Why You Can Be Strong Without Competing or Comparing

So many have said the pandemic has accelerated the trajectories we were already on. Have you found that true for you? Were you running too fast or perhaps stuck with no direction?

Ann Voskamp says: “We run like bulls in the china shops of our lives." We justify the wreckage along the way and the emotional wake behind us. I have justified my own blurry-eyed race – to launch, to build, to serve – and that has meant pushing and climbing and risking. But that is not the strong way. The strong way is to go back to some great leadership wisdom from Scripture and recenter myself to get back on the strong path.

Here is what can help you move in your strong way forward without running too fast or not being challenged enough to move:

1. Right-size expectations of yourself.

Galatians 6:4-5 is a great reminder in The Message:

4-5 Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.

In Jon Tyson’s book, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success, he reminds us: “Even in what should be the best moments of our lives, comparison lurks in the shadows, always seeking to exert itself and secure our worth at the expense of others.”

The pandemic may have brought to light what may be already lurking in the shadow of your being.

Comparison is the root of most of the misery we feel in life.

Comparison makes it impossible to view ourselves from any sort of godly perspective. It is an absolute snare for the soul.

Consider what comparison does to our view of others.

First, when we compare ourselves with those we perceive to be better than we are in any given area of life, the comparison produces a sense of inferiority and insecurity. Whenever we see those people, they become reminders that we don’t have what it takes and are falling behind. We feel we must toil and strive to keep up. Yet the harder we try to do that, the more we’re caught in a cycle of despair.
 

Comparison erodes our sense of worth and self-esteem.

And it has a flip side. When we compare ourselves with people we perceive to be inferior to us, we are filled with a sense of superiority. The people around us become constant reminders of how good we are and how well we are doing and judgment and pride creep in. Those controlled by forces of comparison have unstable and insecure souls.

2. Right-size expectations of others.

Comparison not only creates an ulcer in the source of our self-worth but also makes it impossible for us to love deeply in community. As followers of Jesus, we are called to live lives of sacrificial love, but it’s impossible to give our hearts and lives away to those whom we must better in order to determine our worth.
 

Comparison is the enemy of compassion.

I thought I was empathetic, compassionate and all the things as a female leader, so I should be naturally nurturing, should I not? But I could not be any of those things while I was enslaved to comparison and competing that I could be Michelle Obama.

The pandemic taught me to stop trying to be everyone’s saviour and instead to offer them my true self and grace, grace, grace.

3. Redefine success.

Perhaps you need to resize your relationship and ministry intention back to the one, the few, investing in the one as having the potential to out-multiply investment in the many.

In Jesus’ life, why the 12 and not the 72? Why the one Samaritan woman? Why did Jesus turn and notice Peter while he was just a fisherman and the crowd was still clamouring for his attention?
 

You cannot measure success or impact on this side of heaven.
All will be measured with a God standard on the other side of everything.

I pray you will run in a cadence that does not burn you out – but spends you – so when you are done, you have more energy inwardly than you ever had. Not comparing, not competing, but in your own grace cadence. That is the strong way.

I believe in you.

God bless,

Cathie