Note: This article was originally published in Substack on 15 Mar. 2024

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Comparison is like porn. You can’t help but look. And If you look long enough, you might mistake it for reality.

There is a pithy saying, “Compare and despair.” Based on the teachings on the causes of suffering (dukkha) found in the Four Noble Truths in Buddhist teachings, comparison is a source of suffering.

Jesuit James Martin points out that comparison

Leads us away from the True Self, and encourages us to be someone else, someone whom God did not create.”

Easier said than done.

And I doubt this is a fresh insight. Given the content our eyes are constantly exposed to these days, it’s take a certain finesse to not compare.

I hope to provide some distinctions to help us along this path, and maybe get us unstuck from the mire of suffering that we can so easily slip into from comparing with others.

Let’s compare each of these seven distinctions.

1. Compare the Results vs. Compare the Process

It’s easy to envy the performance of someone else. We get “wowed” by their achievements, and end up envying the fruits of their labour, while failing to see the process that led that.

Instead of comparing the results, compare the process of what and how they worked on things.

Consider what James Clear, author of Atomic Habits said,

To improve, compare little things.

• marketing strategies
• exercise technique
• writing tactics

To be miserable, compare big things.

• career path
• marriage
• net worth

To be miserable, compare the outcomes, the results of a person’s effort with your inferior performance.

To improve, compare the micro-processes, the tiny little things that one does to become good at what they do.

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2. Compare Locally vs. Compare Globally

A few years ago, I played a little thought experiment with my two teenage nieces. I asked them the following question:

“Imagine a very long street, where everyone in the world lives in. Those on the left are the poorest, and those on the right are the richest. Where do you think you are on this Dollar Street?”

The teens in my family placed themselves at the middle. The truth was closer to, at the very least, the 85th percentile or above.

This was based on Anna Rosling Rönnlund’s, daughter of Hans Rosling, project called, Dollar Street. For 15 years, she documented stories, pictures and videos of people from all over the world, attempting to create a global profile of everyday life on different income levels understandable.

So what does a bedroom of someone living right in the middle of Dollar Street look like?

This does not look anywhere like my two nieces’ bedrooms. At the middle of Dollar Street, this was a family of six, living at $654/month.

It turned out that my nieces responded similarly to Swedish students who were studied in the Dollar Street project. Swedish students thought they are in the middle when they are in the top 1 %.

Comparing with those locally, from a “zoomed-in” perspective, causes us to experience a cognitive bias, a kind of spotlight effect.

But, when we compare with those globally, from a “zoomed-out” perspective, we are likely to be confronted with one of the following:

1. Our lack of knowledge from a global perspective, or
2. Humbling ourselves.

“Humility,” as Iris Murdoch said, “Is a respect for reality.”

For more on this, watch Anna Rosling Rönnlund TED talk.

See how the rest of the world lives, organized by income | Anna Rosling Rönnlund

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To be miserable, “zoom-in” and compare with your nearest neighbour.

To improve, “zoom-out” as far as you can to gain perspective.

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3. Compare Within vs. Compare Between

Most people intuitively know this point, but it’s useful to be reminded.

Don’t compare yourself to others; compare yourself to your past performance. Compare to your previous benchmark and aim for incremental improvements.

When we compare to others, we become prone to #1. Comparing the Results.

When we compare to our past selfs, we now have a clear reference what improvement looks like.

To be miserable, engage in “comparitition”1 (i.e., compare and compete).

To improve, compare to your past self and take steps.

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4. Compare Based on Someone’s External Life with Your Internal Life vs. Based on Someone’s Inner-Life with your Inner-Life.

Once, an elderly woman told me that she could not fathom the possibility that I would actually have any distressed clients who lived in Peppermint Grove, Perth’s most expensive suburb.

This is an important point, especially for children, teens, and adults who are constantly exposed to social media feeds.2 When we are constantly fed with images of people’s external “best lives,” even though we know so, we have a tendency to conflate the difference between our inner and outer lives.

To be miserable, assume that someone’s external life is a direct correlation to their inner-life.

To improve, learn to introspect. And learn from others who radiate wisdom and deep joy that comes from within (see #7. Look Sideways vs. Look Up).

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5. Think Like a Silver Medalist vs. Think Like a Bronze Medalist.

Writer Derek Silver said,

Imagine the Olympics, where you have the three winners of a race standing on the podium: the gold, the silver, and the bronze.

Imagine what it’s like to be the silver medalist. If you’d been just one second faster, you could have won the gold! Damn! So close! Damn damn damn! Full of envy, you’d keep comparing yourself to the gold winner.

Now imagine what it’s like to be the bronze medalist. If you’d been just one second slower, you wouldn’t have won anything! Awesome! You’d be thrilled that you’re officially an Olympic medalist and get to stand on the winner’s podium.

Comparing up versus comparing down: Your happiness depends on where you’re focusing.

I’ve met a lot of famous musicians. The miserable ones were upset that they weren’t more famous, because they’d bitterly compare themselves to the superstars. The happiest ones were thrilled to be able to make a living making music.

Though there might be some caveats to how silver and bronze medalists actually think after a competition3, I think the metaphor is still useful.

To be miserable, compare yourself to the gold medalist based solely on outcome.

To improve, own the fruits of your labour AND work on the specific things to improve in that particular context (See #1 Compare the Results vs Compare the Process).

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6. Amplify Weaknesses vs. Amplify Strengths

Our strengths will fail to serve us when we do not acknowledge and amplify them. Your strength is something that strengthens you.

Working on our weaknesses are needed especially when there are deficits. Consider the following: What is the value of a restaurant’s food vs. the cleanliness of the floor?

Imagine if you run a 3-Star Michelin restaurant with spectacular food, but the floor was littered with last week’s leftover from 5-year-old Tommy’s spaghetti bolognaise, plus occasional sightings of roaches and rats. Clearly, it doesn’t make sense to improve the food in such a situation.

Mop the floor.

To be miserable, focus exclusively on your weaknesses and ignore what’s in your nature, your inherent strengths that make you, you.

To improve, leverage and amplify your personal strengths that resonate with who you are as a person. Don’t under-estimate them. There is no one like you.

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7. Look Sideways vs. Look Up.

Finally, similar to #2. Compare Locally vs Compare Globally and #3. Compare Between vs. Compare Within, we need to guide our eyes. Where our attention is, that’s where life is.

To look sideways, is like running a marathon with our heads tilted to the left and to the right all the time (watch that kerb!).

To “look up,” is to find mentors, role models, instrumental luminary figures, who become our guiding light. We are sorely lacking elders, people who have walked before us, to be our co-journeyers.

When we lack a guiding light, we fall to our lower desires. We start to turn our gaze sideways.

Many of us are professional orphans. We are trying to grow and develop, for the most part, on our own. In Caring for Those Who Care, a post for psychotherapists, I wrote,

Maybe I was slow to fully realise this, but as I worked with others in the helping profession, I see how orphaned many of us feel. Orphaned in a sense that we receive little to no guidance after becoming licensed, accredited or graduated. Most PD activities doesn’t seem to address this.

Some might call the experience of wounds and betrayals that they carry from the workplace as moral injuries; others feel like their development is of no concern to those who hire them; many are teetering on the brink of burnout.

One person commented on that post saying,

I feel strongly about. Seeking help, being vulnerable and showing our fallibilities is something we as helping professionals do not do well, nor are we very good at self-reflection…

I think this is key as health professionals. Looking after each other, TRUSTING each other.

Many are also emotional orphans. Many people don’t know you on the inside in a deep level. In turn, we become stranger to a strange interior land. Consequently, our gaze and attention gets turned outward, on what’s available out there, on social media platforms, influencers who are touting the best way to lead a best life, and providing you a tantalising hope for a better you, and even potentially misleading you to self-diagnose your mental health problems (Read

Todd Kashdan excellent post on this: The Troubling Trend of Self-Diagnosing Mental Health.

To be miserable, keep comparing with your peers in the absence of guiding figures in your life.

To improve, seek out guiding lights.

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Threats of Envy and Jealousy

We colloquially use “envy” and “jealousy” interchangeably, but they are not the same.

To envy, is to focus on the “have-nots,” in comparison with the success of others. Often times, the envier and the envied are social equals. (e.g., “My colleague just upgraded to a Tesla”).

To be jealous, is to experience a threat on our “haves”, our valued relationship (e.g., “Who is my girlfriend really hanging out with at the library?”)

Psychologically, we must also look into our own insecurities and fears that fuel this, and make the distinctions between ways that lead us to become miserable, and ways that can actually help us improve. If left unchecked, comparison can become the gateway drug to envy and jealousy.

Realistically, with the current technological platforms we have created in our culture, the comparison issue is not going to be solved overnight. It’s going to be everyone’s on-going project. My hope is we keep a contemplative and discerning disposition on this, based on the seven distinctions that we’ve listed in the table above, so that we can pick ourselves up—or maybe help each other out—when we fall into the quicksand of comparisons.

When you focus on what you lack, you lost what you have.

When you focus on what you have, you get what you lack.

~ Greg McKeown, Effortless, pp. 58-59, 2021.

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P/S: THANKS FOR GETTING TO THE END. I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR WHICH OF THE SEVEN POINTS RESONATE WITH YOU.

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