The Thief of Joy?
“Comparison is the Thief of Joy.“ —Teddy Roosevelt
One of the questions I ask in my Yogi of the Month Q&A’s is “What advice would you give to a beginning yoga student?” By far the most common answer is “Don’t compare yourself to others in the class.”
Our fellow yogis aren’t the only ones who caution against comparison. Appalachian trail hikers have the motto, “hike your own hike,” i.e., don’t compare how many miles you cover in a day to the mileage of other hikers. Teddy Roosevelt famously called comparison the Thief of Joy; Mark Twain went even further, calling it the Death of Joy. Clearly, there’s a lot of agreement that making comparisons can detract from our happiness.
Nevertheless, our urge to compare ourselves to others is strong. Research has found that more than 10% of our daily thoughts involved making a comparison of some kind.
Some comparisons make us feel better about ourselves, some worse. Here are some comparisons I tend to make and how they make me feel:
I’ve been wanting to live on the water ever since we moved to the Northern Neck in 1997 and envy all of you who do.
I compare our ages but am neutral if you’re younger or older.
I generally don’t envy you if you’re better looking, have a nicer car, or if you go to more parties than I do.
I don’t negatively compare our wealth, but I envy the awesome trips you take.
I compare our intelligence and am inspired by yours.
I rarely compare our yoga practices, but I do compare our teaching skills. I’m always inspired by teachers (or anyone) who works hard on their craft.
I sometimes envy your hair.
So why do we compare ourselves to other people? Is there any benefit? And if there isn’t, how can we stop?
It turns out that social comparison is in our DNA. We’re hardwired to compare ourselves to others in order to compete for limited resources. It’s crucial to our survival. We also have a fundamental need to evaluate ourselves and the only way to do that is in relation to others.
That means that comparison isn’t something we can or should stuff down. As Roosevelt, Twain, Appalachian trail hikers and countless others point out, it can have a lot of downsides. But it also has upsides. The trick is to be mindful of when comparison lifts us up and when it brings us down. If comparing yourself to your fellow yogis or hikers inspires admiration or brings growth to your own journey, awesome! If doing so makes you feel demoralized, embarrassed or tempts you to hike someone else’s hike, then it’s time to stop comparing or shift your approach to it.
We can’t ever fully stop comparing ourselves to others. But we can pause to recognize when it’s robbing us or when it’s enriching us and move forward from there.
I wish you health and happiness in your waterfront home.