Why We Fall Into Unhealthy Comparison
It’s inevitable. We have days where we think about people and measure our place against theirs. I think it’s okay when we fall into healthy comparison.
We can’t help comparing because we’re humans. We love to see the process and the progress.
Sometimes, we don’t notice what happens when we compare, though.
We begin to accept that the person is far better than ours---to the point of becoming a threat.
This is one reason we start unhealthy comparison.
It gives way to the mindsets: “we lack something” or “we’re not good enough”.
There statements reveal how we feel towards ourselves. It shows that we’re not aware of our strengths, talents, and uniqueness. It shows we don’t walk from them.
It’s one of the facets of unhealthy comparison.
Here are two effects of that:
- We think we’re the only one so we want to see if someone’s in the same status as us.
Clingy humans! Or is it just me? Humans want to belong. They want to have someone that’ll serve as companion or someone to run to. We want to know the person that can relate with us. That’s wonderful, actually.
That person can either be our friend or people that we interact with on social. One thing’s for sure, though: we won’t know where they are on the journey if we don’t talk with them.
Talking with someone gives us a lot of ideas on what they’re going through. Having this knowledge makes us look for the similarities or differences.
After being aware of this, it’s not enough. What happens next is, we immediately think that they’re better than us. Once we accept that fact, we’ve been trapped.
We begin to think they’re a threat to us.
This thinking magnifies the weaknesses we already know we have. This will give way to self-doubt, envy, annoyance (to the person), even anger. As you continue to compare yourself carrying these, it’ll begin to direct your actions and conversations.
Please be careful. Let’s go to the next one.
2. We think that person got it easy.
This is another thought we begin to have after accepting that the other person is better than us. We become distracted from our own processes. We begin to accept that it was just easy for that person. When the opposite is true.
Everybody starts from zero, everybody had struggles. That’s okay. When we think that the other person got it easy, we start to follow blindly without considering our own unique take on things.
Following blindly becomes a constraint makes the journey less enjoyable. This breeds to frustration and to other emotions that make us think the other person is a threat.
To become aware of this and avoid it to the best that we can, we must begin within ourselves. We must recognize first our strengths and qualities. So that when we see someone doing better than ours, we’re already aware that they’re also using their strengths to their advantage.
