THE SELF GROWTH JOURNAL

Your journey is meant to be your own and not a copy of someone else’s

We humans are inherently social animals, a truth observed long ago by Aristotle. As we move through life, we form connections, build relationships, and become part of a social web. As we grow, the web keeps expanding. We are wired to look sideways, at our neighbours, our friends, relatives, the stranger on the other side of a screen, and we measure ourselves in relation to them.

Try as we might, we cannot survive without our sociosystem. Just like every other being requires an ecosystem to survive, we humans require a sociosystem. Our sociosystem consists of all those with whom we interact or have a relationship, whether personal or professional. The problem arises when we see ourselves in the context of others.

When Comparison becomes the compass

Comparison means the act of considering something or someone similar to another. If used wisely, comparison could be the most powerful tool for growth. If an athlete compares his records with those of other athletes and pushes himself to do better, then it is a forward-looking kind of comparison. It fuels ambition and efforts.

However, the moment you start comparing your inner strength and capability with the external achievements of another, it pierces through your self-worth and starts to work against your growth. We start to compare our skills and abilities with the external achievements of others. We see the progress of others and we compare it to our failures. Someone’s new car is a reflection of my failure to buy one for myself. Someone’s admission to a leading institute is my failure to get good grades. Someone’s beautiful or rich spouse is my failure to get one. Every comparison starts to reflect upon our own inner capabilities. we stop looking at our journey and instead every action is seen in the light of others and in this process we lose touch with who we are. Each time we compare, we are less of us and more of the other.

I ask, who are we to compare who is better?

When we set out to compare ourselves with others, we convene an invisible courtroom where we present evidence against ourselves, argue harshly against our own abilities and in the end we pronounce judgments against ourselves. Doesn’t it sound a little absurd that we give evidence against our own capabilities.

If you observe your life carefully, you might be doing this self-sabotage more often than you think. Each day, in subtle ways, we measure our lives against others. We see someone achieving more, moving faster, or reaching farther and without realising it, we begin to question our own journey. We scroll through the highlights of others’ lives on social media, the awards, the milestones, the radiant social life, etc., and we put them against the unfiltered, raw and crude life of ours. We compare the stage performance of others with our backstage fears, mistakes, anxieties and failures.

It’s time to return to the real race

The real comparison is not against others but against who we were yesterday. Our skills, our ambitions, our journeys, they are ours in a way that no one else’s can be. Our timeline is not a slower version of someone else’s story. It is a completely different story. The chapters are not the same. The themes are not the same. Each one’s book is different from the other and no amount of comparison can equate the two. The centre of our focus should be on us, our growth, our skills, our abilities and our ambitions. Our goal should be in accordance with our desires and not the achievements of others.

Practical ways to stop comparison and build self-worth

1. Shift the benchmark to yourself
Make yourself the reference point. Instead of asking “Am I doing as well as them?”, ask “Am I doing better than I was last month or last year?”. We know our own starting point, our own strengths and weaknesses and our finishing line. Tracking your own progress, improving skills, building habits, and gaining resilience anchors us in reality rather than illusion.

2. Borrow inspiration and not identity
Comparison isn’t always harmful. It becomes harmful when admiration turns into self-criticism. When you see someone doing well, pause and consciously reframe your thoughts from self-sabotage to self-belief and start working towards building yourself.

3. Audit the content you are feeding your mind
Most of what you see online is a highlight reel, carefully edited, filtered, and timed. You’re comparing your everyday reality with someone else’s best moments. That’s not a fair contest. Limit the content you feed onto in social media and start living in the real world.

4. Practice gratitude
Train your mind to focus on the blessings of your life. Start emphasising on what’s working for you rather than what’s missing. Comparison narrows your vision and gratitude widens it.

Stop measuring your chapter against someone else’s cover. The most extraordinary story you will ever read is the one you are still in the middle of writing  and it was never meant to look like anyone else’s so believe in your worth and work hard to make it accomplished.

We live in a world overflowing with “How to” blogs and tutorials. Every challenge, whether it’s tech trouble, health concerns, or financial stress, seems to have a step-by-step solution just a click away. Yet, once we close the tab, the information often sits idle in our minds, rarely transforming into real life change.

Here is a space that will gently guide you through life, not by shortcuts, but through practices, coping mechanisms, and lessons from my own healing journey. It will provide ways to nurture resilience, emotional strength, and personal growth. My hope is that these reflections guide you in your own journey of self-discovery and healing.

🌸 The Practice That Changed My Life

I wish to start this initiative with that one practice that has stayed with me forever and has helped me, guided me and shaped me into who I am. We often catch ourselves caught in loops of regret about the past or anxiety about the future. Questions like Why did that person betray me? What if my decisions don’t lead to success? Why was life unfair to me? Keep haunting us. As we grow older and accumulate experiences, these thoughts intensify. But pause for a moment and think, was this the case when you were a child?

Children are the happiest not because life was easier back then, but because they live fully in the present. They laugh, play, and experience each moment without the burden of past regrets or future fears. As we grow, we gain experiences and learn the standards set by society for success and well-being. The achievements of others and the idea of a perfect future generates anxiety in our minds.

We keep revisiting our past or worrying about our future and in this process, we lose out on our present. As it’s rightly said, one has to be somewhere; if not in the present, he will either be depressed about the past or anxious about the future. As humans, we have a tendency to either visit our past that drains our energy or anticipate the future that makes us fearful of what might go wrong in future. In both scenarios, the event has already happened or it might most likely never happen in future but we ruin our present by thinking about them.

🧠 The Monkey Mind

Psychologists describe our minds as “monkey minds”, constantly hopping from one thought to another. We can travel decades in time and continents in space in a few seconds. On average, humans have more than 6,000 thoughts a day. Most of these are repetitive echoes of yesterday, ruminations, worries, and mental noise. In both cases, the present moment slips away unnoticed. Physically, we may be here, but mentally we’re decades away.

So, how do we break free? How do we stop being prisoners of time, haunted by the past and anxious about the future? The answer lies in awareness and training. Living in the present is not a gift, it’s a skill. And like any skill, it can be practised and mastered.

Steps for Embracing the present:

1. Mindfulness: We have to start by observing our thoughts andeach time we catch ourselves thinking about past or future, we have to catch hold of them and bring them back to the present. Daily meditation acts as a powerful tool to monitor thoughts and control them as and when required. It helps to guide thoughts in the right direction. Journaling is also a wonderful way to become aware of one’s thoughts.
2. Sensory grounding technique: It involves using the sense of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell to anchor yourself in the present moment. Each time we catch ourselves ruminating about the past or future, we must use our sensory organs to bring back our focus on the things present around us.
3. Deep Breathing: Taking deep breaths helps in centring our thoughts. Each time we inhale and fill our lungs with air, we force our brain to focus on something that is happening internally at the current moment. It calms our nervous system and brings us back to the present immediately.
4. Gratitude: Focusing on your blessings instead of what is missing from your life, helps bring calmness and positivity in our lives. Appreciating the relations, resources and career opportunities we currently have makes us more grateful and soothes our brain.
   
   

Adhering to these practices will develop mindfulness and it will eventually help in living in the present. My grandmother remembers the exact fare of a bus ticket she bought 30 years ago, not because she had extraordinary memory, but because she lived each moment fully. That’s the secret, when we immerse ourselves in the present, life becomes vivid, memorable, and meaningful.

Finally, Life is not meant to be lived in the shadows of yesterday or the fears of tomorrow. It is meant to be experienced here and now. By practising awareness, we reclaim our energy, our joy, and our peace.

Always remember that the present is the only place where healing happens.

Aakshi Goel, Well-Being Enthusiast