There’s a famous study from the 1992 Barcelona Olympics that gets wheeled out regularly to make a point about happiness. Bronze medallists, on camera and in interviews, look happier than silver medallists — despite silver being the objectively better result.
The explanation is that silver medallists compare themselves up, to the gold they nearly had, while bronze medallists compare themselves down, to not making the podium at all. Same result, different comparison, different feeling.
I took a closer look at the actual study and I’ve got some issues with the methodology. But the broader point it’s reaching for is real enough: the thing that determines how you feel about what you have is almost never the thing itself. It’s what you put next to it.
Last week, I talked about the Ebbinghaus Illusion, where the circles appear differently sized depending on what is next to them [link to that post].
Here’s the problem with comparing yourself to other people specifically: you are always comparing your full interior experience to their visible exterior. You see their life from the outside — the job title, the house, the relationship as it appears in public, the confidence they project in meetings. They see yours the same way. Neither of you has any idea what it feels like to be the other person.
I’m fortunate in my business to speak to many people who appear confident and successful to the world at large and I can tell you there is a great deal more personal doubt and insecurity going on that you would perceive or believe.
The colleague whose career you envy goes home to something you don’t know about. The friend whose relationship looks solid has conversations behind closed doors you’ll never hear. The person you follow online has chosen, with considerable care, exactly what you’re allowed to see. You’re not comparing lives. You’re comparing your unedited internal experience — every doubt, every regret, every two-in-the-morning thought — against a performance.
It is, structurally, an unfair fight. The kind of fight that you only win by avoiding it.
The research on this is consistent — measuring your life against other people’s is one of the more reliable ways to make yourself miserable.
The better move is to keep your eyes on your own race. Compete against yourself. Try to be a little better than you were, rather than a little better than them. That’s a race you can actually win.
And if you’re going to look around — make it useful. Replace envy with curiosity about what you could learn from someone doing well. Replace the quiet pride of beating someone else with gratitude for what you actually have. Both are a choice about what to do with the comparison. One corrodes. The other compounds.
Nigel