“Comparison is the thief of joy.” ~Theodore Roosevelt
In March 2020, the UK went into its first Covid lockdown, and the country was swept with anxiety and sadness. When would we see our loved ones again? Would our health be okay? Was my job safe? And more pressingly, how the heck was I expected to teach my kids?
Along with everyone else, I first received the news with a sense of impending doom and tried to make the best of a bizarre situation. “Normal life” consisted of stressful home schooling, online working, mask wearing, and (in the UK at least) stockpiling toilet paper!
We were forced to slow down and retreat because nobody was allowed to socialize or engage in any activity outside of work or home. This was hard at first, but then, after a few weeks, something strange happened. I realized I’d never felt happier.
You see, before lockdown, I might have appeared happy on the outside, but inside, I was an insecure mess. My mind was full of all the things I thought I “should” be doing: planning more exciting weekend plans, engaging in better hobbies, and making a bigger group of friends. Unless I was at the latest summer festival or spending my Wednesday evenings doing yin yoga, I didn’t feel good enough.
After a busy day at work, scrolling through Facebook just gave me another list of things to do. An empty schedule felt like failure, and everyone else’s lives looked so much more exciting.
So I lived for the future, constantly in planning mode and looking over my shoulder for approval. The pressure to keep up and always be doing something was exhausting. It caused rows with my husband (who couldn’t care less what everyone else was up to!), made me ignore my own needs, and reinforced low self-worth.
If I wasn’t thinking about plans, then I was thinking about people. I compared myself to (what I assumed were) other people’s busy social lives and felt obliged to organize group nights out or always have people over for dinner. Even when I wasn’t seeing friends, I was always preoccupied with them. Were they a good friend? Was I? Why hadn’t they replied to that text? Do they even like me?
Just below the surface of all the “planning” and “people” chatter that filled my brain was the ever-present noise of self-criticism.
If you’re not making the most of life every minute, you’re failing.
If you don’t have the perfect gang of besties like everyone else, then there’s something wrong with you.
Your life is boring compared to everyone else’s.
Nobody finds you interesting.
Do more!!
What made it all worse was assuming I was the only one with this nagging need to keep striving and do more just to feel good enough.
I now know that, not only am I not the only one, but this type of thinking is natural.
When I trained as a compassion-focused therapist, I learned all about how social comparison is wired into our brains. This is because having the biggest tribe and highest status gave us protection in Stone Age times.
What gives us a sense of status these days? How big our social media following is, how many likes we get, and how amazing our social feed looks! We can’t help sharing if we’ve done something exciting because that inner caveman is driving us to compete.
The problem is that when we don’t feel like we’re keeping up, our brain will turn on our inner critic because it thinks it’s helping (thanks brain!). It also has a negative bias, which makes us focus on the ways that everyone else seems to be doing better than us. And the false images we see on social media don’t help!
Although this tendency is natural and we cannot help it, we are living in an age of unprecedented information about what everyone else is doing, and it’s putting our innate comparison nature into overdrive! This puts a strain on us all.
For me, this started to change when the country closed down. Since everyone’s social calendar was empty, I no longer had anything to compare myself to. Since there were no longer any events or classes, there was nothing I felt like I “should” be doing.
I spent my evenings and weekends doing what was in front of me because there was no other option. I’d take a local walk, relax in the garden, watch TV, and make it an early night.
Surprisingly, rather than feeling unhappy and bored, like my critic told me I would, I felt relaxed, deeply content, and at peace. No more feeling like I was missing out; no internal should-ing; no self-criticism for being “boring.” The world had gone quiet, and so had my mind.
I also realized how small my social circle needed to be. I know that many people felt crushingly alone and understandably missed those vital connections, but for me, it wasn’t an issue. I had my husband and kids, and, for the most part, that’s all I needed.
Seeing very few people felt incredibly liberating, and it occurred to me that my desire to have a large social circle came from a need for validation. I liked my own company and was an introvert. Who knew?
As life started to open up again, I was determined to hold on to this deep sense of contentment, and I didn’t want the world to have to stop again for me to keep it.
Here are five useful steps I practice regularly that have helped me do that.
1. Practice mindful self-compassion.
As a newly trained therapist and committed mindfulness practitioner, I’ve found that mindful self-compassion is a powerful tool that helps keep comparison and criticism at bay. It’s becoming a widely used method taught by psychologists and spiritual leaders to improve mental well-being and self-acceptance.
So, when I find myself being self-critical and comparing myself to others, I pause and bring a curious attention to my thoughts so that they are less consuming. Something simple like “I am noticing I am having self-critical thoughts” can be enough to recognize it’s just a thought, not a fact.
Next, I tune into how I am feeling in my body so that I can label my emotions and allow any discomfort to be there. There might be a tightness in my chest from turning down an invitation or a heaviness in my stomach from feeling not good enough.
Then, rather than judge how I feel, I remind myself that I cannot help it and that everyone feels like this from time to time. This step is so powerful because it releases the self-judgment cycle that makes us feel worse and opens up space for compassion.
Finally, I ask myself what I need to hear, what would be helpful in this moment, or what I would say to a friend. Inevitably, I am able to tap into a deeper wisdom to remind myself that I am good enough already, that my needs are important, or that we have no idea what other people’s lives are really like.
2. Give myself permission to be boring.
We can be perfectly happy with our relatively chill weekend or evening, but as soon as we scroll through social media and see what other people are up to, we think there’s something wrong with us, and we experience FOMO.
If you’re an active type and love staying busy, then great. But for me, the constant need to be doing something came from social pressure, and quiet evenings in front of the TV were what I craved the most after a busy day at work.
Giving myself permission to be ‘boring’ honors who I am and helps me tune into my needs, which helps me know and like myself more. If the self-critical thoughts creep in, it’s a perfect time to practice self-compassion, and I remind myself that nobody is paying attention anyway.
3. Keep my circle small.
Many friendships changed for everyone during Covid because we were forced to focus on who mattered. I felt grateful that Covid made me realize that a large social circle was not actually making me happier, and social comparison had been a big driver for that.
Not everyone has or needs a big gang, like my self-critic had told me. So, instead of going back out there and rekindling all my friendships, I made a point of keeping my circle small. I now focus on one to two close friendships and am able to be friendly with others without feeling like I have to be best friends with everyone!
4. Embrace my inner introvert.
It can be easy to think that introverts are quiet, bookish types, and if you met me, you would know that I do not fit that description at all. “Life and soul,” “chatterbox,” and “super-confident” are words that might more accurately describe me. But, as an empath, I have limited social reserves to be around people constantly, and I don’t need to either.
I am perfectly happy in my own company and need lots of time to recharge in between socializing. Such tendencies do not suit a lifestyle with a busy social calendar and wide friendship circle. Acknowledging and accepting my introversion has allowed me to tune into what I need rather than thinking I need to be like everyone else.
5. Work on my self-worth.
Although we are all prone to social comparison, we are much more likely to do it if we lack self-worth. This is because our default “not good enough” belief makes us automatically assume other people are better than us, so to feel good enough, we try to keep up and secure imaginary approval.
But it’s a slippery pole we can never get to the top of because it’s coming from a faulty belief that won’t go away just because we have external conditions. We therefore need to accept that we are already okay as we are, focus on what is important to us, and leave other people to their own lives.
For me, using self-compassion and self-worth meditations, acting as if I was already good enough, and offering myself positive self-worth validations really helped.
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Learning to let go of destructive social comparisons and having the courage to be myself has been life changing, and I haven’t looked back since. There was so much about the pandemic that was negative, but I am grateful for the changes it helped me make.
