MIRAI CODE · Bloom Your Own Way
To You Who Keeps Comparing Yourself and Feeling Small
A rose and a sunflower never compete — and you have a season, and a way of blooming, all your own.
Mirai — a Future Decoder who reads the sounds of your name
You open a social feed, and something in you tightens. Everyone else seems to be doing so well — and me?
Compare, and sink. Compare again, and sink again. Are you caught, too, somewhere inside that loop?
In my readings, I meet so many genuinely lovely people who have lost all their confidence — "someone like me…" — from measuring themselves against everyone around them.
— And the truth is, even now, I am terribly bad with social media.
I glance at the impression numbers and my heart sinks. "The young ones are so good at this…" To this day, I don't even really understand how to post a Story.
Come to think of it, it was always this way. Back when I ran a cooking class, my theme was food that's good for your body. But the times had turned to the "made-for-Instagram" boom — glittering tables, gorgeous homes, glamorous celebrity cooking classes, all of it lifted up and celebrated.
(At this rate, no one will come to my little class anymore.) Get the photogenic dishware. Arrange the flowers. Change the whole menu — I have to. And the harder I strained to catch up to "those people," the plainer, the shabbier my own class began to look to me.
— The more I compared, and compared, the more I came, steadily, to dislike myself.
It hurts because you're measuring by someone else's ruler
When comparison leaves you aching, it is not because you have no worth.
It is because you are measuring yourself with someone else's ruler.
But every person has a different sound, and a different way of coming into bloom. Just as we would never hold a rose up against a sunflower — you have a season, and a way of flowering, that is yours, and only yours.
The only one worth comparing to is yesterday's you
When the urge to compare grows too strong, try — gently — changing who you compare against.
Not someone out there. But the you of yesterday.
A little kinder than yesterday. A single step further along. When you can notice that small step, the heart begins, quietly, to come free of the ache of comparing.
The sounds of your name reveal your own way of blooming
The sounds of your name carry the charm that is yours alone, and a way of flowering that belongs to no one else.
When people come to know it, so many feel something loosen, deep inside: "Ah — I don't have to try to become someone else."
Your sound is one of a kind, in all the world. It was never a thing to be measured against anyone else at all.
What I am really doing, in every reading
So, within a reading, I put into words and hand back to you the charm of the sound that is yours alone.
The very place you had thought of as a flaw turns out to be a beauty that only you possess. And when a person sees that, the world around them stops pressing in.
In the end
When you're about to sink under a comparison, please — remember this.
Your worth is never, ever decided by how you measure against someone else.
You, just as you are, are already more than lovely enough. Let's bring your own flower into bloom, in your own time.