The kid that always ran faster than you when you were playing outside, the colleague who always got better grades than you, than good-looking friend who had more luck dating and made a family before you even got married, these are comparison terms we simply can't shake off. It's mean, it's hurting us, but we simply can't hold back from constantly comparing ourselves with others.
Is this a bad habit that increases our frustration and decreases ours self-esteem, or a good trigger that urges us to be better than others? I think that the effects differ a lot based on how each one sees himself/herself in relationship to others.
How strongly comparison affects you depends what type of persons you're comparing yourself with; if it's those who are interior to you, the outcome might be positive. If you only compare yourself with people who outperform you, the effects might be negative as you might end up thinking you're never as good as X person.
Even if you do this mentally and you never verbalize the fact that you are constantly measuring your skills and achievements based on those of the other people around you, the effects are still there. You might simply dislike the presence of the young colleague sitting next to you without logically realizing why. And there might be plenty motives to justify your feeling: she might be faster, funnier, she might get more compliments or bonuses than you and all these make you dislike her. It's called jealousy and this nasty disease usually stems from the fact that we believe we're inferior to others, in other words we compare ourselves with them.
Now, to come back to the main topic of the article which is why we do this, I can find 3 main causes:
- It is in our survival instinct to try to be better than others, defeat them, steal their food, shelter and mate in order to perpetuate our genes. This is a very basic explanation, but you get where I'm going. If 10000 years ago we used to steal our mating partners, caves or food, now we do the same when it comes to jobs because these cover our necessities (food, home, family).
Ever since we are little, we are actually encouraged to constantly be aware of what other are doing and make sure we don't fall behind them. Why are grades so important at school? Why is it so important to be the first in your basketball team or to win the chess championship. No matter what your passion is as a child, everyone around you encourages to be the best, which means to keep a close eye on where other are at and strive to outperform them.
Competition gets even more serious as we age. At work, you have to attend meetings in which your boss tells everyone how they performed each months, congratulates achievers and criticizes losers. On social media, you see the wonders of everyone's happy life and you are compelled to create posts that also show how successful and happy you are. When you get married and have a family, it's also a constant race; each member of your group of friends has to show his house is bigger, his family is happier, his kids are more talented.
This life is all about comparing yourself with others because, well, we are social animals and we simply can't help it. However, we can help feeling miserable when we do it by thinking that no one has it all an every one is miserable in their own way.
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