The Jordan Harbinger Show - 22: How to Stop Comparing Yourself to Other People | Deep Dive

Episode Date: March 29, 2018

Gabriel Mizrahi (@GabeMizrahi) joins us for this deep dive into why we all compare ourselves with other people, the pros and cons that arise from this, and what we can do to filter out the unhealthy comparisons we inevitably make. What We Discuss with Gabriel Mizrahi: Why we all compare ourselves to others and what purpose this comparison serves. Why we tend to compare ourselves to people who are similar to us (often to the detriment of our relationships). The two types of comparisons we make between ourselves and others. Strategies to stop the unhealthy types of comparisons we make and how we can make ourselves better in the process. Do we really need to compare ourselves to other people in order to be happy? And much more... Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course!  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! Full show notes and resources can be found here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We've been doing social comparison since the time we were kids. So for most of us, we have decades of these ideas about ourselves that are built up from self-comparison. They're already established. We might not always know they're there. They might be subtle or subconscious, but they're definitely there. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DeFilippo.

On this episode, we'll be talking with my friend Gabriel Mizrahi. Today, we'll talk about why you compare yourself to other people and how to stop. We'll learn why we all compare ourselves to other people, what purpose it serves us, and why we tend to compare ourselves to those that are most similar to us, often to the detriment of our relationships, and we'll discover the two types of comparisons we make between ourselves and other people and what purpose each of these comparison types serves. And last but not least, we'll explore some strategies to stop the unhealthy types of comparisons we make and learn more about how to make ourselves better in the process.

Don't forget, we've got a worksheet for today's episode so you can make sure you solidify all your understandings of why and how we compare ourselves to other people and what you can do about it. That link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. Now, here's a deep dive with Gabriel Mizrahi. So a few weeks ago, I go to a conference, and Jenny and I are sitting with a group of successful friends, pretty successful guys. And I can't remember how this topic came up, but someone said, oh, you know, I, always comparing myself to this or these conferences are great, but you meet all these successful people. But I'm always comparing myself to all these other people.

And then another guy goes, well, I feel like I compare myself less to other people. And then another guy across the table said, you mean less than other people? You compare yourself to other people less than other people. And we all started laughing because we've realized that even when you think you've kind of gotten over this, you've gotten through this, you don't do this, we all compare ourselves to other people. We all do it. It's just that a lot of folks think, oh, well, you know, the way I do it, well, this isn't what I mean by that. Or we don't even necessarily know. We just think as long as we're comparing ourselves favorably or something like that, then, or maybe we don't do it as much, then it's okay.

But it actually has this kind of nagging, deleterious effect, I think, on our personality and on our self-esteem. So I wanted to talk about that today with you, Gabriel, who comparatively speaking compares yourself to other people. more or less. That is the best introduction. We wanted to talk to you because you don't do this quite as often. Yes. But you still do it. But you still do.

Yeah, totally. Well, we all do it. I mean, it's such a human thing to do. And we do compare ourselves to other people, even when those comparisons aren't particularly meaningful or useful. Like, even if they don't make us better, sometimes they make us feel better or sometimes they make us feel worse. And I think a lot of us feel like it makes us feel worse, which is why we want to talk about

it, especially like why do we compare ourselves to other people? even and despite the fact that we might be advancing in our careers or feeling pretty good about ourselves, you know, psychologically, mentally pretty okay. And yet it still seems to happen almost subconsciously. And, you know, is there any benefit to seeing how we stack up against other people? And if there isn't, how can we stop? Right. How can we stop?

And I think one of the problems is that we're always comparing our blooper reel to other people's highlight reel. So even if it's like you got promoted, you got, you met someone's, You just got a new apartment. Your project at work is going well. You just took a great vacation. You just got 10 new Instagram followers, whatever it is. Then you're like, but my cousin's friend, she just got a new car and she got promoted.

And you're like, oh, I need to get a new car now. But you're not necessarily having that conscious conversation with yourself. You're just thinking, I'm just raining on my own parade just a little bit because somebody else has something that I don't. or maybe has something perceived that I don't. Totally, absolutely. I mean, I think a lot of people feel like comparing themselves to other people has gotten worse. Like, it seems like we do it more or that it feels worse than it used to. And I think social media has a huge role to play in that.

We'll talk about that in a little bit. But I think it's important to notice that we compare ourselves to other people because human beings are designed to understand themselves. So, like, this capacity for self-reflection. is one of the things that makes us humans, right? We have this fundamental need to evaluate ourselves. And the most immediate and relevant way to evaluate ourselves is in comparison to something. Yeah.

But because we're human beings, the most meaningful comparison is to someone else. And closer those people are to us in proximity and similarity. So if they're in the same room or building or city or life stage or are doing the same things we are doing or want the same things we want, then that comparison gets really intense and that's when we start to look to other people to tell us about ourselves. It's a peculiar thing. Yeah. But we are designed to understand ourselves in that way. And actually, that's been around for that understanding has been around for quite some time. In 1954, there was a guy named Leon Festinger, social psychologist. And he really was the one to unpack this peculiar drive that

makes humans, humans. And he called it social comparison theory, very apt name. And basically said that people evaluate their opinions and their abilities by comparing themselves to other people. And they do it, this is what's interesting, they do it for two reasons. The first is, he said, to reduce uncertainty in the areas in which they're comparing themselves so that they can be more certain about what they believe. And second, to learn how to define themselves. So this is the paradox, because on the one hand, I think a lot of people, certainly you and I have talked about this, I bet a lot of people listening to this are like, I'm tuning in because I want to know how to stop doing this. And yet it seems like we almost don't know how to even understand ourselves if we don't do this. So how do we get ourselves

out of that paradox. That's part of what we're going to be talking about. Yeah, the counterintuitive bit to this was that the tendency to compare ourselves to other people decreases as the difference between our opinion or ability and the other person's increases. So basically, somebody who's more similar to us is more likely to be someone with whom we compare ourselves. So we're more likely to compare ourselves to a colleague, somebody we work with, than to the CEO of the company or if we're an athlete, we're more likely to be. likely to compare ourselves to somebody we jog with than to an Olympian or to Usain Bolt. And that's, in theory, because the difference between me and the CEO is huge.

Me and the Olympic runner is huge. So it's not, I mean, I don't know. What's going on here in our brain? Our brain just says, well, that's not a fair comparison. But this other person who's kind of close to us is somehow fair game. Yeah. I mean, it would be kind of absurd and irrelevant to compare yourself to like, I need to be as good as Michaela Schifrin. in the Olympics. You know, you compare yourself to somebody who's attainable and who's in your vicinity

that probably has evolutionary roots, right? It probably goes way back to like, we compare ourselves to people in the tribe, not to people way out there. But also those old brains probably weren't prepared to be able to look at Instagram and NBC when they're showing the Olympics. Right. Because we didn't even know those people existed. So a lot of this does have to do with that old ancient brain in a modern world and how we think about it. But for sure, we're not going to compare ourselves to somebody whose status is unattainable, we're going to compare ourselves to someone who's more immediately relevant because that means more to us. So to your point, you're going to compare yourself to that colleague in the next cubicle over

more than you are to the CEO, three levels up in the building. It seems like a lot of disorders are probably caused by people thinking, this person's like me when really they're not. So, for example, a photoshopped image of a woman or a guy in a fitness magazine were like, huh, okay, I kind of look like this person. and I'm just a couple, maybe I'm just 10 or 15 pounds of fat in my midsection away from this. And then we're not evolved to think, well, that's fake tan, starved himself for three days, you know, took diuretic pills to pee out all the subcutaneous water and is on a special photo shoot diet as a model.

He will look like this for exactly 24 hours before reverting back to something a little bit more normal. And because our brains don't have that calculation being made. We just think, huh, I'm kind of that guy's build. I should probably have that six-back. Or, oh, I'm sort of like this gal, but look how clear her skin is because we're not thinking, well, there's technology that eliminated all the blemishes and added a little bit of rose to her cheeks or whatever. We don't have that. So we can create all these sort of mental disorders by looking at someone and thinking that they're misjudging and thinking that they're attainable or in our league or in our tribe when really they're not even. even human this image. Advertisers and marketers understand that really well. They understand how to

create something that seems that it's just within the realm of attainability, but aspirational enough to make you wonder if you're good enough. And there's a lot of psychology to that that is probably beyond you and me, but for sure, that's absolutely what's going on. The other interesting thing that came out of Festinger's research was he pointed out that when we stop comparing ourselves to other people, which again, a lot of us want to do, when we stop comparing ourselves to other people, then this interesting feeling creeps in of like hostility and derogation, he called it, which is sort of mentally tearing someone down or taking them down a peg. As long as continuing to compare ourselves to someone else brings unpleasant feelings,

then stopping to compare ourselves will invite these other unpleasant feelings, but they're more manageable. So we might feel not so great comparing ourselves to that colleague who's a few cubicles over. But if we say, you know what, I'm just going to stop doing that. I'm not going to worry about that person. Then often subconsciously, you'll notice that you're like, but they're not that good anyway. But I don't even, they're not worth my time or is the work they're doing even that good?

And I mean, for a lot of those, it's a bit shameful to realize that we have those feelings. But it's kind of funny once you realize that it's just in the human wiring. Yeah. But that is absolutely what happens. I mean, it's almost like we swap one set of unpleasant feelings for this other set of unpleasant feelings that makes us feel safer because the comparison was so unpleasant. Right, right. So instead of thinking, well, you know, this person's business is further along than mine and they're making a lot of money and they look like they're having a lot of fun. We say, oh, but you know, look how out of shape they look. Oh, they're probably not sleeping. Yeah, if I was a workaholic, maybe I could do that, but I have a life. I have a life. I do all kinds of fun stuff. You know, my friends are better. Look at these dorks he's hanging out with. And that makes you feel better for a minute because then you realize, well, it, It's kind of funny because that still seems like a comparison.

It just seems like you're taking the comparison and then you're like, well, let me chop the legs out from underneath this person. That's very good. That's an interesting point. So you're still sort of comparing them. You're picking and choosing. Yeah. Sort of what you're choosing to compare yourself to in them. And that's something that we'll come back to in just a moment.

That's a really interesting insight. You know, the other interesting thing that came out of the Festinger research that we should just mention is that the important thing about social comparison theory is that the more, you, you know, the other, you know, you know, you know, the other interesting thing. important we think a certain group of people is, the more pressure will feel to conform to that group. Now, that might seem kind of obvious, but this explains why there's so much pressure to, like, kick ass in your Orange Theory class or in your Soul Cycle class, but like not so much pressure to compete with a runner who happens to be running, you know, on the same street at the same time as you. Okay. Because the tribe or the group you're comparing yourself to in the running case is not that meaningful.

You don't know that person. You guys aren't part of some bigger brand or group or movement. But in a certain class where you've paid to go, where you know other people pay to go, where the opinions and the level of ability in that room matter to you, in those cases, you're going to think that comparing yourself means a lot more. Those people's opinions of you will mean a lot more. Again, just the human wiring. So that's actually really also really useful because that explains why we feel this drive to self-compare in scenarios that have a lot of stakes for us, like at work. Yeah. Like, it really matters what your colleagues think of you or what your boss thinks of you.

And probably on a more superficial level, it matters a lot what the people in your boot camp class think of you. Yeah, sure. Or your family. I mean, families are very influential. Like the opinions of our families to most people, it means a lot. So you're not going to care so much about the opinions of people in a random elevator, even if you're stuck in that elevator for a while. It just doesn't, it's not important. And I think yet another disorder for, they're caused by social media.

is sometimes, and especially younger people who are kind of digital natives, which is weird, because I guess we're sort of in that. We're right on that cusp, yeah. Like, I remember when there was no internet, no mobile phones. And it was not that long ago. I was in high sky. I was driving. And it's like, yeah, I have AOL, but nobody else has it. So I don't use it that much, right?

The disease that I'm talking about, the disorder that I'm talking about is people will start to then miscalculate what matters. And you hear about this. And I see this in my inbox for Feedback Friday. It's like when I post things, they don't get enough likes. I delete them. I know that this is weird. And that is totally what's going on here. Someone cares what the Internet thinks of them because they're extending this imaginary tribe of important people out to the people that they're friends with on Facebook or that follow them on Instagram.

So in a way, some of these, I say disorders, but there's nothing clinical here yet that are caused by social media are like caused by a way. weak boundary wall between, hey, these people really matter, your family, your close friends, people at your church or whatever, in your classes, in your business. And then you just go, well, wait a minute, let's extend that out to this invisible mass of people that are anonymous, don't have your best interests in mind, and things like that. So you see people who are, who should have it together and have a great home life in other ways, cause these neuroses or allow these neuroses to creep in. And then somebody who, comments like, you look fat on their random Instagram picture who's trolled them for a year,

but somehow is still not blocked because this person values their opinion. And then they're getting, they're getting cyber bullied suddenly or they're cyber bullying themselves, really, because they're allowing this sort of negative stuff to creep in because we can't stop comparing ourselves or allowing other people to compare themselves to us. Our Instagram feed or our Facebook social graph becomes the new tribe that we assign value to. even though it could be made up of people, A, you wouldn't even know existed potentially if this technology weren't there. And B might not share the same values or care about the same things that you do. And yet they're in this, as you put it, this like movable boundary that's grown the tribe, the so-called important tribe out.

And that's become bigger. And that's a lot of the problem with comparing ourselves because we're comparing ourselves to this new group of people who actually might not be that relevant, but feel super relevant. It does. It feels super relevant because they're allowed to do it in public. like in your space, right? But even if you don't have social media and you say, that's why I don't use social media, I don't need this episode, you're still probably comparing yourselves to other people

because unless you live in one of those like fuel tanks in the middle of the desert like a lot of hermits do, I've seen, I saw a documentary about it, of course, then you're still probably comparing yourself at some level unless you're like my friend who I was eating with the other day who says that they do this, but not as much as a lot. But not as much. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And why he quietly checks his phone at the table. Exactly. So the question now becomes. So what, right? Like, so what? So we, okay, we compare ourselves. It almost seems like we don't have a choice because it's in our wiring. Isn't that just the way we are?

Yeah. Don't we need to compare ourselves to understand how we measure up? I mean, in a way, that could be a healthy thing. Like if we need to understand how well we're doing or how smart we are, how talented we are, how much more we have to grow, couldn't it be useful to compare ourselves to other people? The short answer is yes, but there's more to it than that. So is comparing ourselves to other people really so bad? And to answer that question, we need to understand our motivation for comparing ourselves to other people in the first place. Okay.

And I think that's where we should really delve into it because in the motivation is the answer to our question. How can I compare myself in a way that doesn't make me miserable? So I would love to do that. And of course, I can think of an anecdote or plenty of anecdotes for me that are a little bit not shameful, but, you know, painful because these comparisons that, that we have often stay with us for a really long time because we tell me this is good we hammer them in what i find what i find interesting about this topic is every time people start getting honest about it you realize that everybody does this yeah and that with the stuff that feel shameful really isn't that because it's it's so universal yeah so i would be i would love to hear how this has shown up in your life

so for years i listened obsessively to as many podcasts as i could fit into my day i would listen to tons of different shows. I would listen to crappy shows. And sometimes I've been purposely pick crappy shows, and I'll talk about why in a second, although the answer might be really obvious. I'd listen to NPR stuff and then really niche produced in a basement stuff, mainstream stuff. I'd take some mental notes. I'd pick up some tips and tricks here to try to get better. I would look at real broadcasters and television hosts and take notes on that and figure out how I stacked up against role models like Larry King and then peers, other podcasters. and things like that. And I was, I was researching, and I put that in air quotes because it started off that way and it started off with good intentions, but it definitely did not, it definitely did not stay that way. It started to become a little bit of an obsession, almost like an OCD type of thing. And I did it over time. The reason I was able to spot this behavior in other ways, too, was because I didn't just binge in once and then take a bunch of notes and then be done with it. I started off that way.

And then I'd started to do a little bit each day, or especially when I was feeling bad. And I realized I was propping myself up by listening and watching some of this stuff. I would go, oh, I mean, this wasn't conscious, but it would almost be like, I'm going to listen to this show just so that I can see how crappy this person is compared to what I just produced. And I realized I was starting to do that when I started to feel down or tired or burned out. And I realized I was propping myself up on other people's perceived failure, right? I would be measuring my own progress, but a lot of it was, oh, I already know this, or I can do this. I'm putting out a better show than this. And then other times, unfortunately, I'd find something where I probably could have learned something.

And I would hopefully take a little bit away, but I would also then go, oh, man, I'm never going to be as good as this. This is this natural talent. Am I going to be able to match this? How much work is involved here? Did they go to school for this? Where can I go? How long is that going to take? Is that going to be years of training?

There was all kinds of stuff like that that was. bad news. I knew this was going to be a problem when I started avoiding the useful comparisons or the upward comparisons of people that might actually teach me something and started to focus more on people that I thought were underneath me on the totem pole to make myself feel better because that was easier for me to sort of go, I'm the best person that I've listened to today because I avoided all of the professionals. Right, right.

So what you're really saying is that when you were comparing yourself to other people, there could be two motivations and sometimes they were happening at the same time. One was to try to figure out how good you actually were so that you could get better and improve and understand how you fit into that community. And the other was trying to make yourself feel better. And if you couldn't do that, then sometimes it was about feeling worse for that moment because you weren't as good or there was more to learn or whatever it was. And what's interesting is that sometimes we do one or the other, but sometimes we move back and

forth between the two seamlessly. So we go in thinking we're here to just find out how good we are and whether we have more room to improve and it turns into this very different thing, which is like, but how can I leave here feeling better about myself? Understanding the difference between those two motivations is the key to figuring out how to stopping miserable when we compare ourselves. Because if you're comparing yourself to evaluate, to self-evaluate, to understand the objective quality of your work or your ability or your talent, then that could be in the right amount a totally normal. and healthy thing to do. And I would argue that to some degree, it's essential. Yeah, to get better. Otherwise, you don't really have any kind of, is it rubric the right word?

Yeah. It's part of the rubric. It can't be 100% of the rubric, but it's very useful to understand because to your point, there are people who have been in your tradition for longer than you have. You want to know what they've done to get better. You want to understand how you fit into that tradition. That's all really useful. Yeah.

And that applies to anything. That could apply to marketing. It applies to podcasting. It applies to writing. It applies to athletics. the other motivation is to enhance yourself. And that's to see yourself more favorably, or if you can't do that, to see someone else's less favorable. And that is the kind of comparison that gets us into trouble.

And what's interesting is that in either way, either motivation, you're comparing yourself. It's about your reasons for doing it, what you're trying to get out of it. And if you can differentiate those two, then it is possible to compare yourself in a healthy way without feeling really bad afterward. So self-enhancement, that's the one that gives us a distorted view of ourselves. And the reason is that, as we know, we've talked about this a lot, the research shows that we tend to prioritize feedback that makes us look good and desirable and cool. Yeah, like me looking at the people that I thought, I'm just mopping the floor with these guys. Look how bad this is compared to what I put out yesterday.

Exactly. We've all been there. And then we tend to discount or ignore feedback that makes us look weak or undesirable or generally less than. Right. So, yeah, of course NPR shows sound good. They have like 20 people working on them. They got all kinds of tax money. If I really had that, we'd be 10 times better than what they produced.

Yeah. If only I were PBS, then we could totally do this. Exactly. So even if we quote unquote succeed in making ourselves feel better, our brains are often playing this clever trick with the data we're using to arrive at that conclusion because we're over prioritizing information that

makes us feel better and we're under-prioritizing information that would force us to take a good look at ourselves and have to be honest about where we are. So enhancing ourselves is where this gets us into trouble. And it's often when that is a subconscious goal that it gets us into even more trouble. Because the example you gave is interesting because you did it subconsciously for a while, but then it kind of became obvious. You were like, oh, this is what I'm doing. Right.

Like I'm listening to these things. I have a little bit of an agenda. I'm picking out things that will make me feel a certain way or whatever. Yeah. But for a lot of us, and I would, This happens to me all the time. You do something. You just don't even realize that this is what's operating under the surface.

Yeah. Yeah, that's true. I think the way that I figured it out was trying to turning on something new and going, no, I don't want to listen to this. And then thinking, wait, why? Oh, because it's good. Well, wait a minute. What's my goal here?

Right. I just had to be a little bit honest with myself. It was actually not that hard once I started asking, what's my goal for this particular thing? Not just entertainment because I don't. like this show. Oh, wait, I'm listening to this because, because I don't like this show, you know, well, what's, what's the value? What's that about? The value is, it makes me feel good. Why does it make me feel good? Let me sit down and think about that. So then, and I remember turning on other shows and going, no, this is too good. Wait a minute. What the hell am I doing? Right. Why am I turning

something off that's good? That's what I should be learning from in comparing myself to. Why aren't I doing more of that? Well, because it makes me feel like I have such a long way to go, I don't like that feeling. I like to be patted on the head like everybody else. So then I realized, okay, this is useless. You know, I'm just trying to avoid envy or shame or getting angry or something, but that's where the growth lies for a lot of us. Amazing what that does when you just bring it consciously to the surface. I mean, you said you just a little bit of honesty, and oftentimes that's all it really takes. But it's actually really informative once you look at it. You can learn a lot about yourself. And you realize, oh, this is why I'm doing. This is the motivation. Like, what am I really

getting out of this by doing it for this reason? So back to our original question. Is it really so bad to compare ourselves to other people? Well, the answer, as you've pointed out with your story is it depends. If we're comparing ourselves for self-assessment, then wondering how we stack up is natural and healthy. And as we said, it's, I think for a lot of fields, super important. It's probably even necessary in the right amounts. But if we're comparing ourselves for self-enhanagement to make ourselves feel better or look better, that's when the process can get obsessive and toxic and oftentimes very confusing. And that might have been a little bit of what was going on at that table you were talking about the beginning of this thing where it's like,

oh, I do do this. Okay, I don't want to be seen as doing this very often. And maybe it's because my reasons for doing it are a little bit mixed. Yeah. Like if you were, yeah, if you were sitting at that table and you said, I totally look at other people. I compare myself to other people all the time. It's really important for me to understand whether my talent is stacking up or living up to the standards I want it to.

Here are my heroes. I would love to be as great as them. I need to know. That's one type of self comparison. But if it's the other is like, well, yeah, I do it all the time because I need to know how I feel. And if I'm good enough and if other people trust me as much as that person down the hall and you know that's a very different thing and that's when we tend to not want to talk about it

that's true and i think whenever here's a common example for my own life someone will say oh hey jordan you should meet my friend bill he's got a podcast then bill will go oh you have a podcast i'll say yeah the jordan harbinger show and they're like oh yeah i know it yeah i just have this little tiny audience and you know mine's nowhere near is good nobody ever says yeah i listen to your stuff so that i can learn what i can do better they always just say mine sucks compared to you yours. Interesting. Or, and people often will, we'll say things like, oh, you know, I'm learning how to cook vegan food. And nobody ever says, or I watch or emulate vegan chefs on YouTube or television in order to find new recipes and figure out what I want to do. They usually say

something like, well, compared to this so-and-so famous vegan chef, I'm nothing. Or I'm no Emerald Legasi, but I do know how to cook some noodles. Like, there's a very rarely do you hear someone talk about self-assessment comparisons, usually we're talking about self-enhancement comparisons. Yeah. And that's where the anxiety starts to creep in to your point. Yeah. So the problem is that when we compare ourselves, we're often doing both of these things

simultaneously. That's what's hard about it is that you can move between the two so seamlessly that you don't even realize you're doing it. So you can start off by trying to self-assess and you end up trying to self-enhance. Or once you realize, oh, I'm trying to self-enhance, you're like, got to get back to that self-assessment. Right. Or you walk away entirely.

So this is one of the biggest paradoxes of self-help and self-improvement. Like we need to study other people in order to measure our progress. But by measuring our progress, we often end up inflating ourselves or tearing ourselves down or toggling between the two. And we often do that at the expense of the person we're comparing ourselves to, right? Like mentally, we start to rewrite our story about them. Like, oh, they really are as good as I thought. I'll never be as good as they are.

Right? And it just spins out of control. Or you're like, you know what? Not going to compare myself to that person anymore. But you know what? Andrea in marketing, honestly, I don't get it. She's not that good at the job, you know. People don't really like her as much as they seem to.

So it's really funny how that brain does that trick. It's a toxic hall of mirrors. It's a toxic hall of mirrors. Absolutely. But there is another reason that comparing ourselves to other people makes us so unhappy. Just in case it wasn't bad enough already. There are more reasons why it's bad. There are more reasons. There's one more reason, but we're talking about this because if we can get super clear on this, then I honestly believe that we can compare ourselves without making ourselves feel miserable.

So it's worth talking about. So the other reason that it can make us unhappy is that oftentimes when we compare ourselves, we're actually doing it to get in touch with ideas that we already have about ourselves. Okay. So here's the way we've been talking about comparison is like you compare yourself to someone else. You tend to think of it like, okay. I need to know how good I am. I need to know how much people trust me at work, or I need to know how fit I am in my boot camp class, or I need to know how good of a writer I am, whatever it is. And you look out into the world to the people you want to compare yourself to, the person in your boot camp class, another blogger on the internet, a person in your Instagram

feed, whoever. And you study them and you try to figure out how you stack up and then you form an opinion about yourself. But in reality, the process is a lot more complicated than that. Because when we compare ourselves to other people, we almost always have some pre-existing idea about how we stack up. Like that idea already exists before we decide to look at somebody and compare ourselves. So remember, we've been doing social comparisons since the time we were kids. So for most of us, we have decades of these ideas about ourselves that are built up from self-comparison.

They're already established. We might not always know they're there. They might be subtle or subconscious, but they're definitely there. And those opinions, they make up our self-concept, our ideas about our self-esteem. Psychologists call these ideas self-views. It's like a very broad term. But it's basically the opinions you hold about who you are fundamentally as a person. So our self-views, they're really important to us, to each of us.

Whether they're right or wrong, accurate or inaccurate, healthy or negative, they're really important because they are how we think about ourselves in the world. They help keep the world stable and consistent. So when we compare ourselves to other people, what we're often doing is looking out there for data that will prop up those self-views because we don't want to lose them. Because if we really looked at that person down the hall, if we really looked at Andrea in marketing or really looked at that person in our boot camp class and we're honest fully about the feedback we were getting about ourselves, how we stack up, how we look compared to them,

whatever it is, then we might have to adjust those self-views. We might have to be like, you know what, I'm really not as awesome at work as I thought I was nobody wants to do that though nobody does well certainly not naturally right right or you might have to be like you know what I actually I I am a pretty responsible person I'm not this like irresponsible mess that my family thinks I am right either way whatever the beliefs are it's more important to the human mind to keep those beliefs stable and consistent than have to actually revisit and rewrite them so when we compare ourselves to other people it's not really a blank slate that we're beginning with where we're like don't know how

I stack up at work, let me look to Andrea to figure that out. Or I don't really know if I'm a responsible person or not, but let me look at my family to find out. We already suspect. We suspect that we might be irresponsible or that we aren't as fit or that we aren't as good or are as good or are amazing, whatever the opinion is. But then comparing ourselves as the way for us to confirm that. Right. So we're not looking in the mirror for the first time. We're looking in the mirror for the 5,000th time just to see if we've gotten a little bit fatter like we've not. knew what happened. Exactly.

Yes. Or conversely, we look in the mirror to confirm that we're better than everybody else or that we're amazing or that we're killing it at work or that nobody could be as good as us. Either way, could be negative or positive. So we seek out feedback that confirms those views by comparing ourselves to other people with that opinion already in mind. And that motivation, that is called self-verification. It's the third motivation for comparing yourself.

It was actually developed by William Swan, another social psychologist. And now we can add that to the list of the three main motivations for self-comparison, right? You have the self-assessment, which you've talked about, which is just finding out how you stack up so you know objectively how good or talented or correct or whatever you are. There's self-enhanagement, which is designed to make us feel better about ourselves. And then there's self-verification, which is, I already know how I feel about myself, but I'm going to go out there and confirm it for myself so that I know that whatever I believed already was true.

All right. So in the end, what does this all mean for us? And the key takeaway, or one key takeaway for me is that when we compare ourselves to other people, we're not really comparing ourselves to other people. We're comparing our ideas about ourselves or our preconceived notions or our subjective, weird little label that we put on ourselves in each little category. That's what we're comparing to other people. And then we're using our observations about other people, about those with whom we compare ourselves,

to validate those pre-existing ideas. So essentially, like we said earlier, you're never really honestly looking at yourself or anyone else. You're just looking through different filters, which are your idea that you have of them, the reason that you're comparing yourself, which you might not even be aware of, and then comparing that to this set of ideas

that you have about yourself based on whether you've had your coffee that morning or ate crappy or worked out or... Or your mom was nice to you when you were young or your dad told you that you were awesome. when you weren't always or whatever those are. Exactly. Yeah.

And so now compound all of that baggage and then put it under the giant magnifying glass slash bullhorn microphone that is social media. And we mentioned this a little bit earlier, but now we're comparing ourselves in that totally inaccurate way. And I put ourselves in air quotes. We're comparing our image or ideas of ourselves to other people in that totally inaccurate way that we just described. So then we're going to look online and see other people's edited, curated version of themselves and then create ideas based on that and then compare that to these ideas that we have about ourselves.

So it just gets even worse. Everything gets magnified. The abstraction is crazy because you're comparing an idea you have about yourself to someone else's idea about themselves. But that idea they have about themselves is also based on an idea they have about themselves, right? Like nobody puts up a photo on Facebook to look however everyone else wants them to look. They put it up because they have an idea in mind about what other people want them to look like. Can you imagine the levels? It just multiplies.

Like we think we're comparing ourselves one to one. Like I'm looking at Facebook and I'm comparing myself to him. But I'm not. It's the idea I have about myself compared to the idea I have of him based on his idea of himself, based on his idea of what my idea of him is. Like you could take that as far as you want. But it is a hall of mirrors. It is literally the metaphor.

Literally the metaphor. How's that? It's literally not the metaphor. It is the definition of the metaphor is what I meant to say of the way a Hall of Mears works. So you talked about this at the top of this episode, but that right there, that's why comparing ourselves to other people feel so much worse now. I really do believe that in last five to eight years, self-comparison has gotten more acute. We always did it. It was always in our species.

But the question was, how easily could we do it? and how abstracted were the ideas we were comparing ourselves to. They weren't until we had social media. Right, because you could compare yourself against the other guy in your basketball team who was about as good as you. And then you had your super all-star player who everyone looked up to. And then you had everyone else, right, in the circle around you. And then when you went home, you weren't around those guys anymore, so you watch TV. And then your comparison shifted to your brother.

And you were feeling pretty good about it that day. And also he's your brother. So whatever. It's in the family. It's fine. If you had that. Or if you're an only child, you just watch TV. and those people are too inaccessible and far away to make any kind of difference.

Now you're comparing yourself to the kids on the basketball team, and then you go home and you look at your phone, and you're comparing yourself against all these strangers on the internet. And, oh, there's that kid on the basketball team again. Oh, man, he's doing something fun, and I'm just sitting at home. Oh, he's with that girl that I like. Oh, this sucks. My life sucks.

And then you go to bed, and the last thing you do is you look at your social media again, just to get one more dose of how boring and lame and ugly and fat and slow, you are compared to this random other person who maybe plays basketball but lives in Canada. Yep. That's pretty much, I pretty much nailed it. Yeah. And it's also the other big takeaway is that it's easy to forget that while we're comparing ourselves to other people, other people are comparing themselves to us.

Everybody does it. So we might not be aware of it. In many cases, we're not aware of it. But every single person does this to somebody and multiple people in most cases. So that also adds a whole weird. to it because we could be comparing ourselves to somebody who in turn is comparing herself to us. And then their ideas about us and our ideas about them. And we don't even know that that's happening.

Yeah, that's a good point. Because you don't sit around and go, oh, this person's better looking than me. And they go, man, Jordan's funnier than me. I wish I were, I wish I had a quick on my feet personality. And I'm like, I wish I was six foot four. Right. So you don't have that exchange where you realize, oh, everybody's got things like this. Because we don't sit around and go, hey, does anyone compare themselves?

post your deepest fear here on Instagram, right? And that doesn't happen. Instead, it's more like, post a picture of you flying in a jet because it makes you look cool. At the end of the day, it really is about the preconceptions that we have about ourselves that determines whether comparing ourselves makes us miserable or doesn't make us miserable. So when we compare ourselves to other people, we really are often just confirming ideas we already have. And if we do that in order to verify the self-concepts, these self-views, the most fundamental

ideas we have about who we are, if we're doing it to verify those feelings and not to develop new or accurate ones, then in almost every case, comparing ourselves to other people will make us miserable because it'll either reflect back to us what we already believe, and usually that's pretty negative, or we will use it to confirm something that we want to believe that's positive, that isn't totally accurate. And you have to be so aware and subtle and onto yourself. It was like you listening to the podcast where you were like, wait, a second. What am I doing here? Right. Like, am I going into these podcasts with an idea already? Yeah. Yeah, I probably am. And if I am doing that, is that going to make me happier or better? Probably not. So you have to be super on top of yourself to notice that there, that those ideas are there and that that's the motivation for doing it. And if we were truly honest about the comparison data that we received, then we'd have to rewrite all of those beliefs about ourselves. Well, spoiler alert, like, rewriting those beliefs can be one of the the most interesting and profound experiences, but it takes a lot of conscious work to be able to

be willing to do that and not to compare ourselves to uphold the old ones. So that is, I think, really at the heart of what people are describing when they say, man, like, I'm comparing myself to other people. I don't know how to stop. Sometimes it's useful, but a lot of the time it's really making me unhappy. Yeah. Well, is it making you unhappy because you're finding out things you don't want to find out or is it making you unhappy because you're looking to them to give you something, to make you feel better or to confirm something you already believe? And if the answer is yes, then you're like, that's half the battle. That's already, you're already on your way to figuring out how to do this without tearing yourself down. So we develop that self-awareness to over time,

be more mindful of when and why we're making these comparisons. And then we have to ask ourselves what the motivation really is. You know, is it to assess ourselves and our abilities, our opinions? is it to enhance our sense of self, is it to verify those beliefs, as you'd mentioned before? And then I think we have to figure out how to control those motivations, right? Or at least realize that we're in control of those motivations all along. And then pick and choose, maybe stop the negative habit of, I'm going to look on Instagram because I'm very tempted to, like, we tell ourselves,

we're just bored or we're killing time. Right. But really deep down, we're thinking, okay, well, I want to see what this is. other person is up to? Or what did I do today? And how does that stack up against someone else? And that's never going to help you. That's never going to help you. So, and it's not just, and we're using social media as an example here, but it's really not just that. We do this when we walk into work and we see somebody wearing something or we see somebody giving a presentation. Or we walk into a party and look around the room. Right. Yeah. It happens in the most mundane

situations, too. It's not just when we choose to seek it out because we need to find out how we compare. It just kind of sneaks up on us. It does. What's funny about this is, you You know, the good news, as you pointed out, is that we are in control. We're in control of those motivations. As soon as we see them for what they are, it gives us a measure of control over them. But this also means that we have to give up some ideas we have about who we're blaming for being miserable when we compare ourselves. Because a lot of people, probably a lot of people listening to this, I was one of them, would be like, well, yeah, that's why Instagram sucks. Right, right.

Like social media is a problem. And you know what? I really hate those people at work who are always trying to look good because then I'm constantly worrying about whether I'm good enough and if people trust me enough and if I'm going to get promoted and it's like, wait a second. Those people are there no matter what. What are you doing? Why are you looking at them? What is your motivation for comparing yourself? And as soon as it comes back to you and you realize that to some degree, you do have some control over whether you allow those motivations to take over, then you can't really blame the other.

people around you for making you feel miserable all the time, right? They're just doing their thing. As we've said, in most cases, they're comparing themselves to other people, including you. So it really comes down to the motivations you have inside of you and whether you're going to be honest about those. So the good news is that you have control over it. The bad news, if you want to call it that, is that you have to give up your idea that

everyone else is to blame for making you unhappy. Right, right, right. But we're never going to really stop comparing ourselves to other people. No. So I know a lot of people are thinking, okay, get off social media, develop self-awareness. As soon as I feel myself comparing myself to other people, stop doing it, not going to work. We've evolved this. It is instinctual.

It is wired in. You will not be able to stop. It's not something that there's not even an internal dialogue that I can imagine that exists without that. No, it seems like we're wired that way. Yeah. Yeah. And as we've said, in many cases, it can be really, really helpful. Right.

But you can notice when that tendency to self-compare creeps in and just by noticing it, refrain from doing it when it's motivated by something kind of unhappy or unhealthy. Right. So we have to make sure that we're comparing ourselves for reasons that are productive and healthy rather than toxic, egotistic or egoistic. I never know if there's a difference between those words. I think it depends on the context, but I got you. I know what you're talking about. I hope everybody else does too. and we have to also not hang on to these negative comparisons or these ideas and then use them what I've done and I know people do this too.

We'll hold on to this negative comparison and we're like, well, I don't want to deal with that right now. And then later when we're beating ourselves up about something else, we'll drag out that idea and go, and also this person did this other thing. And we just kind of use them as bats and weapons to beat ourselves with later on. We flog ourselves with these negative ideas. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's why these questions that we've been talking about are so helpful. Because it really just comes down to like these handful of really fundamental things.

And you can come back to these over the course of your life. I do it all the time. Why are you comparing yourself? What are you trying to understand about yourself? What are you trying to confirm about yourself? Are you walking in here to really find out about yourself? Or do you already kind of have an idea of who you are and you just want someone to confirm it? and what conclusions do you find yourself drawing, not just about yourself, but about other people and the world?

And if you answer those questions honestly on an ongoing basis, this isn't a one and done thing. This is a practice. It's really, really hard to compare yourself to other people and still be miserable. Well done, Gabriel. Thanks for coming in. My pleasure. Thank you for having me as always. All right.

So Jason, this type of comparison thing was sort of near and dear to my heart because, one, it's so. hard to stop this set of habits. And I don't know if anybody completely eliminates it. And it seems like the more high performing, amazing people that you and I meet, the more these people do this, or at least the more we talk about doing it and how much we hate it. Yeah, but the great thing about this episode, there's some really solid tools to try and avoid it when you can identify it and do the right kind of comparison instead of the wrong kind of comparison.

Yeah, it's really, you know, I didn't even know before Gabriel and I, decided to explore this issue that there were two different types. I just thought, it's all bad, it's all unhealthy. And then when you try to stop doing it, you're like, I'm going to run my own race. It doesn't quite work out. So we really did have to suss out these two types. And Gabriel did a great job of explaining this. So I'm really glad we did this episode because I know a lot of people sort of suffer from this malady, myself included. Great big thank you to Gabriel Mizrahi. If you enjoyed this one, don't forget to thank Gabriel on Twitter. That'll be linked up in the show notes for this episode, which, as always, can be found at Jordan Harbibor

www.com slash podcast. Tweeted me your number one takeaway here from Gabriel Mizrahi on this deep dive about comparing ourselves to others. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter, and I'm also on Instagram at Jordan Harbinger. And don't forget, if you want to learn how to apply everything you heard from Gabriel, make sure you go grab those worksheets in the show notes at Jordanharbinger.com slash podcast. This episode was produced and edited by Jason DePhilippo.

Show notes on the website are by Robert Fogarty, booking back office and last minute miracles by Jen Harbinger, and I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Would love to get a review of the show in iTunes. We are so close to it. Actually, by the time this airs, we'll be over 1,000, but let's go for 5,000. How's that? Make sure there's a little tricky review glitch going on.

You've got to make sure you have a unique nickname because otherwise it just won't post, and it also won't tell you why. The submit button just doesn't work. So, I don't know. Maybe use a stripper name, which if I recall from high school is your middle name and the street you grew up on. Is that how that works, Jason? I'm pretty sure that was it.

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