Is Comparison Really the Thief of Joy?
Pros and cons of comparing ourselves to others and turning comparison into inspiration
Having lived in five countries and even more cities, I’ve felt social comparison creeping in at every turn. Adjusting to new cultures and languages, starting over in unfamiliar places, and feeling like an outsider, even after settling in, left plenty of room for wondering how I measured up. And as anyone who’s worked in academia knows, it’s a breeding ground for comparison. Adding to that, starting new careers along the way made comparison inevitable.
But paying closer attention to how I compare myself—what I take from it, how it makes me feel, and how I respond—has been eye-opening. It’s taught me a lot about myself: my insecurities, values, strengths, and priorities. More importantly, I’ve learned not to let comparison define my worth. Over time, the habit of measuring myself against others has quieted, leaving space for something better: appreciating and learning from those I admire.
Comparison is present in pretty much everyone’s life. If you’ve ever watched someone crush a work presentation and wondered why you don’t have it all together, scrolled through social media and felt some inadequacy, overheard someone mention their salary at a family gathering and felt a bit of envy, or been inspired by a friend’s effortless workout routine, welcome to being human.
We all look to others to figure out if we’re doing things right. Are we smart enough? Successful enough? Even "normal" enough? Comparison is almost inevitable. After all, we don’t live in a vacuum. We’re surrounded by stories, people, and possibilities. Especially in today’s hyper-connected world, it’s nearly impossible to avoid glimpses of other people’s lives. Technology has amplified something that’s always been part of human nature.
Even great minds weren’t immune to it. Franz Kafka, for instance, once wrote in Diaries 1920–1923:
This week I think I have been completely influenced by Goethe, have really exhausted the strength of this influence and have therefore become useless.
Kafka felt creatively stifled by Goethe’s brilliance, but not all comparisons are detrimental. Some comparisons can genuinely inspire us. Seeing someone achieve their dreams can remind us of what’s possible, drive us to grow, or nudge us to refine our goals. Research supports this. One study found that people are more likely to adopt climate-friendly technologies simply because their neighbours have. Studies also show that for those with serious health conditions, comparing themselves with those who are worse off acts like a coping mechanism, offering comfort by seeing others who are facing even greater struggles.
At the same time, sometimes comparison leads us down a less helpful path. Research shows that we tend to compare ourselves upward—measuring against those who seem better off. While this can sometimes be motivating, it often leads to frustration, self-doubt, and resentment. Downward comparison, looking at those who seem worse off, can offer temporary comfort, like for people with health problems, but it’s a shaky foundation. It can leave us fixated on what might go wrong, afraid of ending up in the same situation. Worse, it can make us complacent or even foster a false sense of superiority.
That said, there’s no need to panic. A recent review suggests that the negative effects of comparison on mental health aren’t as clear-cut as we might think, with insufficient evidence to confirm its widespread harm. How it affects us depends on many individual and contextual factors.
There’s a fine line between finding inspiration in others and getting stuck in the trap of constant, unhealthy comparison.
Noticing the differences between your life and someone else’s—what they own, what they’ve achieved, what their strengths are, or what they’ve experienced—can be a chance to reflect. A neutral look at those differences can help us understand what they mean to us and whether they align with what we want. But when admiration turns into harsh self-criticism or shame, when looking at others makes us feel like we’re falling behind, when guilt and resentment creep in, it’s a sign that comparison is working against us. Instead of motivating us, it leaves us stuck, focused on what we lack rather than appreciating what we have.
Maria Popova, writer of The Marginalian, captured this perfectly in a commencement speech at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communication. She said:
[…] the second I begin comparing my pace to his, my life to his, I’m vacating my own experience of that spring day and ejecting myself into a sort of limbo of life that is neither mine nor his.
And when we compare, we rarely do it objectively. We see curated versions of other people’s lives: the polished highlights, not the struggles behind the scenes. Comparing our unfiltered reality to someone else’s best moments is a losing game.
That’s why I lean into the idea of social inspiration—using other people’s achievements, character, or wisdom as fuel to grow, rather than as a yardstick to measure our own worth. Instead of seeing someone else’s success as proof of our own inadequacy, we can treat it as motivation.
If a meaningful life is about aligning with our own values and creating a genuine path, then habitual comparison pulls us in the opposite direction. The more we measure our lives by someone else’s ruler, the more we risk chasing their dreams instead of our own.
But the impact of comparison also ripples through communities and generations. We see it in the way Gen Z is measured against Millennials, Millennials against Gen X, each generation judged by the expectations of the one before it. This endless cycle of comparison fuels friction and unrealistic pressures, reinforcing the idea that we’re all in a constant race.
We could reduce social comparison, or even eliminate it, by developing a grounded sense of self, one that doesn’t depend on measuring ourselves against others, positively or negatively. But avoiding comparison altogether isn’t always realistic or even helpful. We all find ourselves comparing at some point. Plus, comparison can have loads of benefits.
I’ve found it helpful to approach comparison in a more purposeful way. Comparison can serve as a window into our desires, values, or unmet needs. For instance, if watching a friend thrive in their dream career stirs up discomfort, that might be a signal that something in our own life feels stuck. The point isn’t to shame ourselves, but to notice what matters most to us. Often, the comparisons that sting the most reveal our deepest longings. That doesn’t mean we should chase every passing desire or depend on comparison to shape our goals, but when we do compare (perhaps unintentionally), it can help clarify what truly matters to us.
It’s worth pausing to consider whether the comparisons we’re making are even fair to us. It’s so easy to look at someone else’s success or possessions and wonder, “Why can’t I have that?” But context matters. Are we comparing our starting line to someone else’s midpoint? Our behind-the-scenes progress to their big, flashy wins? Maybe we’re holding ourselves up against someone with entirely different resources or privileges. Everyone’s story is unique, shaped by struggles and opportunities we can’t always see. Recognising this won’t magically erase feelings of envy or frustration, but it can help reframe them.
Envy is one of the trickiest parts of comparison. Although it sounds like a negative emotion, envy can offer surprising insights. For example, envying a friend’s gorgeous vacation might reveal a craving for rest or adventure. Envying a colleague’s income might reflect a deeper yearning for fairness.
Sometimes envy runs deeper than it seems on the surface. Maybe you envy your sister’s thick, glossy hair, but the root of that envy isn’t really the hair. It’s the praise she received growing up, leaving you feeling unseen or less valued. Or maybe envying a coworker’s promotion isn’t about the promotion itself—it’s about feeling overlooked or unappreciated. When we take the time to unpack envy, it often shifts from bitterness to insight. We may even discover that what we envied wasn’t aligned with our true desires, but that it was something we were taught to value.
We won’t escape comparison as long as we live in a social world. What really matters is how we go about comparing ourselves, what we take from it, and how we respond to it. Those things can have a much bigger impact than the comparison itself.
The paths of those we think are better off might inspire us, push us, or make us uncomfortable, but they should never overshadow our own. Living honestly with our values in a world full of distractions and contradictions isn’t easy, and we’ll stumble along the way. There will be many moments when we turn outward, and that’s okay. But the more we anchor ourselves in what truly matters to us, the less comparison will control us.
Comparing ourselves to those who seem to be worse off, on the other hand, can feel like an easy win—a fleeting source of comfort. When it serves as a reminder to practice gratitude, it might be harmless or even virtuous. But when we start relying on someone else’s struggles to bolster our own sense of worth, it turns into something else entirely. It’s a misguided path I’m not willing to take.
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On the subject of envy, I really like the way Turkish draws the subtle distinction between özenmek, imrenmek and kıskanmak.
Thank you so much, Good Doctor, for this explanation of how people who are constantly looking outside themselves can become very unhappy with the way their lives are going. Maybe I’ve been practicing self-deception for over sixty years, but all I’ve ever wanted to be is myself. I can’t say why I’ve been able to accept myself just the way I am. I’ve never felt much inclination to give in to peer pressure, and I’ve always prided myself on being what was known as a Rugged Individualist. I don’t hear that term very often nowadays but when I was growing up in the 1960s that was considered a very cool thing to be. A look at popular fiction and movies of the late Sixties and early Seventies will show that some of the most influential and respected entertainment of that era reflected that mindset. I turned eighteen in 1977, having missed out on being drafted for the Vietnam War by a few years. Prior to that in the USA a lot of people my age wanted to tear society down and start all over again. Nowadays it seems very naive to think that a minority of college students could remake an entire civilization, but the US government was worried enough that the FBI kept detailed files on student leaders and infiltrated groups such as the Students for Democratic Society. Quite a few of us thought that making money was a lot less important than pursuing spirituality, creativity and inner peace in our lives. There was a lot of illegal drug use and involvement with the occult as well. A lot of this was purely foolish and dangerous, especially playing around with hallucinogenic drugs. The Sexual Revolution was phony too, because a lot of guys just espoused it in order to take advantage of women without having any commitment or responsibility. This is a very brief history of the age that I grew up in. Though I supported a lot of those practices and objectives I never became personally involved with the Counterculture. I was too busy pursuing my music career and writing fantasy novels and stories. I was quite content to work unskilled day jobs to support my other passions. When my dreams of success as a musician and novelist began to fizzle I joined the Navy and managed quite well to exist with someone else telling me what to do all the time, in spite of my rebellious and passive aggressive tendencies. At that time I met the girl who would become my wife and we shared a lot of the same views about life. The most important thing to me was making her feel happy and loved. Through good fortune or Divine Providence, my wife’s main goal has been the same toward me. Now that I’m in my late sixties I feel almost exactly the same as I did when I was eighteen. My college education seems like a waste and most of the things I wanted to learn came through my own reading and experiences. My wife and I seem to be a couple of pretty rare birds. We’re almost completely alike in that we don’t care about what other people own and what they do. Is this really the way we are, or have we both been living a life of elaborate self-deception? I can’t say for certain, but I think that we are both very happy “doing our own thing,” and that we will remain that way until the angels come for us. ‘Bye for now, Good Doctor, and thank you for inspiring me to think about something that has come naturally to me for as long as I can remember!