How do you balance between comparing your self to others in a healthy vs and unhealthy way?

There is a theory that you have to learn to fail in order to be able to cope with the inevitable failures you will experience. Yet so many children will only participate in activities where they know they can be best. They stop doing things where they do not excel, compared to others.

My son prefers individual sports, like bike riding, or gymnastics or Aikido. But he refuses to compete. I don’t think he is into team sports at all. Maybe he’s afraid he’s not good enough to compare to others on his team, or that he will let his team down.

When I was a child, I often compared myself to others, and when I thought that others would be too critical of me, or worse, be offended by me if I did something, I didn’t do it. I’m thinking of a time when I had the opportunity to join a jazz band being lead by Archie Shepp.

We all compare ourselves to others, I believe. Yet some comparisons aren’t healthy for us. They stop us from doing things we might enjoy. Teachers of some kinds of activities, like yoga, make efforts to discourage people from comparing themselves to others. They urge people to compare themselves to themselves if they have to compare at all.

Other people enjoy competing against others. The competition motivates them to get better. Comparisons stimulate them rather than stop them.

To some extent, we have control over how we feel about comparisons. Some of us can ignore those comparisons completely, and enjoy an activity no matter how bad others might think they are (singing, for example). Other people may withdraw from the world as much as possible, and never try much of anything because they believe they aren’t good enough.

How have comparisons affected you in your life? Do you struggle with this issue? Examples? Where do you draw the line between healthy comparing and dysfunctional comparing of yourself to others? How do you wish you behaved with respect to comparisons with others? Are you even aware of how comparisons might affect others?