The Fallacy of Comparison
Hey y’all —
I hope you are doing so well and are having a fantastic week thus far.
It’s the middle of my workday here, but I had a client reschedule at the last minute, so a window of opportunity opened within my calendar, and I wanted to take a few moments to hopefully crank out a quick blog post on a topic that’s quite important and powerful to so many of us, especially while this topic is still fresh on my mind (the session I just came from touched largely on this topic).
And that topic is comparison.
Comparison occurs when we assess our similarities and/or differences to those of someone else. Oftentimes, we tend to compare the things we are insecure about ourselves with the qualities of other people in order to try to find some sense of resolve for ourself or in order to punish ourselves for being naturally who we are (and/or for being in the stage of life we are currently in).
For example, I often compare myself to my friends. I take a look at how much money they make, I notice how they decorate their homes, I take stock of their relationships and the way they live life, and I assess where I personally stand in all of these areas.
If I’m feeling less than in any capacity, I’m going to start crapping on myself, leading to a disconnected relationship with myself, one that is earmarked by personal shame in the words of the phrase ‘I’m not good enough.’
If I’m feeling greater than in any capacity, I’m going to start thinking my friends are less than I am, and over time, this is going to begin derailing the connection that we have where I’ll begin believing myself to be superior in some capacity, thus looking down upon them with judgment.
Either way is unhelpful and un-beneficial to building strong connections. Further, either way is not aligned with the way that I want to be living my life and the way that I want to be connecting with the people around me, especially the people that I love.
While this is one simple example of how comparison can show up for us on a daily basis, the tricky part is our brains are wired to compare. So, if we were to tell ourselves, “Oh, I shouldn’t be comparing myself to anyone else,” that would essentially be a futile effort because the brain is going to do it regardless. It’s how it’s designed.
You see, there is actually a survival component connected to comparison. Evolutionarily speaking, our human species learned to compare because this helps us to stay protected and stay alive. If we notice what other people are doing and how they are living, we can learn from them, thus allowing us the opportunity to utilize problem solving and critical thinking skills to make adjustments to our own behaviors, thereby protecting ourselves and our environments.
For instance: if I saw my cave-person neighbor was fortifying her shelter even though it was a completely sunny day, this might have encouraged me to to do the same thing because what if a storm came? Or what if a bear tried to attack us?
The challenge is the modern world frequently operates differently from those historical evolutionary times; however, our brains haven’t caught up as fast. So, our brains are still going to be comparing ourselves to others and our surroundings to see if we are “doing life right,” even if we know we aren’t in a life-or-death situation.
This is where our own self-awareness and advanced critical thinking can beneficially come into play. When we notice we are comparing ourselves to others, we can pause in that moment and ask ourself if this comparison is factual, logical, and sensible. And oftentimes, it’s not going to be. In fact, most of the comparison we do when we compare ourselves to other people is completely fallible.
How can this be?
Well, just think about it. It’s actually quite simple:
The individual human experience is just too unique to be compared to that of another person.
We are individual beings with individual, unique backgrounds, stories, experiences, perspectives, tools, resources, abilities, limitations, challenges, etc. — no matter how many similarities we share with someone, and no matter how closely our stories may align, we still have ample unique viewpoints, perspectives, and qualities that differ between us that makes it absolutely impossible to compare ourselves.
Honestly, it’s really as simple as that.
I’m an almost 30 year old white gay mental health professional. There are hundreds of thousands of people just like me. At the same time, none of them also come from the town of Pemberville, Ohio where they were raised by my parents and my grandparents and where they went to Webster Elementary School and where they lost their grandfather at 10 years old and where they’ve been married and divorced and where they moved several states throughout their life thus far.
Many people likely share a very similar situation to this, but no one shares exactly this story, so if I wanted to compare myself to someone very, very similarly, I still couldn’t because there remains unique variables that set ourselves apart, making any sort of comparison impossible.
I really want you to absorb this into your head: it is fallible for us to compare ourselves to other people. And yet we still do it (and we’re going to continue to do it, again, because the brain is wired for us to do so).
Our emotions are going to want us to continue to compare ourselves to others (because that’s where we are comfortable — that’s what we are comfortable doing since we’ve been doing it all along). However, our logic has to override this system here and recognize the inherent fallacy in comparing ourselves to literally any one else.
So, here’s how we navigate through it:
1) We notice when we are comparing ourselves to other people
“Ah, shit. I just saw my friends’ bank statement, and they have more money than me.”
2) We observe the way this is impacting us
“Because I see they have more money than me, I’m feeling jealous, envious, and insecure.”
3) We acknowledge those emotions and reground ourself with logic and fact
“It makes sense that I’m feeling this way. At the same time, this isn’t the whole picture. I don’t know what debts they have. We are in different career fields. We come from different backgrounds and experiences, etc.”
We might have to do this process over and over again, and that’s okay. The repetition might be needed because — remember — the brain has learned over millions of years that comparison is necessary, so we need to show it that in this very particular situation, it’s unhelpful and fallible.
Okay, onto my next sessions, but I hope this helps.
Have a marvelous rest of your week, and I’ll be back with another blog post shortly. Let me know your thoughts here; I love your feedback, and I’m so grateful for it!
All my love,
Kevin