Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
Speaker 1: the podcast where we talk through some of the big
Speaker 1: life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
Speaker 1: mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever
Speaker 1: you are in the world, it is so great to
Speaker 1: have you here. Back for another episode as we, of
Speaker 1: course break down the psychology of our twenties. Now, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of things that cause us, I would say,
Speaker 1: a great deal of stress and unhappiness in our twenties,
Speaker 1: and a lot of it is beyond our control. This
Speaker 1: is naturally a decade where we feel extremely lost. Things
Speaker 1: are very much up in the air. But I would
Speaker 1: say a fair amount of our occasional miss and our
Speaker 1: self doubt comes down to things that we can change
Speaker 1: when we kind of examine our mindset and how we
Speaker 1: treat ourselves, and how we acknowledge our wins, our successes,
Speaker 1: our best attributes. What we're talking about today is self comparison,
Speaker 1: namely why it is that social comparison steals so much
Speaker 1: joy from us, but also how we can learn to
Speaker 1: stop tearing ourselves down by constantly measuring ourselves against others,
Speaker 1: by constantly looking at their careers, at their relationships, at
Speaker 1: their clothes, their body, their success, their financial situation, and
Speaker 1: feeling like we are lacking. I think comparison is one
Speaker 1: of those really hard parts about being human, right. I
Speaker 1: find it so fascinating that, as a species we have
Speaker 1: all the critical thinking skills in the world, we can
Speaker 1: solve some of humanity's greatest problems. Our brains quite literally
Speaker 1: contain millions of neural connections, and yet we choose to
Speaker 1: use them in ways that may hurt our own feelings,
Speaker 1: in ways that harm us more than they benefit us.
Speaker 1: And one of those ways is by constantly comparing ourselves
Speaker 1: to others and coming up short. It's like self imposed
Speaker 1: psychological torture in so many ways. But on another level,
Speaker 1: sometimes we don't feel like we can stop. We just
Speaker 1: never feel good enough, and so we use social comparison
Speaker 1: to reinforce that, perhaps as a form of self sabotage.
Speaker 1: If our self esteem is already in the dumps, we
Speaker 1: sometimes do things that don't serve us because we think
Speaker 1: that we deserve to feel bad. We do things like
Speaker 1: procrastinating or binge drinking, or self isolating, or looking into
Speaker 1: the lives of other people and fantasizing about how much
Speaker 1: better things would be if we were more like them.
Speaker 1: I think this just perpetuates the cycle, and it steals
Speaker 1: a lot of our joy. We're particularly prone to this
Speaker 1: in our twenties, of course, because our identity already feels
Speaker 1: quite unstable, and there is a great deal of insecurity
Speaker 1: amongst people in this generation, and insecurity that stems from
Speaker 1: uncertainty about the future and uncertainty about our place in
Speaker 1: this world. From an evolutionary perspective, some psychologists would also
Speaker 1: argue that we actually have an innate tendency to compare
Speaker 1: ourselves to others, because in this way we learn what
Speaker 1: we might be doing wrong, but also how to fit in.
Speaker 1: So in that way, it serves this social purpose. Now,
Speaker 1: this idea was first introduced back in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: by a social psychologist known as Leon Fessinger. If you
Speaker 1: are a bit of a psychology geek or a trivia master,
Speaker 1: you'll recognize that name because he is also responsible for
Speaker 1: the term cognitive dissonance. But Leon, he assumed that back
Speaker 1: when we roamed the savannah in tribes, when we were
Speaker 1: mere hunter gatherers. Comparing ourselves to others conferred a survival
Speaker 1: advantage by providing information about our relative position within a group.
Speaker 1: As a result, this helped us assess what kind of
Speaker 1: resources we had access to, how we were kind of
Speaker 1: like squaring up compared to others, what other people had
Speaker 1: that we lacked. It also helped us conform because we
Speaker 1: could look and observe how others were behaving and adapt
Speaker 1: our own behavior accordingly, meaning that we were less likely
Speaker 1: to be kicked out of the group because we were
Speaker 1: doing everything right. Because we were basing our behavior on
Speaker 1: the norm that we saw projected by others, so we
Speaker 1: were more likely to be accepted, We were more likely
Speaker 1: to learn from other people in the group, and we
Speaker 1: were more likely to essentially survive in that way. I
Speaker 1: think that social comparison also acted as a form of
Speaker 1: validation and personal reassurance, both back in the day and
Speaker 1: also these days. Right Like if Wendy from down the
Speaker 1: street is wearing double denim and I am too well,
Speaker 1: I must be doing something right, or at least I
Speaker 1: have like an ally in this we reassure ourselves that
Speaker 1: we're not doing anything that's too ghastly or too against
Speaker 1: what people expect from us. Or you know, if your
Speaker 1: good friend Dave took a gap year and still ended
Speaker 1: up with a great job, by comparing yourself to him,
Speaker 1: you feel like you can do that as well. We
Speaker 1: use others as an example to assure us that we
Speaker 1: are on the right path, that what we are doing
Speaker 1: will be accepted because somebody else is doing it. But
Speaker 1: also we use social comparison as a form of aspiration
Speaker 1: and sometimes even motivation. I think, regardless of the purpose,
Speaker 1: there might be some quote unquote benefits. It can also
Speaker 1: make us feel pretty horrific when it goes untamed. I think.
Speaker 1: Also compared to our ancestors, which is what leon Festinger
Speaker 1: based his theory on, right, we now have so many
Speaker 1: more opportunities to compare compared to those people back then.
Speaker 1: We are exposed to firstly, just a lot more people
Speaker 1: in our communities and in our environment compared to the
Speaker 1: small tribes that he was operating his beliefs on. And
Speaker 1: we also have social media, which means that at any
Speaker 1: stage you can jump online and find the perfect example
Speaker 1: of somebody who is going to make you feel bad
Speaker 1: about yourself. So for the most part, it can really
Speaker 1: give rise to a lot of feelings of jealousy or competition,
Speaker 1: which ends up harming our relationships and sadly, how we
Speaker 1: treat ourselves and how we treat others. It can make
Speaker 1: us feel a lot less grateful for what we do
Speaker 1: have because someone out there in the world is always
Speaker 1: going to have more, and as a result, we never
Speaker 1: feel quite satisfied because we're in this chual spiral of
Speaker 1: chronic comparison. It is the classic idea that the grass
Speaker 1: is always greener on the other side. That is a
Speaker 1: tailor's oldest time. But something that I think contains an
Speaker 1: equal amount of truth is that the grass is actually
Speaker 1: greener where you water it. The ultimate kind of antidote
Speaker 1: to social comparison is feeling confident enough in what you're
Speaker 1: building and what you're doing, and spending more time nurturing
Speaker 1: these parts of you then being distracted by other people's progress.
Speaker 1: That is something I'm definitely working on in my own life.
Speaker 1: But I'm also learning that when social comparison is used wisely,
Speaker 1: it can also be used to our advantage. If we
Speaker 1: switch from using social comparison as a form of self
Speaker 1: sabotaged and trying to hurt our own feelings to an
Speaker 1: opportunity to really take stock of our lives and what
Speaker 1: we're actually grateful for, but also what we want to improve.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's rather useful. So today going to talk about
Speaker 1: five tips I have for controlling the temptation to compare,
Speaker 1: how to stop comparing yourself to others, or maybe more
Speaker 1: a better way to put that is how to keep
Speaker 1: the parts of social comparison that benefit you and say
Speaker 1: goodbye to the other aspects. So we have a lot
Speaker 1: to talk about today, a lot to cover, of course,
Speaker 1: a lot of fascinating psychology. So without further ado, let's
Speaker 1: get into it. The easiest way to let something control
Speaker 1: you is to ignore it and suppress it. I think
Speaker 1: anytime we try too hard to not do something to
Speaker 1: you know, keep our hands behind our back, that just
Speaker 1: really hands over the microphone, and it amplifies our insecurities
Speaker 1: because we feel like that if we were to set
Speaker 1: this thing free, if we were to allow ourselves to
Speaker 1: compare ourselves to others as much as we want, it
Speaker 1: would give it all the path, and we are so
Speaker 1: scared of that reality that we actually end up focusing
Speaker 1: more on the possibility of that happening as a result.
Speaker 1: So what we really didn't want to happen becomes inevitable
Speaker 1: because we avoided it for too long and we gave
Speaker 1: it power over ourselves. It might sound counterintuitive, but if
Speaker 1: you want to reduce the negative effects of social comparison,
Speaker 1: you kind of have to give yourself a mission to
Speaker 1: compare yourself to others whenever you would like. So this
Speaker 1: is rule one. Don't unfollow, don't suppress, accept your need
Speaker 1: to compare, and expand on your comparison. So let me explain.
Speaker 1: I'm going to admit that in a past episode I
Speaker 1: did on social comparison, I gave some advice that I
Speaker 1: no longer believe in, particularly in regards to social media.
Speaker 1: So I think this episode came out a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, and at the time, my advice was to
Speaker 1: unfollow the people who made you feel bad. That woman
Speaker 1: with a better body than you, with the lavish lifestyle,
Speaker 1: the millions of followers, the person who was traveling to
Speaker 1: the places that you really wanted to go to whilst
Speaker 1: you were busy working. You're nine to five. If they
Speaker 1: trigger your social comparison, avoid it, avoid exposure, unfollow. There
Speaker 1: we go, You're fixed. Your social comparison is no longer
Speaker 1: there because you're not experiencing it. I think I had
Speaker 1: a rather immature viewpoint back then, and I was trying
Speaker 1: to get the science to fit what I wanted to believe,
Speaker 1: when honestly, all the psychology really disagrees with me on that. Yes,
Speaker 1: there are some people you don't need to engage with
Speaker 1: on social media or in real life, but if you
Speaker 1: really want to gain power over your social comparison, you
Speaker 1: need to realize that these people are not a threat.
Speaker 1: Their brilliance, their luck, their successes, and your own are
Speaker 1: not mutually exclusive. Just because they're doing really well for
Speaker 1: themselves doesn't mean you can't feel good about what you have.
Speaker 1: If we unfollow anyone who makes us uncomfortable or who
Speaker 1: we feel jealous of, we end up in an echo
Speaker 1: chamber of only engaging with people who we don't see
Speaker 1: as a threat. And that really comes down to a
Speaker 1: classic form of avoidance, turning away from things that make
Speaker 1: us uncomfortable instead of engaging with them and learning how
Speaker 1: to manage our feelings towards something that make us feel bad.
Speaker 1: I think in that space, with this perspective, we give
Speaker 1: our social comparison the power that it wants, meaning that yes,
Speaker 1: we will inevitably be exposed to someone who was doing
Speaker 1: better than us, who is making more money than us,
Speaker 1: who was absolutely crushing it. Whatever it is, it just
Speaker 1: isn't the big deal anymore. I think suppressing a bad
Speaker 1: feeling doesn't lessen its sting. It doesn't make it go away.
Speaker 1: The root cause, which is most likely your sense of insecurity,
Speaker 1: is still there. It just makes us less prepared or
Speaker 1: emotionally strong to deal with with feeling unpresent when inevitably
Speaker 1: this person will come along, right like we just live
Speaker 1: behind a wall. We just never challenge ourselves. Instead, when
Speaker 1: you feel like there is that siren call to compare yourself,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say the thing that you probably least expect
Speaker 1: me to say. Let yourself do it, but then expand
Speaker 1: on your comparison. For example, if you see someone on
Speaker 1: LinkedIn who just had a huge promotion, and she's your age,
Speaker 1: you went to university together, her career has taken off,
Speaker 1: yours has kind of stalled. Yes, you can get upset,
Speaker 1: you can let yourself feel really shitty and assume that
Speaker 1: her success says something about yours. But you can also
Speaker 1: add on to those judgments. So I'm going to give
Speaker 1: you an example of what this sounds like. Adding on
Speaker 1: to our judgments that come from our need to compare
Speaker 1: basically shows up that our initial thought around what this
Speaker 1: person has that we don't is not the full picture. So,
Speaker 1: for example, with this woman you see on LinkedIn right,
Speaker 1: what you can say is this person is doing so well,
Speaker 1: and so am I. We just have different paths. I'm
Speaker 1: so jealous of what they're achieving, and I'll get there
Speaker 1: one day as well. I wish I had what she had,
Speaker 1: and it's great because I already have so much, So
Speaker 1: I'm so close. Her body is like so amazing and
Speaker 1: so beautiful, and so is mine. How amazing. The reason
Speaker 1: this works is that you don't scold yourself for comparing
Speaker 1: and therefore make it feel taboo or give it power.
Speaker 1: You just make your judgments more nuanced and you don't
Speaker 1: let them only take on a negative spin. On that
Speaker 1: note of LinkedIn and career comparison, let's talk about why
Speaker 1: social comparison seems to be impacting us so much more nowadays.
Speaker 1: Social media means that we are experiencing an insane level
Speaker 1: of information overload, where by any moment, you can be
Speaker 1: exposed to the lives of hundreds, if not thousands of people.
Speaker 1: All you have to do is open your phone and
Speaker 1: you are going to see a highlight reel of everybody's lives,
Speaker 1: all the things that they know will get them likes,
Speaker 1: all the pictures that will match their aesthetic. It really
Speaker 1: warps our sense of what is normal, especially because social
Speaker 1: media was built to be performative, and when we get
Speaker 1: so much about information about the world, about trends, about
Speaker 1: what we should be doing, about what's called from social media,
Speaker 1: that means that our view of what is normal becomes
Speaker 1: quite skewed. So that brings me to rule number two.
Speaker 1: Keep your judgments realistic. I know I sound like a
Speaker 1: broken record, but truly from somebody who does this themselves,
Speaker 1: I'll admit it. Everything you see online is curated. Everything
Speaker 1: I post online I think about a million times. I'm
Speaker 1: not posting like the random screenshots of like where my
Speaker 1: ruber is. I'm not posting like the photo I took
Speaker 1: of my Wi Fi password on, like the back of
Speaker 1: the modem, or like all the rubbish that I need
Speaker 1: to get collected. Even the videos you see of people
Speaker 1: who are complaining or tired or sad or going through
Speaker 1: a breakup or a stepback, whatever it is, that is
Speaker 1: still not the full picture. And it's often very strategic
Speaker 1: because we know that that kind of content, that vulnerable content,
Speaker 1: draws people in, but it's still not real. It's still
Speaker 1: not the full picture. In that way, we often comparing
Speaker 1: ourselves to a reality that doesn't even exist, not even
Speaker 1: for the person who is advertising it as such. It's
Speaker 1: why I'm such a big fan of those influences or
Speaker 1: those pages that do post the unpost gym shots, who
Speaker 1: do post their messy homes and their unblemish skin and
Speaker 1: they're just everyday life. I think it's so comforting to
Speaker 1: see somebody who was breaking like the fourth wall of
Speaker 1: the Internet, who was literally looking at you and going,
Speaker 1: this is not real. None of this is real, and
Speaker 1: yet you are basing your perceptions of your own life
Speaker 1: on someone else's sugar coated version that they post online.
Speaker 1: Even in our real lives, even in like our everyday
Speaker 1: interactions with people, no one is coming out and saying
Speaker 1: exactly how they were feeling. No one is vessing up
Speaker 1: to half of the emotions that they're trying to manage
Speaker 1: their insecurities, you know, the time that they spend alone,
Speaker 1: the fears, the doubts, the fights. I just think that
Speaker 1: it's good to remind yourself that it's not the truth.
Speaker 1: Keep that in mind. This brings me to rule number three.
Speaker 1: Do things for you first, and sometimes for you only.
Speaker 1: Unhealthy social con comparison can be a huge time waster
Speaker 1: because it makes us doubt our own decisions and our
Speaker 1: path and therefore kind of keeps us in this loop.
Speaker 1: It gets us stuck because we spend so much time
Speaker 1: thinking about what other people are thinking rather than actually
Speaker 1: just doing. I think that comes from this weird realization
Speaker 1: we have that the fact that we are comparing ourselves
Speaker 1: to others means that people are comparing themselves to us,
Speaker 1: and they're measuring themselves up against our actions and our lives,
Speaker 1: so we better put on a really good show, right.
Speaker 1: This makes us quite insecure, I think, because we want
Speaker 1: to impress them, so we get stuck in trying to
Speaker 1: do things perfectly or according to what we think others
Speaker 1: want or will find esthetic or attractive or worthwhile. And
Speaker 1: a lot of that stems from a sense of self
Speaker 1: doubt that if we were to come out and just
Speaker 1: do what we would want to do to be authentic
Speaker 1: that that might not be accepted. I like to use
Speaker 1: the example of choosing an outfit in the morning, right, like,
Speaker 1: not a huge risk, not a huge time, not brown groundbreaking.
Speaker 1: If you did think about what others were thinking, or
Speaker 1: didn't pay much attention to how they might be comparing
Speaker 1: themselves to you, you would wear whatever you wanted. You
Speaker 1: would pick up the first thing you saw, regardless of
Speaker 1: whether your top matched your pants, which matched your shoes.
Speaker 1: And if you were, you know, not thinking about other
Speaker 1: people's opinions, you would be ready out the door in
Speaker 1: five minutes. In contrast, if you are contemplating the judgments
Speaker 1: and the opinions of others, trying to anticipate their thoughts
Speaker 1: and their feelings towards you, suddenly every choice takes on
Speaker 1: a whole new level of gravity. You start putting yourself
Speaker 1: in the mind of every person you walk past, the
Speaker 1: person that you're going to meet, the stranger, your own age.
Speaker 1: The focus on what other people might be thinking about
Speaker 1: you makes every decision takes so much longer. And it
Speaker 1: all derives from social comparison and realizing that there is
Speaker 1: this weird mind game going on between everybody where we're
Speaker 1: looking at others and they're looking at us, trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what's cool, what's normal, what we should be doing.
Speaker 1: If you want to beat social comparison, go with your
Speaker 1: gut instinct. Don't fall into the game of thinking about
Speaker 1: what other people want from you. What do you want?
Speaker 1: If you want to post that photo on social media,
Speaker 1: that video that TikTok, don't question, just do it. You
Speaker 1: want to wear that outfit you like that you don't
Speaker 1: think is like trendy or stylish, don't think, just put
Speaker 1: it on. You want to buy those weird shoes because
Speaker 1: you really like them, go ahead. You want to go
Speaker 1: to the gym in your sports bra, even though your
Speaker 1: body doesn't look like hers or doesn't look like his,
Speaker 1: or those shorts you think other people might have a
Speaker 1: problem with. Feel the fear of judgment, and do it anyway.
Speaker 1: People's opinions are their problem, not yours. If they want
Speaker 1: to spend their time and like, let's be honest, they're finite,
Speaker 1: precious energy making themselves feel better by looking at you
Speaker 1: and putting you down. That is their burden to bear.
Speaker 1: The antidote to social comparison is authenticity, and it's a
Speaker 1: muscle that you have to build. Social comparison, by nature
Speaker 1: asks us to converge to the norm, to prevent sticking
Speaker 1: out as an outlier, to do what others are doing
Speaker 1: so that we're never the one sticking out in the crowd,
Speaker 1: never the one who's going to be judged. So the
Speaker 1: way to be that is to do the absolute opposite.
Speaker 1: If there is something you want to do, do it.
Speaker 1: And you'll soon find that as you adjust to this
Speaker 1: new mindset, your urge to compare will start to fade
Speaker 1: because the information that you're getting from others' lives and
Speaker 1: whether they're better or worse than yours, whether they're judging
Speaker 1: you their opinions, it doesn't really matter anymore. It doesn't
Speaker 1: serve you because you're coming to the table with the
Speaker 1: perspective of I'm just going to do it. I'm just
Speaker 1: going to be the person I want to be. I'm
Speaker 1: going to act the way I want to act. This
Speaker 1: is who I am, this is what I look like,
Speaker 1: this is what I'm doing, And you know, nobody else's
Speaker 1: opinions are going to be a factor. They just don't matter.
Speaker 1: So rule four is very similar, kind of falls onto
Speaker 1: the same category. It's about watering your own grass, and
Speaker 1: I know we just kind of spoke about that, so
Speaker 1: I'll keep it brief. I think a lot of the
Speaker 1: time we get stuck in the comparison spiral because there
Speaker 1: is something that we are unhappy or secure about, and
Speaker 1: so when we look at somebody else's life, the fact
Speaker 1: that they do have the thing that we don't makes
Speaker 1: us feel worse and makes us experience a level of
Speaker 1: cognitive dissonance. Right, either we can tear somebody else down
Speaker 1: and therefore elevate our own way of doing things, or
Speaker 1: we can feel worse about ourselves. What option, off the
Speaker 1: top of your head do you think we're most likely
Speaker 1: to take? Obviously, option A, because that is what protects
Speaker 1: our ego, That is what protects our brain from feeling rejected,
Speaker 1: from feeling less than, from feeling hurt. So it's the
Speaker 1: path that keeps us safest. But knocking somebody else down
Speaker 1: is a really unhealthy defense mechanism. Instead, I think that
Speaker 1: we should respond as your ideal self would, by seeing
Speaker 1: somebody else's successes, seeing their beautiful, amazing life, and deciding
Speaker 1: you can also experience that joy by doing something that's
Speaker 1: good for you. You know, if you see someone at
Speaker 1: a music festival or overseas or like, surrounded by all
Speaker 1: of their amazing friends on the weekend. You can be
Speaker 1: sour about it, and that is of course our natural inclination.
Speaker 1: Or you can go and do something that you also
Speaker 1: enjoy instead of feeling miserable or weakened. When you fixate
Speaker 1: on what you don't have, you let it shape your
Speaker 1: life and you let it have power, and it makes
Speaker 1: you feel like you're quite powerless. You don't have agency
Speaker 1: over what's happening, because you're seeing this other person who
Speaker 1: has everything that you want, who has all the friends,
Speaker 1: who has the job, who has the clothes, and you
Speaker 1: think that you can't have that as well, and so
Speaker 1: that makes you quite frustrated and insecure, and it makes
Speaker 1: you resent them. But when you water your own grass,
Speaker 1: when you shift back to what is going to make
Speaker 1: you happy, when you nurture your friendships, when you build
Speaker 1: your career, when you go outside and move your body,
Speaker 1: when you prioritize doing fun things on your weekends, you
Speaker 1: no longer feel threatened by what somebody else has because
Speaker 1: you realize that you can also create that life for yourself.
Speaker 1: So this brings me to our final fifth rule, using
Speaker 1: comparison as a motivator rather than as a means to
Speaker 1: tear yourself down. So something that we have spoken about
Speaker 1: yet is this distinction between upward and downward social comparison. So,
Speaker 1: downward social comparison involves comparing oneself to others who are
Speaker 1: perceived as less fortunate or less successful, as a way
Speaker 1: of boosting our own sense of self esteem and providing
Speaker 1: almost a sense of relief that we're better than this person,
Speaker 1: that when we are compared, will come out on top.
Speaker 1: It's honestly, often unconscious and very shallow, and it gives
Speaker 1: us an immediate sense of satisfaction, but at the expense
Speaker 1: of somebody else, and it's going to fade away pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: This is the kind of social comparison that we engage
Speaker 1: in for self enhancement sake. On the other hand, upward
Speaker 1: social comparison involves comparing ourselves to those who we think
Speaker 1: are more successful or superior quote unquote in a particular domain,
Speaker 1: either because they are more successful, they're more attractive, they
Speaker 1: have a greatest status, they have more money. This type
Speaker 1: of comparison is often what leads to feelings of inadequacy
Speaker 1: and envy, and it's really on the rise. Upward social
Speaker 1: comparison is a lot more common. There's a few reasons why.
Speaker 1: Perhaps it's this fascination with like celebrity culture, the rise
Speaker 1: and idolization of people who are very, very successful, an
Speaker 1: increasing competitiveness in our society. But upward social comparison can
Speaker 1: also be very useful. It's a very powerful source of motivation.
Speaker 1: Think about it. If you see somebody who has something
Speaker 1: that you want, that just serves as a confirmation that
Speaker 1: this goal you have, this life, this achievement is possible,
Speaker 1: and instead of feeling bitter that you don't have it yet,
Speaker 1: you now have something to strive towards. You have somebody
Speaker 1: to learn from, to replicate, you have a vision for
Speaker 1: your future self. I think that this strategy is about
Speaker 1: turning the part of you that naturally wants to be
Speaker 1: jealous into someone who wants to feel inspired, who is
Speaker 1: a cheerleader for others. So, in one study, they found
Speaker 1: that when people were asked to speak about someone they
Speaker 1: admire in a positive light in the days and even
Speaker 1: weeks afterwards, they became more productive and focused compared to
Speaker 1: the people who were asked to criticize people that they admired,
Speaker 1: they actually became less disciplined in another kind of domain.
Speaker 1: Another study they wanted to look at this in regards
Speaker 1: to people who were recovering from eating disorders, and the
Speaker 1: researchers found that the comparison effect was actually quite positive
Speaker 1: when people were exposed to individuals who were further along
Speaker 1: in their recovery journey, because it was kind of driving
Speaker 1: self improvement, especially amongst people who are particularly competitive. Right,
Speaker 1: obviously we need to proceed with caution, especially in the
Speaker 1: case of a serious mental health condition that has a
Speaker 1: very high rate of relapse. But at the core of
Speaker 1: both of these studies is this message that you can
Speaker 1: use your desire to compare to motivate you. You can
Speaker 1: use your desire to make yourself feel bad by looking
Speaker 1: at what somebody else has. You can use that as
Speaker 1: a catalyst to change yourself and your own life. I've
Speaker 1: seen this personally. I think about this a lot when
Speaker 1: I think about like running content that I see on Instagram.
Speaker 1: I'm really getting back into running recently. It's something I
Speaker 1: used to love doing. I just like kind of fell
Speaker 1: off the bandwagon and I've been of course, my algorithm
Speaker 1: has adjusted to this new interest, and it keeps showing
Speaker 1: me all these videos of people who are doing like
Speaker 1: they are sinking miles. They were doing half marathons before
Speaker 1: they go to work in the morning, and full marathons
Speaker 1: on weekends, and for a while it actually left me
Speaker 1: feeling quite disappointed in myself. I kept being like, well,
Speaker 1: why am I not at that level? Why do I
Speaker 1: not have what they have? And I could unfollow. I
Speaker 1: could say like, well, if I was their size, if
Speaker 1: I'd been doing it for this long, I could do
Speaker 1: that as well. Oh, like they just they're not working
Speaker 1: as hard as I am, so they have more time
Speaker 1: for this. I could say that I could be in
Speaker 1: this kind of like sulky mindset, but what it would
Speaker 1: mean is that I would miss out on so many tips,
Speaker 1: so much inspiration, so much growth because they're doing the
Speaker 1: thing that I want to do. Their proof that I
Speaker 1: can get where I want to go. So instead of
Speaker 1: looking at somebody else and feeling bad because you're not
Speaker 1: squaring up to what they have, just see it as
Speaker 1: a target. See it as confirmation that everything you want
Speaker 1: in your life is possible because they've done it. So
Speaker 1: I want to give you two final speed round tips. Firstly,
Speaker 1: despite all that we've talked about, sometimes we do still
Speaker 1: find ourselves feel really shit about where we're at and
Speaker 1: thinking that we are behind, that we are failing, that
Speaker 1: we aren't who we want to be. Everyone else is
Speaker 1: better than us. You know, you get the picture. In
Speaker 1: those moments, I want you to immediately counteract that thought
Speaker 1: by saying five things that you're good at, or listing
Speaker 1: five things that you've accomplished this past week, this past
Speaker 1: month in your life. You don't need to be humble.
Speaker 1: You have done amazing things. You've probably done a lot
Speaker 1: of really cool things, and when you hide them from yourself,
Speaker 1: when you spend too much time being self deprecating or
Speaker 1: trying not to seem egotistical, sometimes it's easy to forget.
Speaker 1: So when we see somebody else who is willing to
Speaker 1: be open about their accomplishments, we kind of forget that
Speaker 1: we might also be at that level. We're just not
Speaker 1: as willing to talk openly about it. Finally, remember that
Speaker 1: the person you're comparing yourself to is probably doing the
Speaker 1: exact same thing to somebody else. There is somebody in
Speaker 1: their mind who is better than them. They are compared
Speaker 1: caring themselves to that person. Probably right now, that person
Speaker 1: may even be you. You have no idea what is
Speaker 1: going on internally in somebody else's mind. We often think
Speaker 1: we're the only person with doubts with insecurity, when it
Speaker 1: actually is one of the most universal parts about being human.
Speaker 1: But when we get stuck in our heads and don't
Speaker 1: filter our experience through the lens of our humanity, it
Speaker 1: makes us feel more shame for something that is so normal.
Speaker 1: I want to remind you there is not a person
Speaker 1: out there who does not have the same thoughts that
Speaker 1: you are having now. And if that person does exist,
Speaker 1: either they came out of the womb at like the
Speaker 1: peak of spiritual enlightenment, or there is something very psychologically
Speaker 1: wrong with that person. Because what our social comparison stems
Speaker 1: from is an awareness of others and an awareness of
Speaker 1: where they're at in their lives, what they're doing, and
Speaker 1: that awareness is important for so many other things in
Speaker 1: our life. Right, It's important for empathy, it's important for connection,
Speaker 1: for inspiration. It's like two sides of the same coin. Right.
Speaker 1: Being more socially conscious comes with a lot of perks,
Speaker 1: but it also means that we can be more self conscious,
Speaker 1: so we have to learn how to treat it correctly.
Speaker 1: We have to learn to use it for its advantages
Speaker 1: and to not use it as a form of self
Speaker 1: sabotage or a form of self destruction, whereby the only
Speaker 1: time we compare ourselves to others is just to make
Speaker 1: ourselves feel worse. You are a cool person, You are
Speaker 1: an interesting person. You are an intelligent, successful, beautiful person
Speaker 1: in your own right. So don't let what somebody else
Speaker 1: has their beauty, their achievements, their cool factor, their job,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. Remember those things are not mutually exclusive.
Speaker 1: You can both be those things. It doesn't detract from
Speaker 1: everything that you have. I just want to finish on
Speaker 1: that reminder. So I really hope that you have enjoyed
Speaker 1: this episode. Thank you for putting up with my voice today.
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit sick, so hopefully it wasn't too grading.
Speaker 1: But you know, I just felt that this episode needed
Speaker 1: to be done. I feel like social comparison is such
Speaker 1: a curse that we manage in our twenties. But it's
Speaker 1: like a curse that we don't need to suffer through
Speaker 1: because there are so many solutions, and it really does
Speaker 1: come down to how we think about it, right whether
Speaker 1: we think about it as something that is meant to
Speaker 1: harm us and something that is meant to make us
Speaker 1: feel bad, or something that can really ignite our sense
Speaker 1: of purpose and be inspirational and does come from a
Speaker 1: deep like recognition and connection with others. So thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening. I hope that you've got something
Speaker 1: from this episode. If there is somebody who needs to
Speaker 1: hear it, please feel free to share it with them
Speaker 1: and make sure you're following along on Spotify, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: whatever you're listening, so that you know when new episodes
Speaker 1: go up. As always, if you have an episode suggestion, firstly,
Speaker 1: make sure we haven't done it. You can just search
Speaker 1: it wherever you are looking the keywords, or shoot me
Speaker 1: a DM on Instagram and I'll point you in the
Speaker 1: right direction. Otherwise, give us a suggestion. We would love
Speaker 1: to hear from you. We would love to know what
Speaker 1: you want us to speak about when it comes to
Speaker 1: our Tenney's, when it comes to psychology, there is so
Speaker 1: much to be sad, So thank you again for listening.
Speaker 1: Until next time, be kind to yourself, be gentle, stay safe,
Speaker 1: and we'll see you back next week.