You’re Comparing Your Whole Life to Everyone Else’s Best Parts
Comparison has become remarkably efficient. We no longer need to find one person whose entire life makes us envious. Instead, we can collect the most appealing pieces from dozens of people and assemble them into an imaginary person who has everything figured out. One woman has the body we wish we had, another has the career, someone else has the beautiful house, another has the marriage that appears effortless, and still another seems to spend half her life traveling somewhere fabulous. Then we compare our one very real life to this person we have constructed from everybody else's best parts and wonder why we don't measure up.
The absurdity becomes easier to see when we actually name what we're doing. We aren't comparing ourselves to one woman who is fitter, more successful, better traveled, happily married, beautifully dressed, endlessly patient with her children, financially secure, socially interesting, and somehow maintaining an immaculate house at the same time.
We're taking one person's visible advantage here and another person's visible advantage there and combining them into a standard no actual human being was ever required to meet. Meanwhile, we bring everything we know about ourselves to the comparison: the mistakes, insecurities, unfinished projects, bad photographs, difficult mornings, financial worries, and things we haven't quite figured out yet. It was never going to be a fair contest.
That doesn't mean noticing other people is inherently bad for us. Comparison can occasionally provide useful information, because another person's choices may reveal something we genuinely want for ourselves. Seeing someone become healthier might remind us that we've been neglecting our own health, while watching a friend make a career change may awaken an ambition we've been quietly ignoring. The difference is whether we use what we notice as information or turn it into a judgment about our own worth. Admiration can point us toward something; comparison becomes destructive when we use it to decide whether we are enough.
That distinction matters because we usually know remarkably little about the person we're using as our measuring stick. We may see the promotion without knowing what the job costs her, admire the marriage without knowing what happens inside it, or envy the beautiful home without knowing whether she'd trade it tomorrow for something we already possess. Social media has certainly made this easier, but we did it long before Instagram existed. Human beings have always been capable of seeing the polished portion of another person's life and filling in everything outside the frame with our own assumptions.
One of the ideas I explore in Approved is that another person can have more of something without your having too little. That sounds simple, but it challenges one of comparison's favorite tricks: turning somebody else's abundance into evidence of our deficiency. Her beauty does not reduce yours. His professional success does not make your work insignificant, and somebody else's exciting vacation does not transform your perfectly pleasant Tuesday into a disappointing life. We can recognize that another person possesses something wonderful without immediately dragging ourselves into the picture and asking what it says about us.
It also helps to ask a question we often skip entirely: Do I actually want what I'm comparing? Sometimes the answer will be yes, and that can be useful. Perhaps you really do want to travel more, improve your health, pursue a different career, reconnect with friends, or finally make your home feel more like you. But sometimes, if you're completely truthful, you don't want the schedule, sacrifice, expense, maintenance, responsibility, or lifestyle attached to the thing you're admiring. You want the feeling you imagine you would have if you were the person who possessed it, and that is something entirely different.
There is tremendous freedom in allowing other people to be good at things you have no intention of mastering. You can admire someone's beautifully decorated house without developing a sudden obligation to redecorate yours, celebrate a friend's promotion without deciding you're behind, and appreciate someone's discipline without adopting her routine as evidence of what you should be doing. We are allowed to encounter excellence without turning every encounter into an assignment for self-improvement. Some beautiful things can simply be beautiful, some impressive people can simply be impressive, and none of it has to become a referendum on us.
Confidence, then, isn't reaching some enlightened state in which we never compare ourselves again. It is becoming more careful about what authority we give the comparison when it appears. We can notice what someone else has, decide whether it contains useful information for our own lives, and leave behind the judgment that says their advantage must represent our inadequacy. We can pursue what genuinely matters to us while allowing other people to pursue what matters to them. Their lives do not have to become the measuring stick for ours, because our worth was never under review in the first place.
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