Never Measure Yourself Against Perfection

When I was in high school, one of the happiest kids I knew was an excellent athlete-I’ll call him Bill. He was also very intelligent and always had the best looking girlfriends. He ended up marrying his high school sweetheart.

He was from a relatively small town in Michigan and had ended up going to our private boarding school, where he was surrounded by a lot of very high achievers. I think the type of people he met there really must have changed his perspective. Some of the kids he played baseball with in high school went on to play baseball in college. Some of these kids went to Ivy League schools and planned on doing things like becoming doctors. I remember one of his friends went to Stanford. I do not think Bill went away for college. After high school, his life did not appear to blossom the way the lives of others around him did. That is not to say there was anything wrong with his life. It is just to say that he did not appear interested in taking over the world.

When I first met Bill he was among the happiest people I had ever met. His happiness was very pure and deep. But something happened to him, and I will come back to that in a moment. Something horrible happened to him.

What I am about to share with you is one of the most profound ways that I know of to look at the world and your place in it. If you consider yourself even slightly motivated, this may be one of the more useful and helpful things you will ever read. What you are about to read could change your life forever, and it could even save your life.

A few years ago, I was at a Tony Robbins conference in Palm Springs, California. Tony told a story about how his stepson ended up going to one of the most prestigious boarding schools in the world. An important person from the Middle East was apparently so happy with the assistance that Tony provided him that he told Tony he would get his stepson into this ultra prestigious school, which was in Switzerland, as a gift. Tony accepted the offer and sent his stepson off to the school.

Tony made the point that before sending his stepson off to the school he was a very fit kid and was extremely happy. The boy had a great disposition and lots of friends and was also quite positive. The boy never seemed to care what other kids around him were doing and was mainly interested in just being happy.

While Tony did not know it, once his stepson started going to this school he started requesting thousands of dollars a month in spending money from his mother. Apparently he felt that he needed new clothes and various other things to keep up with the other kids at the school. These kids were the sons of prime ministers and princes from Europe, famous actors, and other titans of industry-essentially the children of the most important people in the world.

After Tony’s stepson had been at the school for about six months, Tony traveled to Switzerland to visit him. He immediately noticed that his stepson, who had normally been a very fit kid, had gained at least 30 pounds. He hardly recognized him. His stepson insisted they go to a certain sushi restaurant for lunch, and the bill was several hundred dollars. His stepson had never been concerned about restaurants and spending a lot of money. However, what Tony noticed most about his stepson was that he seemed very unhappy. He kept comparing himself with people around him and did not seem to feel good about himself.

His stepson had started comparing himself to others and felt like he came up short in every category. The boy did not feel good about himself or his family any longer. As Tony was speaking with him, the boy would say things like:

-This person was better than he was in this category

-This person was better than Tony in this category

-This person had a newer this

-This person had more important parents

-Tony was “new money,” and this was not good

-This family was better than his because of this reason

According to Tony, it was as if the school had given his stepson reasons to no longer feel good about himself. Everything was compared to something else. Consequently, the boy gained tons of weight and became very unhappy with himself. Tony felt the damage was so severe that he pulled him out of the school a short time later.

The message I got from this, and I am sure you do too, is that when you are at the highest level of success and are around people with the most privileges and advantages, you often find the people who are the unhappiest with themselves. I think there is some truth to the idea that the most successful people are often the most unhappy. The reason many of the most successful people are often the unhappiest is that they constantly measure themselves against ideals they simply cannot live up to.

People who want to get very good grades may say to themselves, “nothing less than an ‘A’ is acceptable.” When they fail to get an “A” grade, they feel badly about themselves. Even if they get all “As,” if they get one “A+” they may feel angry that their other grades are not “A+” as well. A thinking process geared towards an ideal leads people to see that they are failing to be “perfect” and meet a certain ideal in numerous other areas of their life:

-Their relationships with others
-Their wealth
-Their athletic ability
-Their health
-Their attractiveness
-Their popularity
-Their possessions
-Their social status
-The social status of their parents
-Their weight
-Their natural intelligence
-Their home
-Their car
-Their talents of every kind

This list could go on and on. When people see others who are better than themselves they often feel a sense of inferiority.

When many of us hear about stars overdosing on drugs or having other sorts of severe problems, the reaction often is, “why would someone with so many advantages do this?” Stars are so programmed to achieve success that they often simply feel that they do not measure up in a variety of areas. In many cases, it is the people closest to the star that make them aware that they do not measure up.

When I started seeing headlines about Britney Spears hanging around with Paris Hilton I knew it would not be good for Britney Spears, and instinctively knew that Britney was likely to start having severe problems. Paris comes from a different background than Britney, having grown up among the upper class, and she has an awareness of society that I am sure Britney lacked at the time. In short, Paris’ insight into society could surely make Britney feel as if she were not measuring up, despite her massive fame and fortune. Paris knows what it is like to be from money; Paris knows about the social pecking order better than Britney.

Sure enough, very shortly after the two were announced to be friends and seen frequently together, all sorts of horrible things started happening to Spears that were of her own making. She shaved her head, was carted away to a psychiatric ward on a stretcher, and more. I am sure a lot of what happened had to do with Britney simply being shown by Paris how she did not measure up. Paris’ influence on Britney might not have been direct, but the effect occurred nonetheless.

There is a real danger in the way most of us have been taught to think about ourselves and the world. This danger lies in a way of thinking about ourselves and others that never allows us to measure up. Instead of appreciating where we have come from and what we have achieved, most of us simply look outside of ourselves and compare ourselves to an impossible ideal. All around us there are various ideals that we think we need to measure up to. We never can.

I want to propose a way of looking at the world and your place in it that will virtually guarantee you happiness and success throughout your life: you will never achieve the “ideal” in anything. You can keep trying, but you will never, ever be the best at everything. There is always going to be someone better than you.

Compare yourself only to the person you were before. Measure yourself against your own progress in various categories and do not compare yourself to others. Forget about others.

If you If you can understand this and apply it, your life will change forever. When you measure yourself against where you have been in the past, you are always going to feel a sense of progress. Each new success you achieve is going to give you a greater sense of satisfaction and push you forward with more positive energy. You can always improve on where you have been. If you want to make improvements in any area, write down where you are right now and set out to improve. Measure yourself against where you have been and not where others have been.

Our brains like to set goals. Goals are absolutely necessary to drive us forward and make us achieve in life. But we cannot measure ourselves against others. We need to measure ourselves against ourselves and gauge our progress in that fashion.

People who measure themselves against an ideal always feel disappointed. It is impossible to achieve every single goal you set for yourself. When you do not reach your goals you feel like a loser. You simply cannot possibly achieve every goal you set for yourself. What you can do, however, is improve on where you have been. When you improve on where you have been, you continually feel a sense of victory as you move forward.

For example, if your goal is to lose weight you can look at the scale a week from now after dieting and see that you have lost some weight. You have achieved something and have a reason to celebrate. This will improve your self esteem and help you feel better about yourself. You have achieved a small victory and have reason to feel good about yourself.

If you want to weigh 115 pounds like a star you read about in US Magazine, you may never be able to achieve this. This is not how you should measure yourself.

I am sure you love watching television as much as I do, but unless you are watching a television show like Cops, chances are what you are seeing is not the way the world really is at all. Nevertheless, many people are led to believe that the outside world is very similar to what they see on television and read about in books and gossip magazines. There is an ideal out there that everyone aspires to. This ideal is a fantasy that simply does not exist. Comparing yourself against a fantasy world is a recipe for disaster and continual frustration.

Many people believe they can only be happy if their life matches their blueprint of what they believe a perfect life should be. When you really think about this, it is their model of the world that consistently makes them come up short. You need to compare yourself to where you have been and not where you think you should be.

What will happen when you start comparing yourself to where you have been is that you will start to feel fulfilled, as if you are experiencing the life that you want. You deserve to feel fulfilled in life and you deserve to feel good about yourself. You always need to feel good about yourself.

What will happen when you start comparing yourself to where you have been, is you will start to continually feel fulfilled and as if you have experienced the life that you want. You deserve to feel fulfilled in life and you deserve to feel good about yourself. You should feel good about yourself and always need to feel good about yourself.

Growing up, I had the privilege of having relatives who lived in the country on farms and did things like drive trucks for a living. In spending time with this family, I also had occasion to meet many people whom they knew and associate with a crowd of people who had different expectations for their lives than the sort of people you meet in big cities. The people I met from the country typically had very low expectations for themselves and their lives. They were most concerned about things like putting food on the table and simply having a family. They did not believe that they would ever be rich, or that their children should be attending important schools. This simply was not part of their blueprint for what they expected out of life.

These were also some of the happiest people I ever met. The fact that their expectations of life were so low meant that there was very little to disappoint them. Things that we might take for granted (like new tires on a car) were things that could give these people a great deal of satisfaction.

Conversely, I also grew up with people who had extremely high expectations for themselves. These were people who went to the private high school I attended. I knew people in high school who smoked crack cocaine and were continually disappointed in themselves and the world around them. These were kids who were very intelligent and extremely capable. Many of them ended up going to the very best colleges and today are living in big cities and doing things like working for investment banks. They are also still very unhappy.

One of the kids I knew growing up and that I went to school with was Bill-the baseball player I told you about at the beginning of this chapter. He was a kid who was from a small town background of lower expectations-like my relatives, or even Britney Spears (who grew up in rural Louisiana). He was thrust into the high-expectations environment of a private school where I am sure he learned to compare himself to numerous ideals that were being held in front of him:

-It is important to have parents who are rich
-It is important to drive a nice car
-It is important to get into the best college
-It is important to get the best and highest paying job possible
-It is important to score in the top 10 percent on your SATs
-It is important to be the best athlete
-It is important to impress others

He was a happy kid when I first met him, but never my friend (although he had been very nice to me). After college, his first day of work in an “official job” was going to be for his wife’s father. On the night of his first day of work he went to sleep with his wife just like any other night-at least his wife thought he did. In the morning she woke up and did not see him anywhere. A short time later she checked the basement and found him hanging by his neck from a noose. He had committed suicide.

Who knows what was going on inside his mind or why he ended up killing himself? No one around him ever expected anything like that would ever occur. When I think about this, I would bet that he simply did not measure up to his ideals or what he thought he should be doing with his career. Who knows? What I do know is that there must have been something in his mind that made him feel like he did not belong on this earth and that he wanted to escape.

The way for you to be happy and make the most of your life is to compare yourself to where you have been and not to any sort of ideal. You have achieved so much. Let yourself be carried forward by the knowledge that you have improved and are continually improving. You have done so much and are capable of even greater goals.

Use your past as a yardstick, and never use an ideal.