Why Comparing Yourself to Others is Making You Miserable
"Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today."
-Jordan B. Peterson
"A flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it. It just blooms."
-Zen Shin
Are you living a good life? Has fate treated you well? Are you successful?
How we answer these questions greatly determines our self-esteem and self-worth. When we say we are living a good life and are successful in capitalizing on the good fortune we have been given, we feel fulfilled.
However, humans have a natural bias built into our psychology, which makes it difficult to believe our life is enough as it is. There are two reasons for this bias.
(1) We are built to compare our standing to others.
(2) As we improve in life, our Hedonic Set Point moves up to compensate for our new environment. Simply put, when we reach a goal, we are temporarily satisfied before a new goal appears.
No matter how fortunate or prosperous we are, we will compare that success to those around us. As the great Stoic philosopher Seneca says, "Comparison is the thief of joy."
If you live in the United States, in a million-dollar home with three bedrooms, you are killing it compared to most of the world. But if everyone else on your block lives in a two-million dollar home with at least five bedrooms, you feel like the bottom of the barrel.
Because of social media, this instinct to compare is worse now than at any point in human history. We see billionaires traveling the world on yachts with million-dollar watches. Women see Instagram models using filters, and setting impossible beauty standards. Men see fitness models whose livelihood depends on their ability to keep dangerously low body fat levels and hold themselves to the same appearance standards.
We know logically it is irrational to feel this way, yet we still let it rob our joy, peace, and contentment. This is not because we are inherently selfish or spoiled but because evolution built it into our biology to feel this way. I have written about this in the past. See links to Why We're Not Designed to Be Happy or Content and How to Realize Your Life is a Dream Come True in the notes.
How do we break out of this cycle? Like everything valuable in life, it takes awareness and practice. In this article, we will be covering two techniques you can put into practice to get off the Hedonic Treadmill and not let comparison continue to rob your joy.
Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today
The first strategy comes from Jordan Peterson: Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.
This is a practical strategy when you are starting toward a new goal. If you're trying to lose weight, build muscle, or get in shape, it's natural to see fitness models, or even friends, who have been working out consistently for years, and compare yourself to them.
The fact is, the only way to lose 50 pounds is one healthy decision at a time. Choosing to eat whole food (meats, vegetables) instead of processed food (pizza, chips). Drinking water instead of soda or beer. Going for a walk or run instead of bringing that Netflix show.
No single decision will make you a healthy person or fit. But if you can focus on doing a little better than you did yesterday, progress is the natural outcome.
James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, often writes about the importance of compounding interest when it comes to habits and long-term change. It can take a long time to undo the damage of an unhealthy lifestyle. But the longer you stick to healthy habits, the more the benefits compound and accumulate.
This is true for every positive change we want to make in our lives. Want to save more money? Small changes: not buying coffee at Starbucks every day or canceling subscriptions to gyms or apps you don't use. You will save more money, which allows you to gain more interest or invest more to get higher returns. This compounds more and more over time.
Want to master a skill? Inevitably, consistent time and effort grow your skills, which expands your opportunities, and gives you more chances to practice your skills and at a higher level.
But this all begins with a simple mental frame: do not compare yourself to others. Compare yourself to how you were yesterday, and try to do a little better.
Choose Your Own Hedonic Set Point
Another way to understand why comparison steals our joy is the bias of our "Hedonic Set Point." This is the phenomenon that no matter how hard you try to obtain more value out of life and become happier, you'll stay at the same baseline. The metaphorical "moving of the goalpost." Once you reach the goalpost, no matter how accomplished you may feel for a temporary time, the goalpost will inevitably move further away. And you will find yourself with the same level of discontentment as before you reached your last goal.
This is why it is called the Hedonic treadmill. One can run as fast as one can towards happiness and success but feel like they are staying in the same place.
How do we get off the Hedonic treadmill? By taking control of our Hedonic Set Point instead of letting it control us. By bringing awareness to this biological process, we can both recognize when it's happening and internally calibrate our Hedonic Set Point.
Instead of comparing our lives to those of celebrities, we see on social media, we could take a moment to compare our life to the over one billion people on the planet that don't have reliable access to clean water. We can take a moment to appreciate we are not in an active war zone or dealing with a natural disaster that kills tens of thousands of people.
I wrote an article on this called "How To Realize Your Life Is a Dream Come True." In it I argued that there are countless people in the world today, not to mention throughout history, who would consider their dreams to come true if they could live the life you are living right now. Being in control of your own Hedonic Set Point is about taking this perspective.
This doesn't mean we give up on pursuing our goals and becoming the best version of ourselves. Instead, it should serve as inspiration to feel a responsibility to do something great with the gifts and blessings of your life. To return to the world the good fortune it has given you through service, striving for self-actualization, and pursuing the most meaningful life imaginable.
Conclusion
Comparing ourselves to others is not inherently wrong. There are times when it is helpful. However, we are designed by evolution to do it way more often than is ultimately helpful and in ways that don't serve our own journey toward the highest good.
By practicing the habit of comparing ourselves to who we were yesterday, not who someone else is today, we can focus on those small daily improvements which compound over time to amazing results. By being aware of our Hedonic Set Point and intentionally broadening our perspective, we can both appreciate what we have more and pursue that which is truly most valuable to us.
As the Buddha stated, "We must be a light unto ourselves." In the end, we must live our own lives and go on our own journeys. If we spend too much of our life compared to others, we miss the unique gift that our own journey has to offer. We can find the balance between embracing the joy of our life and becoming more of who we were meant to be every day.
Notes: