Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Patience with Yourself

Had an experience today in school.  As I've mentioned before, I'm in a court reporting program and to my own amazement, I've been moving at an exceptional pace.  This is not to brag (well, maybe a little) but I'm doing better than I'd even hoped.

For some background, I am in the Theory class, which is where we learn how to use the specialized keyboard that is the steno machine.  We have a Theory manual with forty chapters total.  We practice two chapters at a time and when we feel confident in our knowledge, we test out.  If we pass, we move onto the next two chapters and repeat the process; if we fail... the teacher isn't happy that we wasted her time.

For the first twenty chapters, we are expected to test out once a week, and for the next twenty chapters, we're expected to test once every two weeks.  I plan to test out tomorrow and when I do, I'll be in Chapters 31/32.  If I had been following the regular order of events, this would not have happened until about Week 25 of the program.  Right now, I am in Week 8.  That's 17 weeks ahead of schedule and let me tell you, it feels great to see those numbers.  It gives me hope that I can move into a real career with a real salary before I know it.

If it's not obvious, I'm happy where I'm at.

Today, it was driven home to me that my classmates' are not.

One of the great things about this program is that even though there are average times and target goals for achievement, everybody moves at their own pace.  In fact, from day one, our teacher has said and continues to say, "Don't compare yourself to other students.  Everybody here moves at their own pace."

I knew that was going to be easier said than done.  We're humans and part of our society is comparing ourselves to other people and it's not always a bad thing if we use that judgment to make ourselves better.  Then there's the dark side of comparison: jealousy.

O! that rotten, devious, unhelpful green-eyed monster!  Jealousy is a monkey that rides on your back determined to tear down those who have what you don't.  Whether or not that monkey can actually latch onto the one you're jealous of, the person it will always bring down is you.

My classmate who I'll call Blondie erupted today.  She admitted up front that she was jealous and then went onto say how frustrating it was how everybody else in the class is trying to stay afloat while I don't even seem to try.  It was starting to weigh her down and began making her feel that she wasn't good enough and even muttered how she might just have to quit the program because she was never going to get it.

After several minutes of this, I could only shake my head.  No matter how I or anybody else tries to explain this, she is not doing bad at all.  In fact, she and one other classmate are on Chapters 21/22, which the average student doesn't reach until Week 16.  Again, I point out, that we're on Week 8.  She has managed to halve her time.  And she's not even the furthest behind.  The slowest student in our class has made it to Chapters 17/18, which normally wouldn't start until Week 12.  It is incredible to me that she hasn't realized how well she is doing.  Not just doing well, but surpassing.

What a melancholy state she is in, that instead of acknowledging how incredible she is (as I and others have pointed out many and many-a) she keeps her eyes focused on the "bad."  Instead of seeing her achievements, she's making an excuse to see a failure.

But how unique is this?  Not much at all.  I've fallen into this trap before, where no matter how well I'm doing at a task, I can't help but notice where I am not.  This attitude is across the board and will never lead the any member of the human family to happiness if we keep such a perspective.  Are there right words to make her or any of the others see how amazing they are?  Perhaps, but I've noticed that it's much easier to feed the monkey than to pull it off.  Following the path of least resistance is a human trait as well.

But this is a Silver Linings post: what's the silver lining?

None of our classmates' are starving.  That's a step in the correct direction.

3 comments:

  1. Comparing ourselves is rarely useful, unless, we use it to have something to strive for. Jealousy, however, is never useful. I think, in our society, it's a rare thing to have individuals truly happy for others successes. It's sad because when we ARE happy for others success, we can feel good about them, and we can feel good about ourselves.

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