Comparing Yourself With Others? – How & Why We Do It?
From the time we are born, we find ourselves being compared with others. Mothers compare their baby’s complexion, weight, and whatnot with other babies around. Whenever a kid does something upsetting, parents don’t hesitate to use comparisons to stop the act. Your poor (or sometimes even 99.5%) grades bring the wrath of comparisons upon you. Over the course of our childhood and teenage life, we go through countless comparisons. Especially, at such a tender age, these experiences shape our brains in an unexpected way so much so that we think it is our innate nature to compare ourselves with others.
Social media sites have exacerbated the problem on an almost irreversible scale. The problem is not that on social media people only post the moments that would catch the most eyeballs, bringing likes and comments. But the fact is people are seeing a lot more of what’s happening in other people’s lives than they are supposed to and care about. As humans, for most of our comparisons, we compare our good moments with others’ best (at least from the look of it) moments, social media has made it a more common and unnoticeable behavior.
I would admit that I have been both a victim and a perpetrator. I don’t know who is to blame here. It has been passed down from generation to generation without any thought and will continue to be. But there is hope. We may not ever be able to eliminate this behavior altogether, but we can put conscious effort and thinking to bring it under control and pass a bit less of it to the next generation.
It took me a lot of time to notice this behavior and put in deliberate thought and effort to do something about it. My complete perspective changed when I read a Twitter thread from Naval Ravikant on comparison. I couldn’t find the exact tweet, but I can explain it in my own words. He said, when we compare ourselves with others, deep inside we only compare those selective aspects of an individual that we desire. For example, I wish I had such great communication skills as him/her. I wish I could have such a prestigious title/job like his. It’s an unfair and incomplete approach to desire and comparison. If we really want to compare (though we shouldn’t), then we should desire to take everything that person has both good and bad. When desiring to have muscles like someone, desire to do as much hard work and grinding as they had put into building it.
You want to own a business like someone else. Don’t just desire to have the outcome or the good part of the business. But also desire to take on the sleepless nights, worries, and stress that comes along with running a business.
I would call this a “full and fair comparison”. It’s hard to get away from comparison habit. However, the least you can do is change your approach to it. Whenever you find yourself being compared or are comparing, switching your approach would make you realize how biased we are in our comparison.