There are only two kinds of people: those who have experienced professional jealousy or career envy, and those who lie about the fact that they do. In other words, we all do at some point. Especially now, in a world that is quick to broadcast and amplify the stories of those who have amassed great wealth and fame, but slow to shed much light on the struggles and challenges behind the curtains.
It’s all too easy to find yourself wondering; what am I doing wrong? How come everyone else seems able to achieve things that are proving impossible for me? Our natural human drive to compare ourselves to others is so strong that one study by researchers at the University of Warwick and Cardiff University found that money only makes people happy if it makes them richer than their neighbors. A basic interpretation is that people would rather earn £4m if everyone around them earned £1m than earn £6m if everyone around them earned £9m. Mind boggling! The researchers were trying to understand why people in rich nations have not become any happier on average over the last 40 years despite substantial increases in average incomes.
We’ve heard of course, that comparison is the thief of joy and we shouldn’t compare ourselves to others. But the thoughts still come unsolicited, often riding on a wave of social media posts that remind us of our low ranking on the totem pole and many perceived inadequacies.
I’m not convinced that it’s easy to stop these thoughts from coming altogether but having the proper framework or ‘filing category’ for them can prevent them from causing you angst. As the saying goes – negative thoughts are like birds; you can’t keep them from flying around your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair. Often, we are advised to stop comparing ourselves to others and instead compare ourselves to ‘who we were yesterday’, and work on continuous improvement. That’s a better approach than envying someone else, but it still doesn’t always get to the root of the problem. Even if you compare you to you, you may end up just as unhappy because the fundamental issue is that you are not comfortable with where you are; whether that’s relative to someone else, or to your own idea of where you should be.
The unhappiness that comes from the comparison cannot be truly dealt with by changing the thing you are comparing yourself to. We tend to compare ourselves with those who are better off than us, not worse, because it is our own feeling of inadequacy that highlights others’ success as evidence of our failure. Just as those with a superiority complex look to those ‘below’ them as evidence of who they are, not those above. What must be dealt with then, is not what we compare ourselves to, but the thinking that compels us to measure our progress this way. Comparison can only be replaced by contentment, and contentment comes from accepting your personal journey.
This is the framework I use for turning my mind away from comparison and towards contentment: it’s the difference between being on a race track and being on a highway.
When we compare ourselves to other people, we are like drivers on a race track. On a race track you can safely assume that everyone is trying to achieve the same thing; you all want to win the same trophy. Going slower than someone else has serious ramifications because it means you’re likely to lose. You have no interest in helping other drivers; after all, they are your competition. Other drivers only make gains at your expense, because on a race track there can only be one winner.
But when you choose contentment over comparison, you become like a driver on a highway. You understand that every driver is on their own journey to a different destination. It doesn’t matter if someone overtakes you; you’re not going to the same place nor do you need to be there at the same time – in fact you have no idea where they’re going. You are happy to smile and wave at other drivers or pull over when they need help; they’re not your competition, just fellow travellers. You do not know the itineraries of all the other drivers, so you can’t pass judgement on how fast or slow they go, or when they take a path that seems unconventional – and it certainly has no bearing at all on your own journey.
The next time you feel a twinge of jealousy when a friend or colleague makes a professional breakthrough, use that trigger as an opportunity to explore what it is about your own journey that you are not happy with – and work to change your attitude towards it. This is not about other people having better luck or getting good breaks, or the world being unfair; it’s about your lack of contentment with your own journey. Remind yourself that we’re all on a highway not a race track, on different life journeys to different destinations. Embrace the freedom that gives you to celebrate fellow travellers enthusiastically, genuinely, with a pure and open heart.
