Three Psychological Reasons You Need to Stop Comparing Yourself to Others
By: Zulie Rane
Tags: Life Lessons, Social Media, Psychology, Productivity, Mental Health

Three Psychological Reasons You Need to Stop Comparing Yourself to Others

Just stop. Don’t do it.

“selective focus photo of black pug” by Charles Deluvio 🇵🇭🇨🇦 on Unsplash

What’s the best way to feel inadequate, no matter how successful you are by objective standards?

Comparing yourself to other people.

How many times can you look at yourself, look at someone else and feel really garbage about yourself?

Speaking from personal experience as a seasoned comparison-ist, it’s a lot.

People put their whole lives up on social media nowadays, making it easier than ever to feel inadequate with just a click of a button!

Whether it’s looking at an old college friend’s LinkedIn profile (way more successful than me) or looking at other cat accounts on Instagram (racking up many more followers than mine), I compare myself to other people every day. And I always make myself feel bad.

Chances are, you do too. Here’s are three reasons why you need to stop — and the best way to do it.

1. It’s all a lie

“person lying on lounger under patio umbrella” by chris tang on Unsplash

It’s crazy I have to say this, but it’s worth repeating: what people post on social media is not their real life.

Your college roommate that posted that amazing night out on Snapchat actually got stuck looking after her friend, who got way too drunk.

That coworker that went on that gorgeous (and very Instagrammable) holiday to Paris got food poisoning halfway through.

If Selena Gomez, arguably the most successful celebrity today, gets anxiety from her Instagram, nobody is invulnerable.

Before you compare your life to someone you see on social media, just remember you’re only seeing one very polished facet of their life.

2. Unequal footing

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

This brings me to my next point: we don’t all live equal lives. Some people are born into more money, or went to a better school, or had individual tutors, or got lucky with their job, or any other factor that’s completely outside your control.

If this is the case, you literally are comparing apples to oranges. How can you try to compare your life with someone you don’t know anything about? You have no idea about the legs up they’ve had in order to enjoy the success they’re posting about.

Consider this: when you look at, for example, Taylor Swift on Instagram, you have to take into consideration that she has a personal trainer, a nutritionist, a makeup artist, a hairstylist and a fashion stylist. Personally I have none of those, so it makes no sense for me to compare myself to her.

Conversely, you might have certain advantages you take completely for granted when posting about your own life. You might be better looking than your neighbor, or maybe you don’t have an autoimmune disease that would stop you from living your full potential.

Ultimately, we all start at different points in life. Inevitably, our successes and failures are at least a little bit due to that. Comparing yourself to someone who started somewhere else doesn’t tell you anything about them, or yourself.

3. It’s not motivating, it’s demoralizing

“woman lying on bed” by Yuris Alhumaydy on Unsplash

When was the last time you saw a fit celeb on TV and vowed that night would be the last night you spent eating Cheeze-its in your comfy pants and watching Netflix?

(Full disclosure, I do this on a weekly basis.)

And how many times did you actually get up, start working out more, and decrease your Cheeze-it consumption?

If you’re anything like me, probably not that often.

Comparing ourselves to others has been demonstrated to not have any motivational effect — in fact, it has the opposite effect and can make us give up.

So why waste your time focusing on other people?

All you can change in life is yourself. All you have control over are your own choices. Comparing ourselves to others is easy but ultimately pointless and demoralizing.

What can you do instead?

Take a more nuanced view when looking for motivation and inspiration. Try to be genuinely happy for other people and their accomplishments — tough, I know — and you’ll be more motivated yourself.

The best way to do this? Focus on how you personally can achieve what you see other people doing, and determine if that’s what you really want.

For example, in an example above I talked about how one of my LinkedIn connections was doing way better than me, job-wise. Did I want that high-powered job? No, not really.

Meanwhile, the cat Instagram accounts that are doing better than me — I do want to accomplish that. But instead of comparing, I see what they’re doing successfully and try to apply it to myself (or my cats’ IG, in this case).

Either way, I’m not comparing myself — I’m just checking out their accomplishment and learning from it. And that’s better than feeling like crap.