The Heartbreaking Cruelty of Comparing Yourself to Others

We all do it: we look at what others are doing and wish we were doing that too.

Or, alternatively, we scoff at what they’re doing and judge them, and see ourselves as better.

One makes us feel bad, the other makes us feel superior.

Neither makes us happy.

Let’s take a couple of quick examples.

Example 1: Looking at Instagram

I’m not an Instagram user, but family members are, and I see the kinds of things that are posted: people going to parties, to the beach, having a great dinner, traveling, going on a run, doing yoga … generally living an amazing life.

If you were to look at these on a regular basis, it would be easy to compare your boring life (looking at your phone) to the incredible lives of your friends. Why aren’t you doing more? Why aren’t you eating more beautiful food? Why aren’t you traveling or exercising or doing anything other than what you’re doing right now? Why don’t you have a better body?

It’s not a fair comparison, of course. They’re not posting photos of themselves when they’re doing the more mundane things, including sitting around looking at their phones. They’re not posting about their anxieties or boredom, their arguments and procrastination, their insecurities.

But even if you do an apples-to-apples comparison — your highlights to theirs — what use is that? Do the highlights of our lives need to be better than anyone else’s? Why?

Do the highlights determine our happiness? Do they show us what life is about?

No: happiness comes from appreciating what’s in front of you, not wishing you were doing something else. You find out what life is about by paying closer attention to it, not wishing you were living a fantasy.

We don’t need to be better than anyone else: we just need to love where we are and what we’re doing and who we are. That’s what matters.

The comparisons don’t make us happier or appreciate life more — they make us feel horrible about ourselves. And that’s heartbreaking.

Example 2: Judging Someone Else

Let’s say I have worked hard to change my habits, quitting smoking and then taking up regular exercise and eating a lot healthier. I’ve worked hard to make myself into a healthy person, and I’m proud of it.

Then I see someone else who is overweight, who eats junk all the time and smokes and can’t seem to stick to an exercise plan.

One common reaction is to look at this overweight person and judge them: why don’t they stop eating all that junk? Go for a daily walk, eat some vegetables? They have no self-control! They are to blame for their problems.

So we judge them, and in comparison we feel superior for not having those bad habits. But this doesn’t make us happy: judging someone else only makes us dislike them. That’s not happiness — that’s shaking our heads in disgust.

We wish they were more like us, and might even feel some frustration that they don’t take action to do something good for themselves.

This doesn’t make us appreciate life more — it makes us wish it were different, and frustrated that it isn’t.

Instead, we might consider trying to understand the person. Have we ever struggled with habits? Have we ever felt bad about ourselves? Of course we have.

We know what it feels like to go through difficulty, to feel hopeless, to not think we can change. We don’t know what it feels like to be this person, but maybe we can imagine that they’re suffering, and we can wish for their suffering to end.

The Two Habits

In both cases, the comparisons led to feeling really bad about ourselves or others. This is heartbreaking, because we are good people, and so are they. It’s only in comparison that we take what’s wonderful and turn it into something cruel.

I propose two habits to replace comparison:

  1. Appreciate where you are. Instead of looking at the lives of others, see the goodness in front of you. Inside of you. Appreciate each moment, one at a time, and be happy where you are. When you find yourself comparing your life to the lives of others, turn to the moment in front of you and find ways to appreciate it.
  2. Seek to understand, not judge. When you find yourself frustrated with others, or judging them … instead, try to understand them. Are they going through a hard time? Are they frustrated? Sad? Angry? Feeling hopeless? Do you know what that’s like? When we understand a person, we let go of judgment.

With these two strategies, our heart comes to the right place. And we let go of the cruelty of comparisons, as unthinkably unnecessary.

The Heartbreaking Cruelty of Comparing Yourself to Others was originally posted on Zen Habits on 9/17/14.

How to Be Prepared for Anything

‘Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.’ ~Marcus Aurelius

There are various ways to prepare yourself for what might come your way, whether that’s a tough work project, a crisis, the loss of a loved one, an argument with your partner, or the zombie apocalypse.

One way is to get everything ready for anything that’s likely to come: get all your survival equipment, prepare your skills, plan for your work projects, get your affairs in order, think through your arguments, and so on.

The trouble with this is you don’t know what’s coming. And so you’ll spend your entire life preparing for various things, and not really be ready. And who wants to spend their life just preparing?

Another way of preparing is learning some skills that will have you ready for just about anything that might come.

This is the survival kit of living.

First, the philosophy: you can’t prepare for the details of every single possible thing that might come your way in the future, because the future is uncertain. Instead, realize that the external events are just details … the real thing to prepare yourself for is what happens internally. And it’s pretty much the same thing. So we’re going to learn some internal survival skills that will help us deal with anything the future holds.

Second, a little prep before you prep: I’ve found that while the external details aren’t as important as what you do internally, it’s still good to have your house in order as much as possible. That means have your finances in order — get out of debt, or at least have your debts listed with a plan to pay them off as soon as you possibly can, have an emergency fund, spend less than you earn, invest as much as you can. That means simplify your possessions and your time. Get your health in order — focus on eating more whole foods (especially vegetables) and less processed foods, get active. Once you have these things down, the rest of life is much, much easier.

The Survival Kit

If you learn these things, you’ll be ready for anything — from regular work and personal events to crises of all kinds, to major losses and life changes.

  1. Mindfulness. This is the foundation — without practicing mindfulness, you won’t be able to do the other skills regularly enough for them to be useful. You can practice mindfulness simply by meditating — focus on your breath for a few minutes every morning, to start with. As you get better at mindfulness, you will get better at noticing what’s going on inside you as external events happen. For example, if someone is yelling at you, you might be mindful of your body at that moment and notice an increased heartbeat, a panicky feeling in your chest, a hot flush in your face, or something like that. Mindfulness of your body’s responses alert you to what might be going on in your mind.
  2. Watch your internal response. As you start to notice your mind’s responses to external events, you can begin to guide your response. For example, if you are given a large project at the last minute, you might notice your breathing getting shallow and your chest tightening, or your jaw clenching … you can then see that you’re extremely anxious about this, maybe resentful that you’re being asked to do this on a short deadline. You can then examine those responses — anxiety, resentfulness — and decide how to act, rather than being controlled by them.
  3. See what you’re holding onto. When you have a difficult feeling, like anxiety, anger, resentfulness, fear (including procrastination) … there’s something you’re attached to that’s causing the feeling. It can be difficult to spot this at first, but with practice you can see it in an instant. If you’re angry or resentful, there’s an ideal situation you would like, and are holding onto, that doesn’t match up with reality. For example, maybe someone has said something mean to you … you might be angry because (ideally) they shouldn’t treat you that way. It doesn’t matter if you’re right or not — if you want things to be different than reality, you’ll be angry or resentful or frustrated. Noticing what you’re holding onto is an important step.
  4. Let it go. It’s impossible not to ever hold onto certain ideals … but if you see that the ideal is causing you pain, you can be compassionate with yourself and let go of the ideal. Sure, people should treat you nicely, but that’s an ideal that’s not always going to be true. Letting go of the ideal means embracing the reality that there’s a wide range of behaviors that people will have, and that’s a part of life. Humans don’t always act ideally. We need to accept that, and not force an ideal on reality.
  5. Respond appropriately. Acceptance of reality doesn’t mean you do nothing. It means you let go of the ideals causing the painful feelings, and then figure out how to respond without the anger, frustration, anxiety, resentment. Responding to a person or situation in anger or resentment (for example) doesn’t usually result in a skillful response. If you can let go of the ideal and let the painful feelings go, you can respond more skillfully. When my child breaks a dish, for example, I can get angry (“They shouldn’t break dishes!”) and yell (not skillful), or I can let go of that ideal and the resultant anger, and see if the child is OK, and then calmly and compassionately talk about how to avoid that in the future. That’s a more appropriate response. When we respond in anger or frustration, we only compound the problem. Responding calmly and compassionately means we’re going to be able to deal with anything that is in front of us, whether it’s a crisis or a loss or an angry loved one.
  6. Stay in the moment. We make situations worse when we replay the past in our heads (“How can they have done that?”) or think of all the things that might go wrong in the future. In the present moment, things are OK. We can meet the present moment with calmness and compassion, if we can stay in the present. That means being mindful of when our mind is stuck in the past or speculating about the future, and returning to the present as much as we can.
  7. Be grateful & accept the moment for what it is. Reality can suck, if we want it to be different … or we can accept reality for what it is, and be grateful for it. This takes practice, because it’s hard to be grateful when you feel you’re being treated badly, or you’ve lost a job, or you’ve lost a loved one, or you’re battling illness. But this is the reality you have, not the ideal you wish you had. And it’s a reality that contains beauty, if we choose to see it. This skill makes us much more at peace with whatever we need to deal with.

It might seem overly simplistic to say that this survival kit of dealing with life will help us be prepared for any situation. And it is. But there’s nothing wrong with simplifying things, if only to help us focus our efforts on what’s most important.

In my experience, these skills matter. They make a huge difference. Practice them, and see how you’re able to deal with life in an entirely new way.

How to Be Prepared for Anything was originally posted on Zen Habits on 7/21/14.

Constant Task Switching

I know I’m losing focus when I’m constantly jumping around from task to task.

This is a “red flag” for me — a sign that I’m doing something wrong. You’ve done it too: switching from one browser tab to another, opening various emails and other messages, checking on this and that. No focus, lots of stress, lots of mental exhaustion without really getting anything done.

It means that I’ve lost myself in a chain of endless distraction, and am not truly conscious of what I’m doing.

When this red flag shows itself, I have a few simple solutions:

  1. Assess what’s important. What should I really be working on right now? I know it’s not the million little things. It’s something big that I’m probably avoiding. Often this means taking a step back to re-examine my priorities.
  2. Simplify. Constant switching often means I’m overloaded. I’ve taken on too much. I need to let go of the idea that I’m going to get everything done, and just focus on what I can really get done today. That might mean emailing or calling people to tell them I can’t do something today (or this week). I let go of tasks or projects, decide they’re not important and cross them off my list or put them on a “later” list that I’ll look at next week. Simplifying helps me to find focus again.
  3. Clear everything. If I have a task to focus on, I like to clear all tabs or close the browser and anything else that I don’t need to be doing right now. And just have the one task in front of me. This makes a huge difference. When you limit your options, you really get good at sticking to what’s there.
  4. Stay with the moment. Often we get lost in rushing around between tasks. When I clear everything away, I try to stay with this task, and do my best to be mindful of my urges to go check on something or switch away to something more comfortable but less important. I am mindful of my thoughts, of my body responses to what I’m doing. This focus, then, becomes a mindfulness exercise.

The practice of simplifying, clearing things away and staying with what I’m doing is incredibly useful, and something I haven’t mastered yet.

In my experience, it’s a process of letting go, and accepting.

Letting go of all the little urges to be up-to-date, to be in-the-know, to do everything, to say yes to everything.

And accepting this present moment as it is, and staying with it.

This letting go and accepting, by the way, is the secret to happiness and peace. It’s worth practicing.

Constant Task Switching was originally posted on Zen Habits on 2/14/14.