Beware of the Compare

Hi all, I’m Finan­cial Mechan­ic, and I write about tools that can help every­one in their pur­suit of finan­cial inde­pen­dence.  I found Fiery Mil­len­ni­als when I first learned about FI as a con­cept and have enjoyed fol­low­ing Gwen’s escapades. I am con­tin­u­al­ly impressed by her aplomb, and thank her for shar­ing my writ­ing with you! This arti­cle delves into how to stop com­par­ing our­selves to oth­ers. Hon­est­ly, I wish I com­pared myself to oth­ers less. Like Gwen– she nev­er com­pares her­self at all.

In my lin­ear alge­bra class, the teacher assis­tant plopped my exam on my desk. At the top was my grade: a measly 55, encir­cled by red pen. I had stud­ied every night for the last three weeks, mem­o­rized all of the equa­tions, prac­ticed until when I tried to sleep I saw vari­ables danc­ing across the backs of my eye­lids. Yet there it was — an F, a fail, a mis­er­able fias­co of a grade.

The pro­fes­sor let the class sit in heavy silence. I won­dered if this meant I should change my major, give up on engi­neer­ing, and run away to start a folk music band. Final­ly, she told us, “This exam was grad­ed on a curve.”

She flicked to the next slide, reveal­ing the range of scores that cor­re­spond­ed with each let­ter grade.  Shoul­ders shift­ed as stu­dents in the room breathed a col­lec­tive sigh of relief. The class aver­age was a 45. My 55 was actu­al­ly an A. Fol­low­ing that day, we would chat­ter in the hall­ways after every exam. We would try to gauge how every­one else did because that deter­mined our true grade.

In order to sur­vive, humans need to com­pare their own abil­i­ty against the abil­i­ties of oth­ers. We don’t learn in isolation—we need a frame of ref­er­ence to fig­ure out how we are doing. Com­par­ing for self-eval­u­a­tion is nat­ur­al and help­ful, how­ev­er, it can turn against us in unhealthy ways, prompt­ing us to be resent­ful and envious.

Comparison Becomes a Problem

We all know the insid­i­ous­ness of com­par­i­son when we obsess over oth­er peo­ples’ lives. We flick through Insta­gram shots at the top of Mac­chu Pic­chu while spoon­ing cere­al into our mouths before mak­ing our ear­ly trudge into work. We scroll through engage­ment pho­to shoots on our way home for the hol­i­days, prepar­ing to weath­er mom’s cha­grin about your per­pet­u­al sin­gle­dom. Did you hear about her friend’s daugh­ter who is mar­ried, has three dar­ling kids, and works as a suc­cess­ful lawyer in NYC?

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there are an infi­nite amount of cat­e­gories we can obsess over when we com­pare our­selves to oth­ers. There will always be some­one smarter, more fit, more social, more influ­en­tial than us.

The Grass is Greener on Your Neighbor’s Lawn

When it comes to mon­ey, we look to our neigh­bors for our own mea­sure of self-worth. A study pub­lished by The Nation­al Bureau of Eco­nom­ic Research found that the more our neigh­bors earn, the worse off our self-report­ed happiness.

In the Simp­sons, Homer can’t stand Flan­ders, a char­ac­ter that is always ready to greet Homer with a smile. He is the neigh­bor with ‘it all,’ hap­py kids, a bet­ter job, and a big­ger house. In one episode, Flan­ders quits his job in order to open up a store to sell left-hand­ed appliances.

Homer Simp­son, laugh­ing: I’m telling you, Flan­ders’ store was desert­ed. So what do you think of your bestest bud­dy now, Marge?

Lisa Simp­son: Dad, do you know what schaden­freude is?

Homer Simp­son: No, I do not know what schaden­freude is. Please tell me because I’m dying to know.

Lisa Simp­son: It’s a Ger­man term for shame­ful joy, tak­ing plea­sure in the suf­fer­ing of others.

Homer Simp­son: Oh, come on, Lisa. I’m just glad to see him fall flat on his butt. He’s usu­al­ly all hap­py and com­fort­able and sur­round­ed by loved ones. And it makes me feel — what’s the oppo­site of that shame­ful joy thing of yours?

Lisa Simp­son: Sour grapes.

Homer Simp­son: Boy, those Ger­mans have a word for everything.

We uni­ver­sal­ly expe­ri­ence schaden­freude. It’s what fuels the tabloids show­cas­ing the fall of celebri­ties– the buzz around the scan­dals of golfer Tiger Woods and famous pub­lic fig­ure Martha Stew­art. It is the same sat­is­fac­tion when the pop­u­lar bul­ly gets their come­up­pance in the teen flick, or when that pompous know-it-all does­n’t make hon­or roll. Yet, why do we waste our time rejoic­ing in fail­ures of oth­ers rather than focus­ing on our own lives?

Gwen here. I also rec­om­mend check­ing out a song called Schaden­freude from the Broad­way musi­cal Avenue Q. It explains the con­cept per­fect­ly. I also high­ly rec­om­mend the musi­cal in gen­er­al. So good! NSFW, btw.

They Don’t Deserve Their Success (Even If They Do)

We begrudge the suc­cess of oth­ers, espe­cial­ly if we strug­gle to feel suc­cess­ful. Mark Alicke, author of the paper Social Com­par­i­son and Envy writes, “The person’s advan­tage can be real or per­ceived, triv­ial or incon­se­quen­tial, due to luck, effort, or nat­ur­al abil­i­ty. What mat­ters ulti­mate­ly is that per­son A believes that per­son B’s advan­tage is in some way unjust.” Say we begin a busi­ness at the same time as our child­hood friend. They have had a sim­i­lar upbring­ing, their idea is sim­i­lar, and we went to the same busi­ness school. For what­ev­er rea­son, their busi­ness soars while ours floun­ders. We are more like­ly to feel intense envy than com­par­ing our­selves to Nike founder Phil Knight because they are more on our level.

Instead of striv­ing to improve our­selves to their lev­el, we would much rather that they step down from a per­ceived pedestal onto our lev­el. If they fail, whether or not we play a part in their down­fall, we feel like the world is righted.

Stop, Col­lab­o­rate

Rather than mali­cious com­pe­ti­tion, social com­par­i­son can dri­ve moti­va­tion and collaboration.

It’s often help­ful to work out with a bud­dy. On Tues­days and Thurs­days, I would throw my rock climb­ing har­ness and shoes in my trunk and head over to the local gym after work. On days when I waf­fled, my cowork­ers encour­aged me to go with them. We depend­ed on each oth­er for moral and phys­i­cal sup­port, we need­ed some­one to belay us after all! 

Your Choic­es Affect Your Outcome

Then I had a work trip that took me abroad for 6 months, so I stopped climb­ing. When I came home, the work envi­ron­ment had changed and a lot of my friends had left the com­pa­ny. The gym was also pret­ty expen­sive, so I thought I should go to the boul­der­ing gym clos­er to home, but I didn’t do that either. I recent­ly met up with one of those orig­i­nal cowork­ers, and he still goes twice a week. He was talk­ing about the routes he’s climbed, how he’s start­ed to go out­door rock-climb­ing, and how he met some of the most famous climbers in the world.

I start­ed feel­ing jeal­ous, but hel­lo! I made the choice to go home after work. I made the choice to do some­thing else with my evenings while he invest­ed in a top rop­ing course. My jeal­ousy was real­ly just dis­ap­point­ment in myself, so I let him know I was proud of his progress and used the moment for moti­va­tion. If I want to go rock climb­ing more, I need to make it a true pri­or­i­ty and delib­er­ate­ly carve out time for it. The inter­ac­tion with my friend only made me more moti­vat­ed to get back to the wall.

Look Behind The Curtain

If all the world is a stage– as William Shake­speare wrote– and we are just actors, con­sid­er each life you see a per­for­mance. While you watch some­one else’s life play out, you don’t see the hours they spent mak­ing the set and learn­ing their lines. The per­son whose busi­ness is boom­ing put in the hours and effort to get there. The per­son who looks put togeth­er spent an extra hour get­ting ready in the morn­ing. The per­son free solo­ing El Cap­i­tan has climbed the route count­less times.

Peo­ple say com­par­i­son (espe­cial­ly on social media) is like watch­ing some­one else’s high­light reel while you live out your bloop­ers. The real trick is to learn to laugh at your own bloop­er scenes. Remem­ber that there is more behind the cur­tain to every person’s life.

Grate­ful­ness

Pur­su­ing finan­cial inde­pen­dence has taught me one thing above all else—you have to be grate­ful for what you have. You can strive for­ev­er on the hedo­nist tread­mill always want­i­ng more, but con­tent­ment comes with grat­i­tude. If we don’t desire a big­ger house or a bet­ter job, our cheery Flan­der-neigh­bors wouldn’t both­er us.

“Mod­ern envy is aroused as much, if not more, by the things that oth­ers have rather than by the attrib­ut­es they pos­sess.” [empha­sis mine] — Mark Alicke

We can learn to be grate­ful for what we have—but per­haps even more dif­fi­cult is to accept our­selves where we are. Look­ing at oth­ers’ achieve­ments and beat­ing our­selves up just leads to low self-esteem. Ulti­mate­ly, social com­par­i­son is a deeply-root­ed way we deter­mine our own val­ue, and the more we val­ue our­selves the less we com­pare. Even in a world where there is always some­one out-per­form­ing us, remem­ber to acknowl­edge what you have done and where you have come from– I bet you have come a long way.

Takeaway

Com­par­i­son is help­ful; envy is unpro­duc­tive. Learn­ing to focus on gar­den­ing our own lawns, work­ing behind-the-scenes, and accept­ing our­selves is the sure path to progress. There will always be some­one who makes more, accom­plish­es more, hus­tles more, or starts a real­ly suc­cess­ful folk band while you’re feel­ing like a fail­ure. Ditch envy for its help­ful coun­ter­parts: moti­va­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and grate­ful­ness. Stop look­ing around and instead look ahead; you have great things ahead of you.

For more arti­cles like this, check out my blog! Thanks again to Gwen for hav­ing me as a guest writer, I will be around to chat in the com­ments so please leave your thoughts below!