Let’s talk about comparison

In the therapy space, one thing that my fellow therapists and I see day in and day out is clients comparing themselves with other people. 

“I’m not athletic enough”, “I’m not as driven as she is”, “I don’t go out on weekends like people my age do”, “they have more friends than I do”

These are only a few ways in which we as people choose to compare ourselves with those around us. What’s worse? Scrolling through hashtag #Instagram for a mere 5 minutes reinforces our hashtag #confirmationbias – confirming that other people have it better than us in work, play and life. 

It is a common human tendency to pit the worst we see in ourselves with the best of what we see in others. Obviously, this results in an uneven playing field. It’s like putting a fish and a monkey in a tree climbing competition and hoping to judge them both by the same token. We as humans are far too complex and diversely skilled to be able to fit into one category, but when we compare, we essentially try to box up each one of us based on a self-imposed blueprint.

Far too often do we try to thwart our own wishes and selves by hoping to be like someone else, doing things that we don’t even like doing just because “they” do it. In a session with a young adult, we came head to head with this phenomenon. Scrolling through her hashtag #socialmedia feed on a weekend night, she found herself feeling increasingly anxious and brought this to the table in the next session with me. “I wish I had plans on a Saturday night but instead I was in bed reading a book. Why can’t I be social like them?” As we explored this, she realised that she didn’t even like going out to party and would rather finish reading her book. Societal expectations of doing what is deemed as “cooler” is causing crippling anxiety amongst our youth, literally. 

The one way to work on this pattern of comparing ourselves to anybody else is by realising that YOU have value in your own way. This includes unlearning how you’ve been taught to place value in some traits and characteristics over others. 

Case in point: A faulty kitchen faucet can inconvenience the best of us. Even the best chef in the world cannot prep his meal without the plumber swooping in to fix what it is broken. Neither is superior, the chef or the plumber. Both have their own utility in our world and we need each of them to function smoothly. 

Never let anybody’s successes pull you down. You have your own value in the world. It’s time to value our value.