Are You Living By Comparison?

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Are You Living By Comparison?

“Comparison is the thief joy,” said the late American ex-President Theodore Roosevelt. By this statement, Roosevelt was referring to what happens when we become wrapped up in comparison. We are unable to be happy when we live by comparison for there will always be someone better, smarter, faster, etc. I’m not sure who Teddy Roosevelt was comparing himself to. Maybe I’m a bit biased, but the man was pretty incredible. But for the rest of us out there, comparing ourselves to others often has detrimental effects on our levels of happiness. I wrote before about the backwards facing eye which plagues Rasmus, the subject of his Lutheran priest uncle’s letters in Matias Daalgard’s Don’t Despair. Rasmus is dealing with an existential crisis, and one of his sources of unhappiness is his distrust of the world around him and the need to analyse everything. In relation to these habits, another source of his unhappiness is his need to constantly compare himself to others in terms of success.

“You compare yourself to your ideal conception of yourself, and you get your ideal conception of yourself by comparing yourself to others. For you, the idea is to be a little better than the others – comparatively. When the only concept you have of your success is comparative, then nothing can stop comparison from running amok.”

It’s human nature to compare ourselves with others. By observing adults as children, we pick up on social norms and behaviours which come to dictate our own actions. This extends into adulthood. When you start at a new job, for example, you pick up on what the more established colleagues do – how long they take for lunch, how long do people normally stay until, etc. This is not the issue. In Don’t Despair, Rasmus’ issues with comparison stem from his inability to gain a concept of himself through any method other than by comparing himself to others. The need to constantly compare himself to everyone else turns into a never-ending cycle, as there is always someone new to compare to. When you are doing this, you only have a concept of yourself in terms of how you stand against other people. I think that this is something many of us can relate to.

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The comparison problem, as we all know, is currently exacerbated by social media; there has been a lot of talk discussing the matter. We have more access to other people’s information. We can find out exactly what that guy we worked with on a project that one time is doing with his career, we know that girl we met at a party five years ago recently became engaged, we know that someone else is doing something cool. We see examples of other peoples’ success and immediately judge our own accomplishments against that. We wouldn’t let someone come up to us and dictate what we should want or strive for, so why do we allow ourselves to live up to a standard set by somebody else? Sometimes I start to think Roosevelt was lucky to live in a social media free world.

“And when you do better than others, how could you do anything other than worry about whether the others will catch up or overtake you?”

Once we have become successful, as Rasmus is described to have done, we are still unable to stop comparing ourselves to other people. We are still always worried that our success is fleeting and someone else will be waiting to steal the spotlight from us. We are barely able to relish in our accomplishments before we move on to the next concern. I am particularly guilty of this habit. Too many of us operate with a zero-sum approach to success, and this is the attitude which leads us to become caught in the comparison cycle. Fortunately, there is something that is truly wonderful about success and happiness—they are not finite resources. Someone else’s success doesn’t reduce your capacity for success, and someone else’s happiness doesn’t detract from the good things you already have in your life. If we can remember this, then maybe we will be able to break the cycle of comparison once and for all.

If the topic of self comparison truly resonates with you, I suggest you check out Don’t Despair. Dalsgaard offers a unique perspective on the topic, as well as providing insights to related topics that unknowingly have hindered our ability to become truly happy.