Comparison is the thief of joy" – or: How you’re making yourself unhappy right now

Comparing yourself to others isn’t unusual at all—it's actually quite normal. Unfortunately, we tend to compare ourselves in ways that don’t do us any favors and often leave us feeling worse. But just because it’s common to engage in these “devaluing” comparisons doesn’t mean you have to keep doing it. In fact, there are several tricks that can help you reduce—or even reverse—the negative effects comparisons can have on your self-esteem and overall happiness.

In this post, I’ll first share some of my own experiences with comparison and what science has to say about it. In the second part, I’ll show you how I’ve learned to limit the impact of comparisons and their negative effects in my own life.

The title of this article is a quote often attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, the early 20th-century U.S. President. When I first read it, I felt it hit the nail on the head. In a short and punchy way, it captures how social comparison can affect us negatively—especially in the age of social media and its ever-present, carefully curated self-presentation. It’s more important than ever to take a closer look at this topic.

Comparisons are an everyday thing—just like not feeling good about myself. Whenever I open social media, a part of my joy slips away.

What first sparked my interest in the topic of social comparison was my own experience. Whenever I saw the self-presentation of my fellow breathwork practitioners on social media, I would regularly spiral into a downward cycle of comparison. Every time I checked Facebook or Instagram to see what other breathworkers were doing, I felt a pang of envy and irritation in my gut.

“Look at so-and-so! She’s hosting a weekend retreat.”
“And this one, who trained with me, is offering a four-week course—and yet another is hosting some fancy event.”
“And breathworker Y has already guided thousands of people, even though he hasn’t even completed formal training.”
“And wow, look at X—how does she manage to do all this cool work while staying super slim and attractive, always finding time for surfing, traveling, and partying in all these amazing places?!”

And predictably, from there, the train would head straight into self-criticism:
“Why don’t I have that many participants at my events?”
“Why haven’t I launched a course yet?”
“Why haven’t I hosted a retreat?”
“Why don’t I seem to have that much fun?”
“And why don’t I look that good?!”

As you can see, the possibilities for self-deprecating comparisons are practically endless…

As sad as this behavior and this chain of thoughts and feelings may be, it also sparked my curiosity. So I embarked on a little journey to explore my own patterns of comparison while also trying to understand what might be universal about them. This text is the result.

To begin, I’ll stick with my personal example to illustrate how this whole comparison thing tends to play out.

What do I actually know about these people I’m comparing myself to in such an unfavorable way?

A first step in my exploration was to sit down with a calm heart and an analytical mind and look at the facts. I asked myself: What do I actually know about these people I’m comparing myself to in such an unfavorable way? As it turned out — very little.

For example, I realized that in most cases, I had no idea how many people actually attended the events being promoted. I saw the advertisement and assumed it reflected reality. In the few cases where I did know how my friends’ and colleagues’ events went, my own results didn’t seem so bad after all. I had mistakenly assumed that everyone else’s breathwork events were always fully booked, while I was sometimes working with very small groups. But in reality, I had seen and heard for myself that many of my colleagues also struggled with low attendance — especially during the summer, or in the early years after launching. So my comparisons were based on uninformed assumptions, castles in the air, or plain old mind tricks.

I also had to admit that I knew nothing about my colleagues’ focus areas or actual day-to-day work. In one case, I found out that someone I envied for their online events didn’t even work with one-on-one clients — which is something that takes up a large portion of my time and energy and is a major focus of my training and work. These examples made it clear that there’s a huge gap between the way I construct comparisons in my head and the actual realities of the people I’m comparing myself to. This was especially true when my only “source of information” was social media. The fog of negative comparisons started to lift when I began having real conversations with people and took both their real experiences — and my own — into account.

We compare ourselves to the top performers in a field — not to the woman working in the lab next door, but to Marie Curie.

While examining my tendency to compare myself, I also realized this: I tend to ignore context in my comparisons. And that, too, is a common trait of negative comparison. Instead of recognizing that everyone is walking their own path — with a different starting point, a different pace, different challenges — I assumed we were all running the same race under the same conditions. (A neoliberal myth, perhaps?)

In my case, when comparing myself within the field of breathwork, I failed to consider that some of the people I trained with had already worked for years as yoga teachers, coaches, bodyworkers, or therapists. They already had a client base, experience with self-promotion, and were part of established communities interested in alternative health and wellness practices — they had found “their group” long before. I, on the other hand, came mostly from academic networks, a community that can be fairly skeptical when it comes to breathwork, shamanism, or even therapy (no offense, fellow academics 😄).

My comparisons had some major flaws: I was comparing based on little or misleading information. I was being selective — emphasizing facts that made me look bad and ignoring examples that might reflect more positively on me. And I expected to be a “top performer” in a group without considering when or where I started. It turns out this, too, is typical of comparison that makes us unhappy: we tend to compare ourselves with the top of the field. Not with the woman working in the lab next door, but with Marie Curie.

Does that sound familiar? If I trust the science, there’s a good chance you’re doing something similar. Because strangely enough, this seems to be pretty normal human behavior. Once I started digging into the research on comparison, I realized: I’m definitely not alone.

The research on comparisons paints a quite interesting picture.

It turns out: People are constantly comparing themselves. Research has supposedly found that "10 percent of our thoughts are related to comparisons in some way" (Psychology Today). 10 percent?! In psychology, a whole branch of theory and research has developed around the topic of "social comparison." Like almost everything we do, comparison was once adaptive and had a survival function (Morina 2021; Carter 2022). Comparison plays an important role in and has an impact on our self-concept. On the positive side, comparison can serve to motivate us and to correctly assess situations. On the other hand, as we’ve already seen, it can reduce self-esteem and satisfaction.

Psychological research shows that we tend to compare upwards rather than downwards (see Davidai & Deri 2019 for an overview). Specifically, we tend to compare ourselves with people we perceive to be the best in a given area. This kind of distorted comparison leads — who would have guessed? — to us feeling bad. To quote Gerber et al. (2018), when engaging in upward comparisons, "the most likely result is a self-deprecating contrast." Research has shown this self-deflating effect in many different areas of comparison (cf. Davidai & Deri (2019: p. 583), and I bet you’re familiar with it from your own life. The fact that we compare ourselves with people who seem to excel in a given area might not be uplifting, but at least it’s normal. As you may know from personal experience, neither comparison nor devaluing ourselves and feeling bad are intentional. At least in this regard, we’re not being masochistic.

omparing yourself to yourself is, so far, not a conscious act.

We don't intentionally compare ourselves to the best; it happens automatically (Davidai & Deri, 2019). Top performers simply come to mind more easily when we think of self-assessment. What drives us is not an unconscious desire to make ourselves feel bad, but simply that people who achieve outstanding results are more mentally accessible (they are "salient," to use a term from cognitive psychology).

No one, not even the rich and famous, seems to be exempt from this: Davidai and Deri point out that even people who are already at the top in the public eye tend to compare themselves negatively to those they think are even better. "Even the most competent people, due to the high standards they set for themselves, can come to view themselves as failures or 'impostors'" (Davidai & Deri, 2019). It seems that the imposter syndrome, however debilitating it may be, is at least egalitarian.

Social media makes it easier to engage in downward comparisons and reinforces our prejudices.

One of the impacts of social media could be that we have more examples of exceptional achievements to compare ourselves to. Additionally, people on social media present a carefully curated version of themselves and their lives; we often only see their outstanding accomplishments. This aligns with another bias we have: we tend to overestimate the happiness of others and underestimate their negative feelings (Jordan et al., 2011, Brooks 2020). Although the overall effect of social media on happiness and well-being is complex, there is evidence that social media amplifies the negative effects of comparisons. To give two examples: research shows that social media increases frustration at work, while casual conversations with real people reduce it! (Fukubayashi & Fuji, 2021). Catharin et al. (2000) found that women who see images of bodies in the media that conform to today's beauty standards experience a negative effect on their own body image. How do you feel when you use social media? Do you feel empowered and uplifted?

Overall, it seems clear that comparisons have a negative impact on our self-image and well-being... but what can we do with all this knowledge? Is there something practical we can do in our own lives to reduce the negative effects of comparing ourselves?

The good news is: The fact that it happens automatically doesn't mean that you can't change it.

Social comparison is a cognitive process we engage in. And therefore, we can - simply put - also choose not to engage in it (Fujita, 2008: 241). There are a number of ways you can make this process easier for yourself. In Part II of this article, I will present six concrete steps.

Read on here.

Sources:

Brooks Arthur (2020) “Thief of Joy”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9D64pEkQHc

Carter, Kristen A. (2022) Are Your Goals Making You Miserable? Our health and fitness goals often involve comparing ourselves to others.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/health-and-human-nature/202204/are-your-goals-making-you-miserable

Cattarin, Jill A.; Thompson, Joel K.; Thomas, Carmen M.; and Williams, Robyn, "Body Image, Mood, and Televised Images of Attractiveness: The Role of Social Comparison" (2000). Psychology Faculty Publications. 2156.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/psy_facpub/2156

Davidai, S., & Deri, S. (2019). The second pugilist’s plight: Why people believe they are above average but are not especially happy about it. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148(3), 570–587. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000580

Duckworth, Angela (2022) Comapring Me to Me, in Psychology Today, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/actionable-advice-help-kids-thrive/202205/comparing-me-me

Gerber, J. P., Wheeler, L., & Suls, J. (2018). A social comparison theory meta-analysis 60+ years on. Psychological Bulletin, 144(2), 177–197. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000127

Jordan, A. H.; Monin, B.; Dweck, C. S.; Lovett, B. J.; John, O. P.; Gross, J. J. (2011). Misery Has More Company Than People Think: Underestimating the Prevalence of Others' Negative Emotions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37(1), 120–135.doi:10.1177/0146167210390822

Macmillan, Amanda. 2017. Why Instagram Is the Worst Social Media for Mental Health
https://time.com/4793331/instagram-social-media-mental-health/

Psychology Today, (n.a.), Social Comparison Theory, in Pscyhology Today, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/social-comparison-theory#the-dangers-of-comparison

Morina N. Comparisons Inform Me Who I Am: A General Comparative-Processing Model of Self-Perception. Perspectives on Psychological Science. 2021;16(6):1281-1299. doi:10.1177/1745691620966788

Scott, Elizabeth (2020) The Stress of Social Comparison
https://www.verywellmind.com/the-stress-of-social-comparison-4154076

Summerville, Amy (2019) Is Comparison Really the Thief of Joy?, in Psychology Today
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/multiple-choice/201903/is-comparison-really-the-thief-joy

Thompson, Nicholas. 2019. Tristan Harris: Tech Is ‘Downgrading Humans.’ It’s Time to Fight Back
https://www.wired.com/story/tristan-harris-tech-is-downgrading-humans-time-to-fight-back/

Tiffany, Kaitlyn. 2019. How to quit Facebook without quitting Facebook
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/3/25/18280689/jenny-odell-how-to-do-nothing-interview-facebook-instagram