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Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s.
The podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our
20s and what they mean for our psychology.
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast, new listeners,
old listeners, wherever you are in the world, it is so great to have you here back for
another episode as we of course break down the psychology of our 20s.
Now there are a lot of things that cause us I would say a great deal of stress and unhappiness
in our 20s and a lot of it is beyond our control.
This is naturally a decade where we feel extremely lost.
Things are very much up in the air but I would say a fair amount of our occasional misery
and our self doubt comes down to things that we can change when we kind of examine our
mindset and how we treat ourselves and how we acknowledge our wins, our successes, our
best attributes.
What we're talking about today is self comparison.
Namely why it is that social comparison steals so much joy from us but also how we can
learn to stop tearing ourselves down by constantly measuring ourselves against others.
By constantly looking at their careers, their relationships, their clothes, their body,
their success, their financial situation and feeling like we are lacking.
I think in Parisin is one of those really hard parts about being human, right?
I find it so fascinating that as a species we have all the critical thinking skills in
the world, we can solve some of humanity's greatest problems, our brains, quite literally
contain millions of neural connections and yet we choose to use them in ways that hurt
our own feelings, in ways that harm us more than they benefit us.
One of those ways is by constantly comparing ourselves to others and coming up short.
It's like self-imposed psychological torture in so many ways but on another level sometimes
we don't feel like we can stop.
We just never feel good enough and so we use social comparison to reinforce that, perhaps
as a form of self sabotage, if our self-esteem is already in the dumps.
We sometimes do things that don't serve us because we think that we deserve to feel bad.
We do things like procrastinating or binge drinking or self-isolating or looking into
the lives of other people and fantasizing about how much better things would be if we
were more like them.
I think this just perpetuates the cycle and it steals a lot of our joy.
We're particularly prone to this in our 20s of course because our identity already feels
quite unstable and there is a great deal of insecurity amongst people in this generation
and insecurity that stems from uncertainty about the future and uncertainty about our
place in this world from an evolutionary perspective.
Some psychologists would also argue that we actually have an innate tendency to compare
ourselves to others because in this way we learn what we might be doing wrong but also
how to fit in.
So in that way it serves the social purpose.
Now this idea was first introduced back in the 1950s by a social psychologist known
as Leon Fessinger.
If you are a bit of a psychology geek or a trivia master you'll recognize that name because
he is also responsible for the term cognitive dissonance but Leon he assumed that back
when we roamed the savannah in tribes when we were mere hunter gatherers comparing ourselves
to others conferred a survival advantage by providing information about our relative position
within a group.
As a result this helped us assess what kind of resources we had access to how we were
kind of like squaring up compared to others what other people had that we lacked.
It also helped us conform because we could look and observe how others were behaving and
adapt our own behavior accordingly meaning that we were less likely to be kicked out of
the group because we were doing everything right because we were basing our behavior on
the norm that we saw projected by others.
So we were more likely to be accepted we were more likely to learn from other people in
the group and we were more likely to essentially survive.
In that way I think that social comparison also acted as a form of validation and personal
reassurance both back in the day and also these days right like if Wendy from down the
street is wearing double denim and I am too well I must be doing something right or at
least I have like an ally in this we reassure ourselves that we're not doing anything that's
too ghastly or to against what people expect from us or you know if you're good rendaive
like took a gap year and still ended up with a great job by comparing yourself to him
you feel like you can do that as well.
We use others as an example to assure us that we are on the right path that what we are
doing will be accepted because somebody else is doing it but also we use social comparison
as a form of aspiration and sometimes even motivation.
I think regardless of the purpose there might be some quote unquote benefits it can also
make us feel pretty horrific when it goes untamed.
I think also compared to our ancestors which is what Leon Festinger based his theory on
right we now have so many more opportunities to compare compared to those you know people
back then.
We are exposed to firstly just a lot more people in our communities and in our environment
compared to the small tribes that he was operating his beliefs on and we also have social
media which means that at any stage you can jump online and find the perfect example of
somebody who is going to make you feel bad about yourself.
So for the most part it can really give rise to a lot of feelings of jealousy or competition
which ends up harming our relationships and sadly how we treat ourselves and how we treat
others.
It can make us feel a lot less grateful for what we do have because someone out there in
the world is always going to have more and as a result we never feel quite satisfied
because we're in this habitual spiral of chronic comparison.
It is the classic idea that the grass is always greener on the other side.
That is a Taylor's oldest time but something that I think contains an equal amount of truth
is that the grass is actually greener where you water it.
The ultimate kind of antidote to social comparison is feeling confident enough in what you're
building and what you're doing and spending your time nurturing these parts of you then
being distracted by other people's progress that is something I'm definitely working on
in my own life but I'm also learning that when social comparison is used wisely it can
also be used to our advantage.
If we switch from using social comparison as a form of like self sabotage and trying
to hurt our own feelings to an opportunity to really take stock of our lives and what
we're actually grateful for but also what we want to improve sometimes it's rather useful.
So today we're going to talk about five tips I have for controlling the temptation to
compare how to stop comparing yourself to others or maybe more a better way to put that
is how to keep the parts of social comparison that benefit you and say goodbye to the other
aspects.
So we have a lot to talk about today a lot to cover of course a lot of fascinating psychology
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The easiest way to let something control you is to ignore it and suppress it.
I think anytime we try too hard to not do something to you know keep our hands behind our
back.
That just really hands over the microphone and it amplifies our insecurities because
we feel like that if we were to set this thing free if we were to allow ourselves to compare
ourselves to others as much as we want it would give it all the power and we are so scared
of that reality that we actually end up focusing more on the possibility of that happening
as a result.
So what we really didn't want to happen becomes inevitable because we avoided it for too
long and we gave it power over ourselves.
It might sound counter intuitive but if you want to reduce the negative effects of social
comparison you kind of have to give yourself a mission to compare yourself to others whenever
you would like.
So this is rule one, don't unfollow, don't suppress, accept your need to compare and expand
on your comparison.
So let me explain.
I'm going to admit that in a past episode I did on social comparison I gave some advice
that I no longer believe in particularly in regards to social media.
So I think this episode came out a couple years ago and at the time my advice was to unfollow
the people who made you feel bad, that woman with a better body than you with the lavish
lifestyle, the millions of followers, the person who was traveling to the places that you
really wanted to go to whilst you were busy working your 9 to 5 if they trigger your social
comparison, avoid it.
Avoid exposure, unfollow, there we go, you're fixed.
Your social comparison is no longer there because you're not experiencing it.
I think I had a rather immatial viewpoint back then and I was trying to get the science
to fit what I wanted to believe when honestly all the psychology really disagrees with me
on that.
Yes, there are some people you don't need to engage with on social media or in real life.
But if you really want to gain power over your social comparison, you need to realize
that these people are not a threat.
Their brilliance, their luck, their successes and your own are not mutually exclusive just
because they're doing really well for themselves doesn't mean you can't feel good about what
you have.
If we unfollow anyone who makes us uncomfortable or who we feel jealous of, we end up in an
echo chamber of only engaging with people who we don't see as a threat.
And that really comes down to a classic form of avoidance, turning away from things that
make us uncomfortable instead of engaging with them and learning how to manage our feelings
towards something that make us feel bad.
I think in that space with this perspective, we give our social comparison the power
that it wants, meaning that yes, we will inevitably be exposed to someone who is doing
better than us, who is making more money with the nurse who is absolutely crushing it.
Whatever it is, it just isn't a big deal anymore.
I think suppressing about feeling doesn't lessen its sting.
It doesn't make it go away.
The root cause, which is most likely your sense of insecurity, is still there.
It just makes us less prepared or emotionally strong to deal with feeling unpleasant when
inevitably this person will come along, right?
Like we just live behind a wall.
We just never challenge ourselves.
Instead, when you feel like there is that siren call to compare yourself, I'm going to
say the thing that you probably least expect me to say, let yourself do it.
But that expand on your comparison.
For example, if you see someone on LinkedIn who just had a huge promotion and she's your
age, you went to university together.
Her career has taken off.
Yours has kind of stored.
Yes, you can get upset.
You can let yourself feel really shitty and assume that her success says something about
yours.
But you can also add on to those judgments.
So I'm going to give you an example of what this sounds like.
Adding on to our judgments that come from our need to compare.
Basically shows us that our initial thought around what this person has that we don't
is not the full picture.
So for example, with this woman you see on LinkedIn, right?
What you can say is this person is doing so well and so am I.
We just have different paths.
I'm so jealous of what they're achieving.
And I'll get there one day as well.
I wish I had what she had.
And it's great because I already have so much so I'm so close.
Her body is like so amazing and so beautiful.
And so is mine.
How amazing.
Reason this works is that you don't scold yourself for comparing and therefore make it feel
taboo or give it power.
You just make your judgments more nuanced and you don't let them only take on a negative
spin.
And that note of LinkedIn and career comparison, let's talk about why social comparison seems
to be impacting us so much more nowadays.
Social media means that we are experiencing an insane level of information overload whereby
at any moment you can be exposed to the lives of hundreds if not thousands of people.
All you have to do is open your phone and you are going to see a highlight reel of everybody's
lives.
All the things that they know will get them likes.
All the pictures that will match their aesthetic.
It really warps our sense of what is normal, especially because social media was built to
be performative.
And when we get so much about information about the world, about trends, about what we should
be doing, about what's cool.
From social media, that means that our view of what is normal becomes quite skewed.
So that brings me to rule number two.
Keep your judgments realistic.
I know I sound like a broken record, but truly, from somebody who does this themselves,
I'll admit it, everything you see online is curated.
Everything I post online, I think about a million times.
I'm not posting like the random screenshots of like where my rubour is.
I'm not posting like the photo I took of my Wi-Fi password on like the back of the
modem or like all the rubbish that I need to get collected.
Even the videos you see of people who are complaining or tired or sad or going through a breakup
or a setback, whatever it is, that is still not the full picture.
And it's often very strategic because we know that that kind of content, that vulnerable
content, draws people in.
But it's still not real.
It's still not the full picture.
In that way, we often comparing ourselves to a reality that doesn't even exist.
Not even for the person who is advertising it as such.
It's why I'm such a big fan of those influencers or those pages that do post the unposted
gym shots, who do post their messy homes and their unblemished skin and their just every
day life.
I think it's so comforting to see somebody who is breaking like the fourth wall of the
internet who was literally looking at you and going, this is not real.
One of this is real and yet you are basing your perceptions of your own life on someone
else's sugar-coated version that they post online, even in our real lives, even in like
our everyday interactions with people.
No one is coming out and saying exactly how they were feeling.
No one is messing up to half of the emotions that they're trying to manage.
They're insecurities.
You know, the time that they spend alone, the fears, the doubts, the fights, I just think
that it's good to remind yourself that it's not the truth.
Keep that in mind.
This brings me to rule number three.
Do things for you first and sometimes for you only.
Unhealthy social comparison can be a huge time wasteer because it makes us doubt our own
decisions in our path and therefore kind of keeps us in this loop.
It gets us stuck because we spend so much time thinking about what other people are thinking
rather than actually just doing.
I think that comes from this weird realization we have that the fact that we are comparing
ourselves to others means that people are comparing themselves to us and then measuring
themselves up against our actions and our lives.
So we better put on a really good show, right?
This makes us quite insecure, I think, because we want to impress them.
So we get stuck in trying to do things perfectly or according to what we think others want or
will find aesthetic or attractive or worthwhile.
And a lot of that stems from a sense of self-doubt that if we were to come out and just do what
we want to want to do to be authentic that that might not be accepted.
I like to use the example of choosing an outfit in the morning, right?
Like not a huge risk, not a huge task, not groundbreaking.
If you did think about what others were thinking or didn't pay much attention to how they might
be comparing themselves to you, you would wear whatever you wanted.
You would pick up the first thing you saw regardless of whether you're top matched to your
parents, which matched your shoes.
And if you were not thinking about other people's opinions, you would be ready at the door
in five minutes.
In contrast, if you are contemplating the judgments and the opinions of others trying to anticipate
their thoughts and their feelings towards you, suddenly every choice takes on a whole new
level of gravity.
You start putting yourself in the mind of every person you walk past, the person that
you're going to meet, the stranger you're old age, the focus on what other people might
be thinking about you makes every decision take so much longer.
And it all derives from social comparison and realizing that there is this weird mind
game going on between everybody where we're looking at others and they're looking at us
trying to figure out what's cool, what's normal, what we should be doing.
If you want to be social comparison, go with your gut instinct.
Don't fall into the game of thinking about what other people want from you.
What do you want?
If you want to post that photo on social media, that video, that TikTok, don't question,
just do it.
You want to wear that outfit you like that you don't think is like trendy or stylish.
Don't think, just put it on, you want to buy those weird shoes because you really like
them, go ahead.
You want to go to the gym in your sports bra, even though your body doesn't look like
hers or doesn't look like hers.
All those shorts you think other people might have a problem with, feel the fear of judgment
and do it anyway.
Those opinions are their problem, not yours.
If they want to spend their time and it's like, let's be honest, they're finite, precious
energy, making themselves feel better by looking at you and putting you down, that is their
burden to bear.
The antidote to social comparison is authenticity and it's a muscle that you have to build.
Social comparison by nature.
