Why We Compare and What To Do About It
How often do you compare? Is it a few times a day? Or is it hundreds?
We live in a world where decision-fatigue has grown immensely, due in part to the wonderful amount of options to choose from. There are six types of penne pastas to choose from, ten different brands of eggs, at least a dozen different providers of basically any product you search for on Amazon (each with thousands of reviews to boot), and on and on it goes.
Comparison is natural to us, and we are growing more and more accustomed to comparing anything and everything.
Comparison as a concept isn't good or bad. It's a neutral action that has implications and results that can either be helpful or unhelpful to us. Comparing produce or products to determine what will be best for our needs (and budget) is often a helpful process. What's unhelpful is getting lost in the endless amount of options and becoming paralyzed from not knowing which will be “best.”
This is one aspect of comparison that may come to mind when you hear the term, but this isn't the area I want to explore. What I'm more interested in considering is how comparison impacts us when our personal self is the object being compared.
Comparison’s Effects
As we’ve seen from the produce example, comparison can give us confidence that we are making a good decision. It can also be defeating and paralyzing if we take it too far. This just highlights the helpful and unhelpful aspects that lie on a spectrum. But what are the effects of comparing when it's ourself that's being compared to others?
Here's a shortlist that came to mind:
discontentment
insecurity
motivation
clarity
When we compare ourselves with others, we can experience a range of results. Just from the brief list I mentioned there are effects all of us would find helpful and unhelpful. So, what distinctions could we highlight that help us understand any meaningful differences between the useful forms of comparison and the hurtful forms?
Understanding the helpful side of comparison seems like an easier place to begin.
How Comparison Serves Us
Comparison can be a helpful resource for us in the domain of skills and abilities. In order to know if we are good at something, we have to be able to compare our version of that thing with others. This is the whole premise that sports are built on: there will be a winner and a loser. It simply means that one team (or person) was better than the other, in the realm of competition they are playing within.
This is where comparison can serve us as a motivating force, driving us to work harder and become better at whatever skill we are trying to develop in. Without being able to compare ourselves with those who are determined to be better than us, we wouldn't have as clear of a roadmap on how to improve and reach the next level with our performance.
The same is true when it comes to the business world. Financial statements are the scorecard that most organizations use to compare themselves with each other. The numbers on those statements help them know where they are doing better or worse than the competition, and what they need to work on in order to try and gain an advantage. This form of comparison produces clarity, and clarity is kindness in many ways. It provides direction and creates actions that can help produce the results that are desired.
In the leadership development work we do at Appello Partners, we have a tool we use called: Effective Learning. In essence, this tool helps us see that the most effective way to learn anything is to first “Imitate,” then we can eventually “Innovate” once we have gained initial competency. In other words, comparison can facilitate effective learning by allowing us to imitate those who are more skilled or knowledgeable than us.
These are simple illustrations of the ways that comparison can benefit us and serve our personal growth and development.
To understand the unhelpful side, we need to dig a layer deeper to find the element that seems to be tied to the less desirable effects of comparison. This is the layer of identity.
A Layer Deeper
Identity can mean many different things, but for our purposes today I want to break it down into two different parts: 1) the true self and 2) the false self.
Franciscan priest, Richard Rohr describes the False Self in this way:
“The false self is all the things we pretend to be and think we are. It is the pride, arrogance, title, costume, role, and degree we take to be ourselves. It’s almost entirely created by our minds, our cultures, and our families. It is what’s passing and what’s going to die, and it is not who we are. For many people this is all they have—but all of it is going to die when we die.”
He goes on to say this about the True Self:
“Your soul—your True Self, your deepest identity, your unique blueprint—is who you are in God and who God is in you. Only your True Self lives forever and is truly free in this world. Your True Self is Life and Being and Love. Love is what you were made for and love is who you are.
Your True Self is who you are and always have been in God. At its core, your True Self is love. Love is both who you are and who you are still becoming, like a sunflower seed that becomes its own sunflower.”
This is simply one perspective, from a spiritual point of view, on the distinction of the True vs. False Self. There are a number of others who also aim to highlight and expound on this distinction, from the lens of psychology, science, and beyond, including D.W. Winnicott, Carl Rogers, Carl Jung, Thomas Merton, David Benner, and Bill Plotkin
The point isn't to definitively capture the fullness of what each means, but rather to begin painting a picture of what the deeper layer of comparison points to.
When we compare ourselves to others, we are often comparing our False Self to their False Self. This doesn't do either of us a favor and only serves to perpetuate the cycle.
This is the unhelpful form of comparison that leads to discontentment and insecurity. Not to mention, every day we are drawn into a virtual world designed to pull us deeper into this hole.
Digging Our Way Out
Since most, if not all, of the unhelpful forms of comparison deal with our False Self (“the things we pretend to be”), then in order to make a meaningful difference we must work on the root cause itself. Fixing and remedying symptoms will only produce short-term results. Over time, these efforts will dwindle and die off. Without a sustained shift, our False Self will continue to resurface and take control, incessantly looking to anyone and everyone it can compare itself with.
So while the easy answers of — “stop looking at social media,” “be content with what you have,” “think about the people who would kill to be where you are,” etc. etc. — may help momentarily, I believe they won't get us to where we want to be: a place of grounded security in our own identity, living from the place of our True Self more times than not.
What can help us is sitting with, understanding, and developing practices that help us learn, embrace, and embody the True Self that we are.
I know, this sounds woo-woo and all, but it really isn't. These are the simple, ancient practices that humans have used for millennia to eliminate the noise and distractions of daily life, and to help us remember and return to what we know to be true of ourselves and the reality we live in.
These practices include:
stillness
solitude
silence
meditation
movement
reflection
writing/journaling
*meaningful* conversations
observation (without judgment)
There are also postures that help us with this shift, including:
patience
humility
curiosity
And finally, here are a few dispositions that support this pursuit:
centeredness
groundedness
stability
This article is meant to simply be a seed. It isn't a complete picture, nor is it the answer you might be looking for. Rather, think of it as a spark to begin shifting away from the forms of comparison that don't serve us, and to shift towards a deeper, truer, fuller understanding of the True Self you possess.
My hope for you is the same as it is for myself: that we can daily embrace the unique identity we possess and fully present that gift to each person we engage with throughout our lives.
• • •
“Self-care is never a selfish act—it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer others. Anytime we can listen to true self and give it the care it requires, we do it not only for ourselves, but for the many others whose lives we touch.” — Parker Palmer
“We lie about the richness of the present by projecting ourselves backward in guilt and forward in anxiety. We lie about our fundamental responsibility by hiding in the herd mentality, getting lost in the Other. In place of the authentic or actual self, we live as the inauthentic self, the false self, fashioning its projects of deception to hide itself from the shocking truth of existence.” — Ken Wilber
