Put Yourself First

Imagine how much extra energy you’d have to direct towards your future if you limited how much you compare yourself with others.

There’s a reason we use the idiom of comparing apples and oranges. 

We measure ourselves constantly. Height, weight, exams, followers, likes, PBs, distance, speed, books read, money earned… it’s… a lot.

We also measure ourselves against other people: Deriving self-worth, or lack thereof, determined by the positions of others.

This social comparison is a natural human tendency. But when it gets out of hand, as it often does, it’s an unsustainable tactic to improve both well-being and performance.

Look At Them

There are three types of social comparison: upwards, lateral and downwards. These three categories were coined by Festinger in a seminal 1954 paper, positing that within us we contain a drive to gain “accurate evaluation of our ability, performance and options,” and achieve this through comparison.

Historically this had more of a tangible and rational benefit. If someone within your locale could perform X better than you, they likely had similar circumstances and means. Today, you look at someone on Insta and don’t see their responsibilities or the number in their bank account that facilitates their performance.

Today, it’s a cop-out more often than not, unless you use other’s success as genuine inspiration. Looking at people further along than you and agonising over their prosperity is a way of folding and shrinking. It’s a way to justify not performing yourself.

Self-Sabotage

It’s a natural response to grit your teeth and squeeze your fist as you compare yourself to others with more. It’s also possible to feel that emotion, before supplanting it with a consequent one of understanding.

Throwing shade at others won’t make you feel good. Lighting up your world, will. You have finite energy. Every side-eye, each snarky comment, launched outwards is a direct removal from your internal capacity to focus on yourself.

An iconic evolutionary psychologist, Robin Dunbar, pioneered the idea (2004) of the benefits of gossiping, comparing, to primates who pick fleas and dirt off one another to bond. When we look at those around us who are doing better and worse, we convey social information and organise our hierarchies.

This chatter may arrange statuses, but it does little for performance. It reinforces narratives of our own creation. Are the narratives you’ve woven for yourself and those around you serving you, or minimising your capacity?

A Long Hard Look At Yourself

Ultimately most negative comparison emerges from people who lack direction. When we’re floundering, unsure of where we’re trying to go, the individuals who’ve made strides in silence appear to have achieved something out of our wheelhouse.

Are you jealous? Are you seeing your potential lived out through somebody else? Then stop stewing. It’s time to deliver.

Understanding a purpose and vision for our own lives allows us to put things into perspective.

Where’s your sense of self? What do you know about yourself? How hard you’re trying to perform, how much you’ve overcome? How far you’re willing to go, how bad you want it?

Entertainment and technology have been marketed as an extension of our consciousness and attention.

In modernity, for many, these two bedfellows have transformed into a protection from our consciousness and attention.

When was the last time you took some time to do… nothing? To sit with a blank page, plot your life ahead. Break the big ideas down into smaller tasks that can be performed, successfully, each day?

This can’t just be a one-and-done thing. It’s not a December 30th task that runs you through the whole year. Like anything concerning performance, success in the endeavour stems from repetition.

Is it less fun than going the pub, watching your favourite film for the fifth time, throwing down a session in the gym or jumping on the PS4? Obviously. But it’s a pathway to a remedy.

Faux Progress

YouTube videos, podcasts and self-help books can masquerade as productivity and performance. They have a place, but doing the thing, will almost always outperform considering the thing.

Reconsider life. It’s an 80(ish) year symphony, sure. But that full performance is a neatly connected series of daily notes that form a score. Seeking rhythm in the 24-hour movements that sync together to serve as the soundtrack to our days… that is what will sweep you forwards to the holy grail; the satiating bow at the end of the show, knowing you’ve done your best.

Did your actions today align with the person you consider yourself as? What aboutthe person you want to become?

Then you did enough. Tomorrow, we pick up our instruments and we play again.