How to Lose your joy in less than 30 seconds … guaranteed or your money back!

Have you considered spending more time comparing yourself to others? It’s a great discipline and one I highly recommend.  You’ll find it especially helpful this time of the year as you frantically finish up your Christmas shopping and baking.  Now don’t be surprised if you find yourself coming up short.  No worries because that will compel you to work hard, to try harder, to never give up.  You get it.  Comparing yourself to others is, quite frankly, the very thing that will help you to be all that you can be.

Here’s a simple exercise that is probably the best way to practice the art of comparing yourself to others.  Do this for, say, 5 or 10 minutes, especially early in the morning several times a week and you’ll soon be a recognized expert …

Here we go:

— First, always look up the ladder.  Look up at all those rich, better educated people above and ahead of you. There are just so many people that make more money than you do. Look at how they smile, so effortlessly. Get lost in this for a while.

— Next, ponder how other people volunteer more than you do. All you ever do is work at your job.  Just think about how others teach Sunday school, read to kids at school, visit people in the nursing home, coach little league soccer.  

— Third, consider how some people have guests in their home all the time.  And the smells…oh, the smells.  Their home always has an aroma of freshly baked bread.  And oh my, look at how they have display those Christmas cookies and dried fruit.  And all their candles … red, purple, pink, white … are burning perfectly, so brightly.   Wow. 

— Then just for fun, try this comparison.  Look at how other people pushed their children in the math and sciences.  And now?  Well, now their kids are physicians, making hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. 

— Oh, and how can I forget, definitely spend time rating your wardrobe against the wardrobe of others.  Others have such nice clothes, don’t they?  And let’s be frank, here.  Many of them are trimmer than you are, too.  When you hug them they smell just like they got out of the shower.

I personally love this little exercise and highly recommend it to you first thing in the morning.  Just today I spent about 10 minutes doing this before my morning Advent devotions.  It led to a sweet time between God and me.

Compare, compare, compare and the truth of what President Theodore Roosevelt once said will sink deeply into your heart:  “Comparison is the thief of joy.”