I have loved every single minute of this exploration into the world of happiness, well-being and positive psychology.
It has interested me my entire life and I have never felt more alive than the day I decided to start this project, and in all the months afterwards. I don’t plan to stop. There is so much more to learn and so much more to share.
But there was one moment when I suddenly felt deflated, that I wasn’t good enough, and questioned whether I had any authority to be writing about these topics.
Comparing our own journey to those of others
This came after I had looked at the website of an author who had also written about the subject of happiness. I felt her website looked slicker than mine ever could. She had also published a book, which I hadn’t, and had a large social media following, which I didn’t.
Comparing myself, for those brief moments, sucked the excitement out of my own endeavour. It was then that I was reminded of Theodore Roosevelt’s famous quote: “Comparison is the thief of joy”.
But comparing ourselves with others is easy to do, and social media does not help with this. So many people are sharing the best of their lives and not the parts they don’t want anyone to see. We naturally compare ourselves to other people, but we are all on our own journey.
Comparing our present selves to our past selves
Hearing a colleague worrying that, compared to her friends, she was not as far along in life as they were, stuck with me. She is only in her twenties and a talented young woman in the early stages of her career. She has, without question, a bright future ahead of her.
My advice at that time was to compare herself to the person she was one year ago, not to her friends. But how easy that was to say, and how hard it is for all of us to follow our own advice.
I reminded myself that this site is documenting my thoughts, my learnings, and my journey. I am exploring topics I am passionate about, and over time, with consistency, the amount of content will increase.
Room for us all
There may be others writing on similar topics, but we need more of that in the world. Putting my plans on hold because someone else is further along the journey than I am, is lacking in logic and makes no sense at all. This experience sparked me to investigate the topic of comparison a little more.
The constantly comparing brain
According to Professor Bruce Hood, in his book The Science of Happiness, our brain is constantly making comparisons. He explains: “From sensations to perceptions, from thoughts to actions, we are drawing constant comparisons to make relative judgements.”
Our sense of self is established over childhood and is dependent on our relative relationships with others. We want to be included, we want to be liked and we want to have status, and that all depends on how we compare with others.
He points out that there are universal motivations that guide our behaviours and the choices we make in life. The problem comes when the comparisons we make with others results in us reaching the wrong conclusions.
The influence of bias
All sorts of biases influence our comparisons, such as a tendency to only notice what we pay attention to (attentional blindness), the tendency to seek out and highlight evidence that confirms our beliefs (confirmation bias) and the tendency to revise retrospectively our predictions in accordance with the outcomes (hindsight bias).
Social media does not reflect reality
It is easy to compare ourselves with others, yet we do not have full insight into the lives of others. What appears on social media often does not reflect reality.
Someone who may appear happy and successful, with a large house, extensive family, and the latest model of car, might not be. There are so many people we can compare ourselves with that it is easy to find someone who is in a better position that we are and home in on them.
There will so many people whose lives do not compare favourably to our own, yet we pay little, if any, attention to them. We tend to compare ourselves upwards.
The comparison is never-ending
Those we feel are more successful than us will be able to find people they feel are more successful than them. The comparison is never-ending. There will always be someone we perceive to be doing better.
A degree of comparison can motive us to achieve more, but too much and it knocks our confidence and leaves us feeling inadequate.
The importance of gratitude
Hood highlights the importance of gratitude, which helps promote happiness “by focussing on the positive rather than the negative things in our life” and helping us acknowledge what we are lucky to have.
This forces us to make downward comparisons and recognise how fortunate we are and move our focus away from what we feel we are lacking.
Our in-built negativity bias
Making downward comparisons takes some practise as we have an in-built negativity bias.
Many animals, including humans, have evolved a propensity to pay special attention and overreact to negative signals in the environment. This includes information from the past, present and future. In the present, we are faster to respond to negative sounds, words, voices and faces.
A survival mechanism
We need to be alert to negative signals in our environment as they can help us avoid danger by activating the freeze response. There is no positive equivalent that produces such a strong and immediate response.
We remember bad experiences so we can learn from them should they happen again. It’s a survival mechanism.
He ends with an important reminder: “We notice unhappiness more than happiness, which is why we need to remind ourselves of the good things in life.”
Sources
Rozin, P. and Royzman, E.B., 2001. Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion. Personality and social psychology review, 5(4), pp.296-320.
Suls, J. and Wheeler, L., 2012. Social comparison theory. Handbook of theories of social psychology, 1, pp.460-482.
Vogel, E.A., Rose, J.P., Okdie, B.M., Eckles, K. and Franz, B., 2015. Who compares and despairs? The effect of social comparison orientation on social media use and its outcomes. Personality and individual differences, 86, pp.249-256.
