You are unique🔗

When you don't understand the potential you have been blessed with, when you have not discovered that you are enough unto yourself, you automatically don't feel confident about the stuff inside you, and you start following others.

Buddha says, 'Nothing exists except in relationship.'

Nothing exists except in relationship. Suppose you were the only person on a new planet, would you call yourself tall or short? Ugly or beautiful? Rich or poor? Tell me! You can't call yourself anything, am I right? You will simply be you! That's all! Understand that this is the truth even when you are on this planet.

Each individual is unique. Can you compare a lion and a horse? Do we ever compare ourselves to flowers or birds or mountains? We simply enjoy their beauty. In the same way, why can't you see and enjoy other human beings also?

Although human beings appear to be the same, each one is unique and traveling on a different path. As long as you travel on your path with full concentration, you will experience fulfillment every minute. You won't even know what it means to look at another person's track.

A small story:

• One man was driving along a dark village road where there were no streetlights.
• He decided to follow the car in front of him to play it safe.
• They went on for some distance and suddenly the lead car stopped.
• The man went and crashed into it.
• 'Why didn't you signal that you were going to stop?' he screamed out.
• The driver put his head out and asked, 'Inside my own garage?'

If you concentrate on your own track, you will be continuously progressing and expanding your own capacity. You need to compare yourself with only yourself, never with others. You need to win yourself only by yourself, not by others. Every minute of comparison with others is a waste of time in your own progress.

Another small story:

A man was running in a 1000-metre race.

After running 200 metres, he looked back and saw that the rest of the runners were after him. Happily he ran on.

After 500 metres, he looked back again and was happy that he was still leading and ran on.

Every few meters, he did the same thing and finally won the race.

If the man had not looked back and instead concentrated only on running faster, he would have

Every minute of comparison with others is a waste of time in your own progress. won the race in a much shorter span of time. He would have probably set a new record! In the same way, in our lives also, if our concentration is always fully on our own progress instead of on others, we can actualize our entire potential.

We are all the time talking about conserving petrol, water and electricity. What about conserving our own energy? What about using our own energy in a proper way? If we used all our energy for our own expansion, just imagine how much we could achieve.

See, the thing about comparison is, you always measure yourself with the weakest link in yourself or your performance. That is the trouble. Never measure yourself with the weakest link. You don't have to be egoistic and claim yourself to be something great. But you can have some self-respect and realise that you are unique unto yourself. Then you won't measure yourself in this way.

When you have self-respect, you will appreciate that each one is unique and understand that there is no scope for comparison. This is also the first step towards feeling

Never measure yourself with the weakest link.

grateful for just being!

A small story:

A king once went to a master to attain some magical powers, so that he could become more powerful than his neighboring kings.

He sat in front of the master and started telling him the purpose of his visit.

The master listened patiently to the king.

He then told him to go into his garden, where a rose bush and a cactus plant were growing side by side. He told him, 'They are your teachers. They can teach you what you need to learn.'

The king went into the garden, saw the two plants and could not understand what he was meant to learn from them.

He came back to the master and asked, 'What do you mean, master? I am not able to understand how they will teach me.'

The master took him to the plants and explained, 'This cactus plant has been next to the rose plant for many years. Never once has it even aspired to become a rose plant. Similarly, the rose plant has never ever aspired to become a cactus plant. They just attend to their own duties of growing and blossoming every day. If man had been the cactus, he would have compared himself with the rose and felt jealous at the attention that the rose plant was getting from people. Or if he were the rose, he would have looked at the cactus enviously thinking how peaceful the latter was without the torture of getting plucked by people all day!' The master said*, '*This is the most powerful magical power you can attain!'

The two plants prospered because they used all their energy for their own growth. Not even an iota of energy was wasted on analyzing the other's growth.