You compare yourself 10% of the day. That's 96 minutes of pain. Here's how to stop

Hey there, my friend!

I need to tell you something that's been on my mind.

Last week I was scrolling LinkedIn at 10pm. Don't ask me why. I couldn't sleep and my brain decided the best medicine was watching other people win.

A former colleague was speaking at a conference I'd kill to be invited to. Someone younger than me with a better title. Someone with less experience making more money. Everyone seemed to be crushing it while I was lying in bed.

And I felt it. That familiar punch in the gut. That voice that says "you're falling behind."

You know that feeling. I know you do.

Throughout human history, we evaluated our standing primarily within small, local groups where we could see the full, messy reality of others' lives. Now we compare ourselves to hundreds or thousands of partially visible lives, each carefully edited to emphasize the most impressive, enviable moments.

Think about that for a second.

Your brain evolved to compare yourself to maybe 50 people in your village. People you actually knew. People whose struggles you could see. People whose failures were just as visible as their wins.

But now? You're not comparing yourself to any single realistic life. You're comparing yourself to a composite ideal that no actual human being achieves across all domains.

You're comparing your messy, complicated, behind-the-scenes reality to everyone else's highlight reel. And wondering why you don't measure up.

There's this quote often attributed to Theodore Roosevelt. "Comparison is the thief of joy." And it's never been more true than right now.

Because social media has turned comparison from an occasional thing into a constant drip feed of everyone else's wins directly into your eyeballs. All day. Every day.

Research shows that viewing other users' positive posts about their careers can lead to career frustration through social comparison.

It's not just in your head. This is real. This is measurable. This is happening to almost everyone.

Passive browsing, like viewing others' curated success stories, easily weakens perceived social connection and intensifies self-doubt and anxiety through upward social comparison.

You're not even actively engaging. You're just scrolling. Just looking. Just consuming everyone else's success. And it's literally rewiring your brain to feel inadequate.

Studies reveal that upward social comparisons on social media can engender feelings of workplace envy and ego depletion, which in turn adversely impact employee behavior, manifesting in diminished job performance, increased tendency towards knowledge hiding, and heightened engagement in cyber loafing.

Read that again. Comparing yourself to others doesn't just make you feel bad. It actually makes you perform worse. It depletes your energy. It makes you hide what you know. It makes you less productive.

The very thing you think is motivating you to do better is actually sabotaging your ability to do anything at all.

But here's what really gets me.

More than 10% of daily thoughts involve making some kind of comparison according to research.

One out of every ten thoughts you have today will be you measuring yourself against someone else.

That's not occasional. That's constant. That's your baseline operating system.

And most of the time? You're not even aware you're doing it.

You see someone's promotion and automatically calculate where you should be. You see someone's vacation and feel guilty about your own choices. You see someone's relationship and question your own.

Comparison is harmful when it causes us to feel superior or inferior to others. When we compare ourselves to others, we will either feel superior or inferior.

There's no winning here. Either you feel better than everyone else and become insufferable. Or you feel worse than everyone else and become paralyzed.

Neither one helps you actually build the life you want.

I know someone who quit social media entirely for six months. Just deleted everything. LinkedIn, Instagram, all of it.

You know what he said?

"I didn't realize how much energy I was wasting being jealous of people I don't even really know."

Social media has significantly impacted the processes of information acquisition and how individuals make career development and employment decisions.

It's not just affecting your mood. It's affecting your decisions. Your career moves. Your sense of what's possible. Your understanding of what success even means.

You're making life choices based on what you see other people doing. Not based on what you actually want. Not based on what fits your values. But based on keeping up with a race you didn't even sign up for.

And here's the brutal part.

The people you're comparing yourself to? They're doing the exact same thing. They're looking at someone else and feeling behind. They're curating their own highlight reel while feeling like frauds behind the scenes.

We are choosing how we react to comparison. We can choose what we want to do next. Give up. Keep going. Pause. Change something. Ask for help. Do it anyway.

This is the part where most people tell you to practice gratitude. To focus on your own journey. To stay in your lane.

And yeah, that's all true and useful.

But I want to give you something more practical.

Because the problem isn't that you're comparing. The problem is what you're comparing.

You're comparing your Chapter 3 to someone else's Chapter 20. Your rough draft to their published work. Your private struggles to their public wins.

You have no idea what it took them to get there. No idea what they sacrificed. No idea what they're dealing with that they don't post about.

We all have different starting points, and pursuing someone else's path won't likely lead to your own happiness and version of success.

Their path isn't your path. Their timeline isn't your timeline. Their definition of success doesn't have to be yours.

But you won't figure out what your path actually is while you're busy watching everyone else walk theirs.

The habit of comparison often involves external factors that are ultimately beyond our control. When we fixate on others' achievements, status, or possessions, we are wasting energy thinking about things that we generally don't have any influence over.

You can't control what they're doing. You can't control their wins. You can't control how fast they're moving or what opportunities they get.

You can only control what you do today. What you build. What you create. What you focus on.

And every minute you spend measuring yourself against them is a minute you're not spending on your own work.

So here's what I want you to do.

For the next week, notice when you're comparing. Don't judge it. Don't try to stop it. Just notice.

"Oh, I'm comparing myself right now."

That's it. Just awareness. Just catching the thought.

Because once you see how often you're doing it, you can start making different choices.

You can choose to put the phone down. To close the app. To focus on your own next step instead of everyone else's highlight reel.

Maybe instead of spending time comparing we use the energy to do the work we want.

That energy you're burning feeling behind? That's energy you could be using to move forward.

That time you're spending scrolling other people's success? That's time you could be spending building your own.

Your life isn't a competition. It's not a race. It's not a performance that gets judged against everyone else.

It's yours. Uniquely yours. With your own timeline, your own challenges, your own wins that matter to you.

And the sooner you stop measuring it against everyone else's carefully curated version of reality, the sooner you can actually start building something that feels right.

Not impressive. Not Instagram-worthy. Not better than what someone else has.

Just right. For you.

Harness AI: Your Comparison Pattern Breaker

I've created a tool that can help you identify your comparison patterns and shift your focus back to your own path. It's designed to help you see where you're wasting energy on other people's highlight reels and redirect that energy toward your own growth.

Here's how to use it:

1. Visit ChatGPT (https://chat.openai.com/)

2. Copy and paste the prompt below

3. Be honest about your comparison triggers

4. Let the AI help you refocus on your own journey

THE PROMPT:

You are a Comparison Pattern Coach, specializing in helping people recognize when they're measuring themselves against others and redirect that energy toward their own growth. Your approach combines psychology research on social comparison with practical strategies for building self-defined success metrics and reducing the negative impact of social media.

Here's my situation:
[Describe who or what you find yourself comparing to most often (specific people, general peers, social media accounts), what triggers the comparison (specific platforms, times of day, situations), how it makes you feel, what it causes you to do or not do, and what you wish you could focus on instead]

Please provide:

1 An analysis of what your comparison patterns reveal about your real values and goals

2 The specific cognitive distortions you're using when you compare (and reality checks for each)

3 Three practical strategies to catch and redirect comparison thoughts in the moment

4 How to define success metrics that are yours alone, not borrowed from others

5 A framework for using social media (if you use it) without falling into the comparison trap

Your advice should be practical and psychology-based, grounded in research on social comparison and self-determination theory, focused on action over just awareness. Use a direct, empathetic tone like a mentor who knows this trap intimately.

HOW TO USE THE PROMPT

Example:

Here is the output I received for the example inputs above.

My Final Thoughts: Your Race, Your Rules

Listen.

I don't know where you are in your journey. I don't know what you've accomplished or what you're still reaching for.

But I know this.

You're not behind. There's no timeline you're supposed to be on. There's no checklist you're failing to complete fast enough.

Those are all made up. Borrowed from other people's definitions of success that have nothing to do with your life.

The only person you need to be better than is who you were yesterday. That's it. That's the only comparison that matters.

Everyone else? They're running their own race. On their own track. With their own obstacles you can't see and their own advantages you don't know about.

Stop measuring your progress against their highlight reel.

Start measuring it against your own values. Your own growth. Your own definition of what actually matters.

Because here's the truth nobody wants to say out loud.

You could win everyone else's race and still feel empty. You could check every box that society tells you matters and still feel unfulfilled.

Or you could build something that's yours. That fits you. That makes you come alive even if it doesn't look impressive on paper.

Comparison is the thief of joy because it literally steals away the satisfaction we have with our own life.

Stop letting it steal from you.

Your life is happening right now. Today. This moment.

Not when you catch up. Not when you've achieved enough. Not when you finally measure up to whoever you're comparing yourself to.

Now.

And it's already enough.

You're already enough.

Talk soon,

Stephan

P.S. What would you do today if you stopped comparing yourself to everyone else? Hit reply and tell me. Then go do it anyway. Your race, your rules.