Praise, Criticism and Comparing Oneself With Others

The vital nature generally craves praise and becomes upset with criticism. This habit has been increased by the rise of social media with the ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ that appear on various posts, videos and blogs. People work hard to increase their ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ and make that almost an end in itself to justify their activities, ideas, actions and reactions to themselves through this exte
al form of validation.

One of the consequences of this fixation on exte
al validation is the temptation to compare oneself with others and thereby judge others and enhance one’s own internal sense of self-worth, or, in some cases, inner sense of defeat and failure if one does not ‘measure up’ in the comparison.

In reality, it is counter-productive and a misdirected focus to concentrate on the praise or blame one receives, as each individual has their own process, method, timing and objectives and not everyone follows the same path of development, trajectory or end-goal. Similarly, comparison with others is necessarily an exte
al and superficial action that does not comprehend the entirety of what anyone is here to do, or how they are here to do it. Sometimes what appears to be a circuitous route turns out to be a more comprehensive approach that bears its fruit later, but in a more complete way.

While we tend to seek praise, which feeds our vanity and thus, fulfills the vital nature’s desire, and become upset by criticism, which leads in many cases to a response of anger or depression, the deeper reality is that criticism actually can play an important role in our progress as it highlights for us areas we should at least be looking at within ourselves. While we should not give undue importance to either praise or blame, we can take the opportunity for an inward look to determine whether and to what extent some actual underlying fault or weakness is being exposed to our view.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “That is a great error of the human vital — to want compliments for their own sake and to be depressed by their absence and imagine that it means there is no capacity. In this world one starts with ignorance and imperfection in whatever one does — one has to find out one’s mistakes and to learn, one has to commit errors and find out by correcting them the right way to do things. Nobody in the world has ever escaped from this law. So what one has to expect from others is not compliments all the time, but praise of what is right or well done and criticism of errors and mistakes. The more one can bear criticism and see one’s mistakes, the more likely one is to arrive at the fullness of one’s capacity.”

“As for comparison with others, one ought not to do that. Each one has his own lesson to learn, his own work to do and he must conce
himself with that, not with the superior or inferior progress of others in comparison with himself. If he is behind today, he can be in full capacity hereafter and it is for that future perfection of his powers that he must labour….”

“But learn to welcome criticism and the pointing out of imperfections — the more you do so, the more rapidly you will advance.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 2, Looking at Oneself and Others, pp. 38-39