Compared to What?

Dear Why Team member,

Ask the question:  "Compared to What?".... Why?

Because we humans cannot make a decision or express a judgement without a comparison.  The quality of our human experience is largely found in our ability and capacity to choose our comparisons wisely.  For example, do you compare your...

...car to the newer and nicer ones on the highway and thus feel a bit less-than?  Or do you compare your car to the ones on their last leg, feeling grateful for your good fortune?  

Hmm...  Who is doing the comparing?

Do you not have the choice to change your comparison, affect your perceptions and thus elevate your gratitude and life experience?  Are you not better positioned to serve another by doing so?  How much of our capacity to give of our selves is limited when we spend so much time wanting for our selves? Is not our perception of lack via a comparison?  Do we allow others to give us our comparisons?  Is not the underlying message of all advertising that we are not enough?  Implying that we could be, for example, in a new Lexus?!
Is that not the message that we can be more if we have more?

Compared to what?  

Consider making those choices, those comparisons, for yourself.
​
Recently I had lunch with a man who had survived falling from a tree.  After several months of surgeries and recuperation he was laughing when he told me that while he was lying in bed, people kept telling him over and over again how lucky he was.
The question to ask is always "Compared to What?"  Why? Because we choose the what and the what we choose determines our views.  This past year, for me personally, has revealed a constant refrain that I have found both interesting and comforting.  The thought that has arisen for me time and again is simply, "It could be worse."  When we acknowledge that no matter how difficult life can be, that it could be worse, we are expressing gratitude. 

"It could be worse" is an acknowledgement that the quality of our life experience is born from our choices of "Compared to What?".  It is very likely that no matter what happens to you today, it's a far better experience than say being in a Nazi concentration camp.  Sports psychologist Dr. Kevin Elko often invites his audiences to consider, "Compared to What?"  He has an additional exercise that is outstanding fuel for gratitude.  He says, "If you lost everything that matters to you yesterday, and you got it all back today, how would you feel?"

Compared to what - you choose the what, and the what you choose, improves your views.
Observe your comparisons.  Do they fuel an attitude of less-than or an attitude of more-than?  

If you lack generosity, now you know Why.  

No matter how difficult life can get, know that it could always be worse.  Find the gifts in the storm.  Know that you are rich beyond belief, you need only go beyond your current belief, to discover how rich you are.  And from that place of awareness, you will no doubt experience a life more abundant, becoming even more of what the world needs now.

Make it a great week,

Steve Luckenbach

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