4 Keys to Avoiding the Comparison Trap
By: Cal Walters
“Comparison is the thief of joy.”
—Theodore Roosevelt
What does it mean to live an intentional life?
I think about this a lot. And I’ve come to the conclusion that living an intentional life is ultimately living a life of integrity—where there is alignment between our deepest values and our daily behaviors.
This sounds simple, and in a way, it is. But in our modern culture of overwork, overwhelm, constant striving and distraction, it is hard.
The beauty of a life of integrity is that it leads to contentment and peace with ourselves.
We all want to experience joy and lasting fulfillment.
And every person I know that is truly happy and fulfilled has a deep sense of peace.
I’m not talking about people that are stagnant and not growing.
No, happy people are typically growing and pushing themselves to reach the upper level of their God-given potential.
But happy people have a peace about who they are, where they are going, and have a healthy self-identity. They want to be better, but they have embraced their unique journey and are focused on who they are becoming.
Now, today we’re going to talk about one of the top, if not the top, threats to us experiencing true peace.
Comparison.
In the past week, you can probably point to a time when you were comparing yourself to someone else.
Maybe it was someone else’s house, their outfit, their body, someone else’s accomplishments, someone else’s job, car, significant other, children, vacation, number of followers . . .
Social media has amplified this reality.
Maybe you saw someone’s post on Instagram and you felt this tinge of jealousy hit you – you saw a curated picture of someone’s life, their family, and there was something in you that felt envy or that you were somehow lacking.
My Journey with Comparison
I recall feeling the sting of comparison when I first arrived at West Point. I did pretty well at a small high school in North Carolina. I was the captain of my varsity football team, and I even received a few letters to play football in college. But West Point didn’t officially offer me a spot on the football team. I applied to West Point, got accepted, showed up in the Summer of 2004 for Cadet Basic Training, and tried to walk on to the football team.
As luck would have it, I was one of only a few cadets to successfully walk onto the football team, but that’s when comparison started to rock my confidence.
I looked around at all of the “real football players” and immediately felt like an imposter. Many of these guys came from large high schools in big states like Texas and California. I came from a small school in North Carolina, and I wasn’t even good enough to get an official offer (these were some of the thoughts in my head). Plus, I was one of the smallest players on the team.
Comparison, comparison, comparison.
Fast forward to six years later.
I’m no longer playing football (ok, maybe some flag football). I’ve now graduated from West Point, married the most amazing woman, and moved to Hawaii. My wife was still in college, but we were fortunate to have a little money left over at the end of each month, so we started investing some of our savings.
I was really proud of our little investment account until . . . comparison.
Many of my friends and colleagues had spouses that worked outside the home. When I began to learn how much they were saving and investing, the joy I felt about our little investments went away. The more I dwelled upon how far “ahead” they were than me, I felt demotivated. Why even try? I know, this sounds really silly in retrospect. But that’s what comparison does to us. As soon as we feel like we’ve achieved a proverbial first down, we see that the first down marker has moved.
Now, before we go too far, let me clarify. Not all forms of comparison are bad. Let’s distinguish between healthy and unhealthy comparison.
Healthy Comparison is all about inspiration. When your comparison is healthy, you acknowledge that your self worth is not connected to this comparison, but you see where someone else is and you use that as healthy motivation to improve yourself. A key indicator that you are engaged in healthy comparison is that you can genuinely celebrate their success and ask for their help.
Unhealthy Comparison is directly attached to our identity and self-worth. This type of comparison affects us at our core. We feel it deeply. Instead of inspiration, we feel deep envy. Or, on the flip side, we feel intense pride about our situation. It’s as if we need them to be worse off than us to feel good about ourselves. This unhealthy comparison can divide and isolate us, placing an unspoken barrier between growth and unity found in community.
Life Picture
I want you to imagine you are about to embark on a long journey to the top of a mountain. You have a pack on your back, hiking boots on, and long in the distance you can see the peak of a mountain. Because you can see the peak of the mountain far in the distance, you generally know the direction you need to travel to get to the top, but you don’t know every twist and turn you will encounter along the way.
The top of this mountain represents the upper level of your God-given potential in life, the fulfillment of your goals and dreams according to YOUR deepest values. You begin traveling laser focused on the path in front of you and your ultimate destination at the top of the mountain. You are on track to reach the top of the mountain and you’re committed to getting there.
However, along the way you begin to look to your left and you see another person. This person also seems to be traveling down a path to a different mountain top destination.
This person is also carrying a pack. But you begin to notice that this person has better gear than you do. Their pack is newer, their clothing and boots are newer, and they seem to be traveling with overall better equipment.
Next, you turn to your right and you notice another person.
This person is also traveling to what appears to be a different mountain top destination.
You notice this person is also different from you in that they are taller, a little better looking, younger, and they appear to be in better shape.
You also notice that they seem to be moving at a faster pace than you.
Before you noticed these two individuals, you were laser focused on your destination and swiftly moving along the path. But now every time you look to the left and right you become distracted. And every time you do this you also veer just a bit off course. You also slow down your pace.
Ultimately, the more time you spend focusing on the other people the less likely it becomes that you will reach your desired destination – your mountain top.
This is exactly what we do in our own lives. We compare ourselves to people that are traveling to completely different destinations. And the more we do this the less focused we become on achieving our goals and our desires.
In the military, we have “battle drills” for predictable situations we will encounter in combat. For example, the most basic battle drill is “react to contact.” The element that first comes into contact with the enemy lays down a base of fire while a second element flanks the enemy. As an infantry unit, we drill this over and over again for two primary reasons: (1) it is predictable that we will come into contact with the enemy; and (2) we need to be really good at reacting to the enemy.
Because we know we tend to engage in unhealthy comparison (and unfortunately this trend is only increasing), we need a battle drill to react well to this predictable situation.
A Simple Battle Drill for the Comparison Trap
Next time you start to feel yourself tempted to engage in unhealthy comparison, take these 4 steps. You can even say them out loud (maybe just to yourself!).
1. Take a deliberate moment to acknowledge this truth: there is no win in comparison
When we look to others to feel good about ourselves, and when we use others as our reference point for our own self-worth, we eventually will have to confront the reality that there will always be someone smarter, richer, funnier, cuter, taller, more accomplished, better family, better job, more Twitter followers, more Facebook friends . . . the list goes on and on.
This is true for everyone – even the people at the very top in a category. Even the best athletes have to confront old age. The most unbreakable records get broken. Even the richest people eventually get surpassed by other rich people.
In Andy Stanley’s wonderful sermon series on Comparison, he puts it this way: there will always be someone with more -er . . . smarter, richer, funnier, taller, younger . . .
So as soon as I start to feel good about my situation compared to someone with less -er I will very soon after find someone with more -er.
In this step of the battle drill, we are acknowledging the futility of unhealthy comparison. In the long run, everyone loses.
King Solomon from the Bible, the wisest and richest man that ever lived said this:
“I observed that most people are motivated to success because they envy their neighbors. But this, too, is meaningless—like chasing the wind.” Ecclesiastes 4:4
There is no win in chasing the wind.
2. Remind yourself this truth: success is not a zero sum game.
There is more than enough success to go around. My success does not mean you can’t also be successful. When other people succeed, we can freely celebrate their success without it somehow detracting from us.
Sure, there are times when only one person can truly win. My daughter reminds me this every time we play Monopoly.
But, in the big-picture context of life, there is more than enough success to go around.
This is about adopting an abundance mindset over a scarcity mindset.
After acknowledging the futility of comparison (Step 1), take a moment to remember that both you and the person to whom you are comparing can be successful at the same time.
3. Choose to Celebrate Other People
Step 3 in the Battle Drill is to deliberately celebrate the other person. When that feeling of jealousy starts to creep in, replace it with joy for the other person’s success.
Often the deliberate act of celebration leads to feelings of genuine excitement for the other person. It’s like praying for someone with whom you are upset. It’s hard to do the selfless act of prayer while also feeling anger towards someone. The feelings follow the behavior.
Doing this quickly shuts down the human tendency to focus on comparison. Complimenting someone or celebrating their success puts your heart in the right place and allows you to focus on others instead of yourself.
Celebrating someone can also turn unhealthy comparison into a chance to learn from someone else. We may now be genuinely inspired by them and be in a place to learn from them and grow. Who knows, you may give them the boost they need to carry on. We never know what others may be going through.
4. Remind yourself of this truth: I am on my own journey to do what only I can do.
Step 4 is to recenter on your unique path.
There is no one else exactly like you on this planet – you are unique. You have a unique combination of personality traits, talents, skills, physical characteristics, desires, experiences, and relationships.
Let me give you a few stats to demonstrate how special you are:
If I could take all of the DNA strands from your body, uncoil them and lay them out, they would stretch over 10 BILLION miles long. That’s all the way to Pluto and back, or to the sun and back 50 times!
Your body is made up of 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (seven octillion) atoms! (That’s a 7 with 27 zeros behind it)
Your heart casually pumps on average of 100,000 times per day, without you even thinking about it
Any parent that has gone through the miracle of birth knows how delicate life is – how many key stages of development have to occur for you to exist as you do today
Your mother had about a 1 in 20,000 chance of ever meeting your father. And that’s just of them ever meeting each other
The specific combination of reproductive cells that resulted in your existence occurs at a likelihood of 1 in 400 quadrillion
If you live in the Western world, then you’re probably even in the top 1% of the 7.7 billion people on Earth. There are literally billions of people that would look at your life, what you have, your circumstances, and would love to have the life of abundance that you have.
After describing comparison as like chasing the wind, the wise King Solomon had another great line about how gratitude leads to peace:
“Better one handful with tranquillity than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.” Ecclesiastes 4:4
You were created and born to do incredible things. There is something on this earth that only you can do. You have the perfect combination of gifts, talents, and circumstances to do something beyond what you can imagine.
But as long as you’re spending time focused on the people to your left and right, that energy you’re expending could be used to focus on the greatness within you – about reaching your full potential and fulfilling that purpose for which you were born.
In our journey to live a more intentional life, to focus on our unique path in life and work to create alignment between our deepest values and our daily behaviors, don’t let comparison distract you from your path.
I hope this simple 4-step battle drill can help you the next time you start to compare. It is coming, but you’ll be ready.
Go climb your mountain! I’m rooting for you!
Check out the following episodes for more content on gratitude and adopting a Go-Giver mindset:
#22: The New Science of Gratitude
#28: Bob Burg — the Go-Giver Way
Cal is the Founder and Host of the Intentional Leader podcast. He is also a major in the US Army and currently serves as the Chief of Criminal Law at the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, NC.
Cal is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, Campbell Law School, US Army Ranger School, and the US Army Airborne School. Prior to attending law school, Cal served as an infantry officer in the US Army where he led a rifle platoon, served as the second in command of an infantry company, deployed to Iraq, and served as an aide-de-camp for an Army general.
He is passionate about helping leaders grow and hopes every interaction you have with Intentional Leader helps you grow in your life and leadership.
Cal and his wife, Natalie, have one daughter.