Gordon Flett

And it's very sad that many famous people still have the problems of not feeling great about themselves due to that unmet need to matter.

Yes, there's an incredible amount of comparison that goes on, and it's really destructive.

There's no way to win the comparison game, especially now when people are putting crafted images of perfect lives online that are not actually real.

But I do remember in terms of social comparison, the best example I can give of somebody who was a perfectionist who compared too much was the late, great Brian Wilson, who just recently passed away, who suffered from extreme mental health problems that became well-known to everyone today.

And he was comparing himself to the Beatles and driving himself to the point of right over the edge.

And at one point he said that he couldn't keep up with the Beatles.

The Beach Boys, of course, were remarkable in their own right, but he needed to try and keep up with the Beatles in the heydays of Beatlemania.

Yet this is Brian Wilson who becomes famous and has entertained people around the world and will continue to even as his legacy.

But he was torturing himself through these comparisons and

You know, the lesson to people listening will be there's no way to win the comparison game, even if you're somebody as famous as Brian Wilson, because you can always find a way.

Yeah, I've heard Olympic champions talk about how they're frustrated because if they'd only not made a mistake, including some of our own Canadian champions, nobody would have beat that record for a longer time.

Yet, you know, you did it.

You won the gold medal.

Donovan Bailey talked about the mistake he made coming out of the blocks as he set the world record and won the gold medal at the Atlanta Olympics.

And later he's thinking about the mistake that he made because he could have gone faster and then his record would have been protected longer.

Yeah.

And I think not only are they caught up in terms of ruminating about mistakes and falling short, I believe they also ruminate and brood over interactions where people have made them feel like they don't matter.

And what happens is that that then is a bridge to depression.

So imagine if you're feeling depressed and then you're also ruminating about why you're feeling depressed and then you're ruminating and thinking over and over about why aren't people seeing me and treating me as more significant.

and why is my friend so significant and i'm not what is it about me and then people unfortunately conclude well they must be defective they must have some shortcoming that and they're just getting treated the way they deserve to be treated when in fact they don't deserve to be treated that way