Dear M:

I like your topic. I used to compare myself to others (with unfavorable-to-me  results) in the following areas: my looks, my grades in school, popularity (lack of, that is), income (later on in life), relationship status (not having one, mostly), wealth/lifestyle. These come to mind at the moment.

Not helpful to me, not at all. Harmful, really. For one thing, I had a distorted view of others, believing they are doing well, when in reality they probably didn’t do as well as I thought. Often people believe that because a person is smiling at a photo that they are happy, sort of always-smiling. People assume that wealthy people are happy, that popular people are confident people, and so on. Lots of assumptions I made, lots of assumptions people  make are not true to reality, therefore the comparing process is flawed, based on distorted reality.

anita