to measure ourselves against something outside of our self.

The true and only measurement of our personal growth, achievements or success is when we measure against ourselves. This measurement is rather simplistic, it is simply creating awareness of our self, knowing the answer to the questions, are we a little kinder today then yesterday, have we gained some wisdom, have we grown more aware, are we fuller of love,  etc? We know the answers to these questions and we know how to make proper adjustments to continue to move forward  in our personal growth.

When we use ourselves as a yardstick for measuring our growth, we tend to eliminate the frustration that we experience when we are attempting to live up to the standards and achievements of others. We no longer go through the exercise of comparing our self to someone else and in doing so, eliminate the negative feeling of not measuring up and we also remove the emotion of jealousy and envy from our life. Instead of jealousy and envy  when we view the accomplishments of others, we begin to find joy in their achievements, we find lessons in what they have done and we learn how to apply these lessons to our life.

Today, I would like you to reflect on your thoughts and ask yourself, who’s race are you running, whose yardstick are you using? If the answer is anyone’s but your own, then you need to acknowledge that and then ask yourself why.

Start measuring yourself against yourself and you will find the joy in knowing how much you grow each day and how much control you have over your personal growth.