The comparison trap

Last weekend, I went to The Big Retreat Festival. It was the first wellbeing festival I’d been to, and by the end of day one I noticed something happening in my mind.

I was comparing.

The activities, the teaching, the atmosphere, the organisation, almost everything was being compared with the World Yoga Festival, which I’ve been to several times. And I wasn’t enjoying the comparisons, as The Big Retreat was coming up short.

But then I realised something: the festival wasn’t necessarily the problem, my expectations were.

The Big Retreat is a wellbeing festival. It never claimed to be a yoga festival. And it was in its first year, whereas the World Yoga Festival has had years to learn, refine and work out what works. So why was I expecting the two to be the same?

This is where my yoga practice came in.

One of the ideas in the Yoga Sutras is yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ — often translated as the settling of the fluctuations of the mind. Our minds are constantly thinking, comparing, judging and creating stories about what is happening. And it’s very easy to mistake those thoughts for reality. I could have carried on down that path for the whole weekend, collecting evidence that this festival wasn’t as good.

Instead, I tried to do what yoga has taught me to do: Notice. Pause. Get curious.

Ah. I’m comparing. Why?

From then, nothing about the festival changed, but my perspective had and I enjoyed the rest of the weekend much more. It reminded me that sometimes it isn’t the situation itself that creates our distress. It’s the story we tell ourselves about it.

Yoga doesn’t mean stopping every thought. It gives us the opportunity to notice what’s happening in our minds, and create enough space to choose how we respond.

That, to me, is yoga extending far beyond the mat.