Why You Should Compare Yourself to Others

You’ve heard the advice: If you want to be happy, don’t compare yourself to others.

I get it. If you’re struggling at a job that makes you dead behind the eyes, the last thing you want is to see your friend announcing they just got their dream job…or, worse, your dream job.

Unlucky in love? No more pictures of your friends cuddling with their significant others. Nope. Not today.

Money is low, and boredom is high? Then, please, for the love of Facebook, don’t follow your college classmate’s hourly posts from her trip to Italy. #SheIsInVenice #YouAreEatingFrozenPizzaAtHome #torture 

As a rule, this is good advice, not to compare. But I suggest that there are times when the best way to shake off a sense of dissatisfaction with your own life is to compare yourself to others.

Let me explain, though, because you have to be careful with this. It’s kind of like water—it can save you in moderation, but kill you in excess. A glass of it will refresh. An ocean of it will overwhelm.

Here’s an example of how comparison recently jarred me back to a healthy state of mind. It all started when my husband and I woke up covered in bug bites in a hotel room in Dallas. If we hadn’t been so exhausted, we might have dragged ourselves out of that bed and to the front desk when, in the middle of the night, I had groggily mumbled, “This bed is making me itch. Does this place have bed bugs?”

But it was a nice hotel, and my super power is imagining worst-case scenarios in every situation—so in the dark of night, I had forced myself to believe that I was just imagining things.

I was not.

We ended up covered with red, enflamed bites all over us. All the way back from Dallas I Googled my way into a small panic, reading warnings about how easy it is to unknowingly transport bed bugs home from a hotel. They can attach to your suitcase, to your belongings. And all those bed bug sprays you can buy off the shelf? They don’t work, the websites warned. You’re going to have to get an exterminator into your house, and you’re going to spend thousands of dollars and countless hours to get rid of them. 

At home, I soaked in an Epsom salt bath, mostly soaking in my agitation about the whole situation. It also gave me time to think about all the other things that were aggravating me—a professional disappointment, my to-do list, and on and on. After my bath, as I was walking out of the bathroom, I glanced over at the toilet, and—well, here’s a distraction from the bugs—there was what appeared to be a baby alligator crawling around inside my toilet.

I screamed. “There is an alligator in the toilet!”

I’m given to exaggeration, so my husband must not have believed how big the creature was, because he came carrying only a fly swatter for a weapon. He glanced at the toilet, turned around, and came back with a huge 16.5-gallon storage container—a more appropriate tool, he realized, for carrying out this bigger-than-expected intruder.

But he stayed calm and assured me, “It’s just a salamander." 

I was already on edge about critters invading my home. “Just a salamander?!”

My husband said we should call our friend who is a plumber. I said we should call our real estate agent.

Turns out, the baby gator (alright, I know, it was just a salamander) probably came up through the septic tank. He went back down before we could capture him, so our plumber friend said to keep an eye out because he might come back.

I was so agitated. I went to the living room to dodge the bugs and amphibians. I sat down and checked my texts. There was a message. A friend had found out her husband—the person she trusted more than anyone else in the world—was having an affair. He wanted a divorce and was leaving her and their three small children. Now she was trying to find a place to live, and a job, and a daycare…and a sense of hope.

I checked my emails. A colleague was asking to cancel a work responsibility because her young child was hospitalized and so was her father, each for serious conditions, each in different hospitals. She was the primary caregiver for both of them, and she was scared neither of them was going to be OK. 

I was dealing with just a salamander and a few bugs. Really. Just a salamander.

A wave of perspective swept over me. Either of these women would have taken an itchy back and a salamander over what they were going through. 

In comparison, I really had nothing to complain about. How ridiculous would it have been if I had told one of those heartbroken women, “Well, my back itches, and I don’t feel safe using my master bathroom toilet”?

Come on.

Usually we’re tempted to just compare ourselves with people who seem to have it better than us. But in this case, I’m talking about comparing yourself to people in less fortunate situations. Psychologists call it downward comparison—and stick with me here, because this is important—its purpose isn't to give us a guilty sense of satisfaction or superiority. It’s about looking past ourselves and grasping onto perspective, compassion, and gratitude. 

Comparing yourself to others in this way isn’t about setting yourself up as better than they are. It’s about getting a grip. It’s about having a reality check. People are struggling. Really struggling. And even in hard times, you probably don’t have to think very long to realize you have quite a few things going your way. Once you look past yourself and really see the people around you who are working out problems of their own, you're able to focus on offering them help and support.  

I mean, one in three people in the world don’t even have a flush toilet. I have three. There’s no reason why I can’t share one of mine with a miniature crocodile.