“Comparison is the thief of joy.” — Theodore Roosevelt
I have a friend who works a stressful job. The job entails 10–12 hours days but with extra work comes great bonuses. It pushes my friend to work even harder. Recently my friend has come into a down year and the stress is becoming difficult to manage.
“Why are my coworkers having success and not me?” They asked.
Since my friend mentioned they had been moved to a new team and department of the company I asked them, “how long as your coworker been working in this department?”
“Three years.”
“How long have you?”
“Three months.”
Last year, my friend was a top performer at the company and won awards for it but this is a new challenge they have embarked upon. I suggested instead of them making comparisons to how their coworkers are doing, make comparisons to how you’re progressing. The only battle you should face is the progress of yourself. Everything else will be outside of your control.
Why Do We Compare Ourselves To Others
Comparing yourself to others is a natural thing to do. It’s how we understand where we are in our tribe.
When you start a new job or work within a team, the first thing you do is to see what everyone else is doing. You want to blend in.
We see who the highest performer is in the group and we want to be like them. It gives us a bar to reach. It sounds great, doesn’t it?
However, this thought process never ends. Once we start doing this, we end up comparing ourselves to everyone and end up in a circle of disappointment. There’s always going to be someone better than us at something. Eventually, it will become exhausting and lead to being burnt out and unmotivated.
Even comparing us to ourselves can sometimes be a detriment. Imagine you’re 50 years old and comparing yourself to your athletic abilities at 20 years old. It doesn’t sound productive but people sometimes do this. People become insecure and start abusing performance-enhancing drugs so they can relive the life they once lived.
We have a culture obsessed with looking young for as long as possible so we get cosmetic surgeries done. While it is important to try to look your best, there is a line between permanently altering the shape of your body versus exercising, eating right, and cleaning yourself up.
We live in a society where people look at what they don’t have instead of what they do. Older people want to look younger to feel youthful, younger people want to look older so others take them seriously. This causes us to overlook our strengths and inflate our weaknesses, creating greater insecurity within us.
How Comparing Yourself To Others Can Harm Your Life
Comparison can harm you because it can take the joy out of your work. It can make you feel inadequate when you’re not reaching the standards you see others reaching.
I’ve been working on making my first YouTube video in the last month. I have good experience with photography, understand lighting, and a basic understanding of sound production.
However, I’ve been comparing myself to YouTubers who have been making videos for over 5 years. YouTubers who spend the majority of their day filming videos and creating scripts. I’m a guy with a 9–5 job who’s doing it for fun. Of course, I’m not going to reach their standards.
This part of it was discouraging at the beginning of the filming process. I felt robotic in the first ten takes in front of the camera and almost decided to quit altogether.
Then one day, I decided to look back at some YouTubers I follow and find their first videos. Almost 100% of the time, the videos were cringy. They had poor lighting, the sound quality was mediocre and they were awkward in front of the camera.
If you’re someone who compares yourself to the highest achievers in the field right at the gate, pull yourself back. This will cause feelings of inadequacy and make you think you’ll never get there. Sometimes you can get there but you have to be patient and be consistent.
How It Creates Imposter Syndrome
Why do we have imposter syndrome? Where does it come from? I believe imposter syndrome comes from a place of comparing ourselves to others.
If you’re a writer but don’t feel like a writer, why? Is it because you see hundreds of other writers who have written hundreds of more articles than you? Or is it because you haven’t written a best-selling book?
If you’re concerned about what others think, then you are comparing yourself to others because you will start looking at the work others approve of.
Guess what? The other people you look up to, also have people who don’t approve of them. You probably overlook it because you don’t see their opinion as relevant. Why wouldn’t you think the same thing of those people who don’t approve of you?
While some form of approval is important because it helps us know if we’re heading in the right direction, it’s also detrimental if you’re looking for universal approval.
Opportunities Are Everywhere
If you let go of comparing yourself to others, the world will open itself up to you. You will begin to see all your shortcomings and feelings of inadequacy in a large part of your head. The important thing is you keep improving at what you love doing.
There are a ton of passions I have where I used to be terrible. Looking back, many past articles are cringy
I’m learning video editing right now and I suck at it. However, every time I get the hang of doing something, it starts to become fun.
We live in a world where there are thousands of people who put a label on themselves and make themselves qualified to do something. If you have more experience than the person who is paying you to do something for them, who’s the expert then?
In a world where you compare yourself to someone else, remember there is someone out there comparing themselves to you.
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Life can occasionally feel like it’s getting away from you. That is why I started Setup Sunday. Sunday is often the perfect day of the week to prepare yourself for what is going to come for the week ahead. If you want tips each week to look at how to set yourself up for a better future, start here and grow each week.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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Photo credit: Jason Dent on Unsplash