Comparisons are something that we do naturally. But there's a lot of things that we do naturally that aren't really good for us. Comparisons are one of those. Comparisons are really the basis for judgments. When you're judging people, it implies you are superior to them so you are worthy of judging them. That in itself is dangerous, because it feeds yourself importance. But what's worse than that, is that when we judge others we're judging them on some feature activity, or basis that we actually feel bad about ourselves. When we judge others we judge ourselves.
{{ callout(text="...emotional baggage that we carry acts as fuel for the fire ...") }}
One of the results of my meditation on my past is that I've noticed I've become a lot less judgmental. I noticed that all the emotional attachments and emotional baggage that we carry acts as fuel for the fire of judging. I would go so far as to say that our emotional baggage compels us to make judgments in comparisons.
{{ callout(text="...the more difficult it is to resist the temptation ...") }}
Think of it like a group of people; if the group is small it's easy to resist the group, but when the group is larger and larger and larger it becomes more and more difficult to resist the activities and flow of the group. To put it another way it becomes difficult to go against the group. Same with our emotional baggage. The more emotional baggage we have the more difficult it is to resist the temptation to judge others and make comparisons. However this causes stress because then we have to live up to our judgments so people don’t judge us. We end up living our lives watching ourselves carefully, feeling stress about all our actions. Since we judge others, we assume it's only natural that they judge us. This puts us on guard and creates a stressful situation.
{{ callout(text="... even better if your goals are abstract ...") }}
Comparisons, judgments and valuations are all unhealthy in the long run. You need to make comparisons in order to assess your progress towards your goals, but these are not unhealthy if you're judging things or situations. They're even better if your goals are abstract as opposed to concrete. Abstract goals push us to become better humans. Concrete goals tend to feed our crass desires for pleasure.
Dropping as much emotional baggage as possible makes avoiding these unhealthy situations a whole lot easier. It takes a lot less self-discipline and a lot less struggle to fight these tides of comparison. So by doing my meditation on my past, I'm starting to feel lighter and more at ease with who I am and what I'm doing.