Self Acceptance by a Coach

I learned something new about myself this morning. I was in the last couple of minutes with a coaching call and my client said she realized why she spent her life comparing herself to others. Her mother had compared her to others when she was a child and she learned it then.

Well, I learned it this morning!

Learning to compare as a child makes perfect sense to me from two perspectives:

• First we have the human perspective – the perspective we hold here on planet earth. Here on planet earth it seems as if comparing is perfectly normal. We are always looking at good and bad , smaller and bigger , better and worse . We see things in duality. If there is one, the opposite is also true. So when my mother used to say, "Why aren’t you like Renee (a goodie-two-shoes who was the older-than-I daughter of my mother’s childhood friend)? It made me feel – bad! So if I was bad then somebody has to be good. And so we spend our lives comparing ourselves to others. We learn by the adults’ and society’s comparing to keep that as a daily mental habit.
• Then we have the broad, spiritual perspective (and I might add, the real one). In that perspective there is only ONENESS. Whether you see it as a spiritual Intelligence, God or whatever, it’s very nature is oneness. And since that implies that ALL is part of that, there is no duality, no good and bad, no smaller and bigger, no comparison. All is included in the ONE.

So, from the spiritual perspective there is nothing to compare because we are all part of the same thing. So it’s only an illusion. When you find yourself comparing yourself to someone else checking to see if they are richer, thinner or prettier or if you are, then you can realize that perspective is learned and all made up. Every time you catch yourself, you are closer and closer to full self acceptance.