Comparison is the thief of joy
Comparison is the thief of joy
Comparing your personal journey to others journeys is the quickest way to fall into defeat. Instead, compare your past self to your current self and practice gratitude for your own situation.
Hello there beautiful people! My name is Ash Lamb, and this is The Visual Growth Letter. An illustrated newsletter about life and creativity.
You arrive home feeling great about yourself.
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Your new job is going well, and you're finally earning more than the median entry-level salary.
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You're thrilled to save money and invest it.
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You check yourself in the mirror and see the abs you've worked hard for over the last four months.
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You have two dates lined up with your Tinder matches this weekend.
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However, while scrolling on Instagram, you see your old classmate, John, announcing that he bought a new home and is dating a famous singer.
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Despite being two years younger than you, John is a millionaire due to his business endeavors since he was 14.
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You start feeling jealous and envious, comparing yourself to him, and wondering where you went wrong.
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Comparing yourself to others can make you feel like a loser.
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However, we tend to compare ourselves with people who share similarities with us, like gender, age, hobbies, work, or country.
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We do this because we understand the world in relative rather than absolute terms, and we need a point of reference.
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Was Darko Milicic a good basketball player?
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Most people that follow basketball would say NO – he’s considered one of the biggest NBA flops in history.
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But that’s if our point of reference is Lebron James or a different NBA superstar.
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If we look more globally, 99.999% of the population couldn’t even make it to the NBA in the first place and Darko Milicic could beat most people playing 1vs1.
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It’s all about the point of reference.
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Why comparing yourself to others is flawed
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Let’s do a little thought experiment. Let’s say you have the urge to compare your net worth to your old classmates.
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In this case, your variable is money. And your logic – the more, the better. The more money you have in your account, the more successful you are.
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Well, according to this logic, Jeff Bezos is the most successful person in the world with approximately $130 billion. But would you really want to be Jeff Bezos?
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His marriage ended up in a wreck, and he definitely isn’t the most attractive person (no offense, Jeff). Plus everyone is constantly shaming him for not donating more of his wealth.
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The problem is that most of the time when we compare ourselves to someone else we take the best thing in their life as a point of reference and disregard any other aspects of their lives.
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You cannot cherry-pick the good parts of other people’s lives and remove the rest. It would be cool to take Jeff Bezos’s money, Brad Pitt’s looks, and Albert Einstein’s intelligence and have all of it but I’m sure that you are able to see how ridiculous it sounds.
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“So what? I will take Bezos’ looks and broken marriage for his billions”
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Sometimes we justify our tendency to compare that the other person indeed has a better life than our own even with their struggles.
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But here is the thing – you don’t know what you don’t know.
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Avicii seemed like he was living a dream – a superstar DJ, traveling the world and making millions. Yeah, being a celebrity can be a hassle with the paparazzi and crazy work schedules, but most people would happily trade their problems for his. Or at least that’s what they thought.
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Turns out that it wasn’t that easy for Avicii and he ended up killing himself. If you are reading this, Avicii had a tougher time than you did even though he had everything you are wanting right now.
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Imagine you were buying a house just because it had a nice living room and not looking at any other rooms. Maybe the bedroom has a rotten ceiling and the toilet doesn’t even work. It would be insane!
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The point is that you will never know what someone else is really going through or what is coming (i.e. a deadly disease), so there is literally no point in comparing your life to his.
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Comparing your life to others is not an apples-to-apples comparison because life overall entails so many variables that we just can’t account for.
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Of course, you can compare a specific skill to someone else’s in a particular area but just keep in mind that no matter how good you are at this particular skill – it doesn’t affect how “successful” you are overall in life.
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What you should do is compare yourself to how you were yesterday and try to be the best version you can be.
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It’s the only fair comparison you can make and the one that will actually benefit you in the long term.
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And when you see your friend John living his seemingly more successful life and the envious feeling arising – ask yourself if you really wanted to trade your life for his just based on how his “living room” looks like…
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This text is an adaptation from this Reddit enlightening post I found months ago from an anonymous user. I really felt like I had to share it with you because it helped me so so much!
Thank you so much for reading!
I truly appreciate your readership and support. Without you, this project wouldn't be the same. :)
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Great love and respect,
Ash Lamb
Great post, Ash. I am reminded of the Hedonic Treadmill in reading this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill
It's the constant growth in happiness that people often seek. It doesn't matter what the absolute magnitude of happiness is. Someone who has a high level of happiness but seems to have plateauing growth may feel unhappy compared to someone who has a moderate level of happiness but steady growth.