#14 The Comparison Trap

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Human beings are social creatures. And because of that, we are always looking to other people to get some sense of like, am I doing this okay? Should I do more like what they're doing? Should I do more what they're doing? Or if things are not going well for somebody, we try to pay attention to what is it that they're doing that really seems to not be working. So I don't do that. And throughout most of human history, we have been surrounded by a relatively small group of people where we see kind of all sides of them, right? So we see some of the things that they do well and some of the things that they don't do quite so well. And so we get a kind of a sense of like, all right, that part of them, they seem to be doing really well. And so maybe I can learn some stuff from that and integrate that into my life. And and but some of these other things, like they may be doing, they may be doing great in business, or they might be a great speaker, or they might do something, they might be a great musician or an artist. But then like what they're doing, how they're managing their relationships and stuff like that. It's like, I don't know if I want to necessarily imitate that. But these people over here, um, I notice that, you know, they tend to do their relationship stuff really well, but maybe, you know, you know, maybe he's kind of awkward or she's kind of awkward and in public, or maybe there's part of their personality or how they communicate that just doesn't really land on me well. And, you know, and they're just we have a tendency to look at a lot of different people and see how they do things, and then compare ourselves to that and you know, say, well, where are some areas that I can improve? Are there some things that they are doing that I could that I could also do? And uh, and kind of where am I in the kind of the status of the whole community? And, you know, am I am I kind of at the the low person or am I kind of at the you know at the at the top, so to speak, or where am I? And we actually have neurology in our brain that is very attuned to kind of social status and how we fit in and all of those kinds of things. And in fact, a lot of our sense of value is really determined by uh where we see ourselves in relations, in relation to other people. And in normal times, when we saw all sides of people, we could we'd compare ourselves with other people and say, well, I'm not as good there. Maybe I could improve a bit, you know, but I can feel pretty good about myself because I feel like I can do some of these things better, right? And it's this social comparison and and trying to fit in and uh and and imitate the kind of the actions and behaviors of people around us that really form some of the cohesion of society and of culture, right? So within a within a society, uh people do some of this social comparison and and they're like, you know what? I want to become a bit of a better person, I want to be seen as a better person or have some higher status within this whole social environment. And when I start behaving in ways that uh that are acceptable to other people, then suddenly I start to feel better about myself, right? And all of that is cool, all of that is fine, we are wired for that. And the uh the problem today is that with the internet and you know, in social media accounts and things like that, the only thing that we're exposed to are the highlight reels of everybody. They're on vacation, look at how sexy and and fun they look, and it just seems like everything is going so well in their life, and we don't really have the complete picture. We don't really see them in other contexts like we used to. Like, I mean, even back in the like the 1990s, you know, when we were around people and interacting with people, we saw kind of more of a full palette of what that person was really like. And so it gave us a more accurate picture of like their good points and their bad points, and some of our good points and bad points, and and we could gauge a little bit more accurately kind of where we fit in, where we could try to improve. But with the internet, you know, with just this constant highlight reel, highlight reel, highlight reel, we see that and we're just getting one little slice of that reality of that person's life, and we're not seeing the rest of it. So it's like we're driving down the street and we are seeing all the beautiful homes with the white picket fences and suddenly feeling like, oh my God, I don't have that. I'm not there. They all look so happy, they everything in their life looks like it's going so well, and that's just not what I'm experiencing. There must be something wrong with me. Why can't I have that? We tend to we tend to compare our our pain with other people's highlight reels, right? Because when we see how how great things are going for other people, seemingly right, it creates this sense of somehow there must be something wrong with me. And this didn't happen when we could see the the complete picture of human beings, right? But with this constant scrolling and seeing all of these, you know, essentially uh very uh curated and crafted and edited images and little videos and all of that of what amazing things are happening in other people's lives. And we're not experiencing that, it really creates a sense of uh, you know, sense that there's something wrong, or it undermines our sense of value, or it makes us feel like we're missing out or we're not enough. And studies have actually played this out, right? They have they've shown that when people spend time on social media, their own sense of self-worth decreases. And it is because we tend to just see those highlight reels of other people as some kind of representation of their entire life, of what their entire life must be, because we don't have access to the rest of that information, right? Like we did before when we knew our neighbors and we would interact with them. We'd see they're good and they're bad and they're ugly and they're wonderful and all of that. We'd have a much more complete human picture. And now, because of the way that the internet is set up and the way that social media works, we just get these little thin slivers of these, of the highlight reels. And our brain, because we are, you know, we tend to generalize things, right? We we tend to say, oh, you know, I got stung by that bee, so I, you know, there's I could get stung by all bees. I mean, all bees sting, kind of thing. Our brain just sort of generalizes that way. And so when it only sees one little bit of information on somebody, it will tend to generalize that as though every element of their life is wonderful. And the reality is that most people struggle with the same things that you do. And even though they may have more success in business, they may be really struggling in their family, or they may be struggling with some of their own woundedness. They may really have a hard time with their health. There, I mean, there's just so many dimensions uh to who we are, right? And just because we see a little five-minute reel, we have to be very careful to not just kind of assume that the little picture that we're seeing is represent is representative of the rest of what is going on with their life. And the one thing that I have just learned as a truism is that most people, regardless of how successful or wonderful you may look, are all pretty much the same, right? We all struggle, we all have stuff. Some of it might be psychological, some of it might be emotional, some of it might be relational, some of it may be some, there are some things that that we we live a double life, and there are some things bad going on, or we don't, you know, we we struggle with being able to um being able to affect change, or you know, with our own sense of self, or we're agoraphobic, or we have anxiety about different things. Everybody has stuff. And so what I would invite you to do is when you catch yourself looking at uh looking at social media and feeling like, oh man, their life looks so much more idyllic than mine, to then follow that up with, yes, and that image was intended to sell that. That in reality, there is a whole lot else going on in their life that probably makes them a lot more like me, right? Because we all we're all imperfect human beings who are all struggling, we're all trying to find our place in the world, we're all trying to find uh uh something positive to think about, we're all trying to find something good to cling on to. And it the reality is that we're all pretty much the same. And so don't compare other people's highlight reels to how you perceive yourself because you'll never win, and it's not accurate. So just remember you're awesome, just hang in there and don't buy too much into the social media stuff.