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Why we compare ourselves to others

Hello and Welcome to the Way of the Emotional Warrior Podcast. My name is Kai Ehnes and today we will be answering the question of why do we Compare ourselves to others?

One of the basic tenets of the way of the emotional warrior is self awareness. That being said, one of the more self contradictory rituals we do to ourselves is comparing ourselves to others. The fastest place we do this is when we scroll through social media and see what friends, even family, post stories about their successes. Even ads that pop up try to convince us that the golden life is just ahead of us if we do things their way. But we also do it in the analog world. We compare ourselves to other people when we are in public or simply watching tv.

Of course it is important to see something other than yourself. Other people can easily show us inspiration in their journey. They obviously have made something out of themselves. Great people can be emulated in their perseverance and quite often leave a trail of steps of how they achieved their success. So there is a good reason to compare yourself. They are at a certain stage or success and give you the hope and motivation to move yourself forward.

However, how often has the following happened. Someone posts that they have achieved something. You see that they are about your age and it instantly becomes clear that they have done something you have not. You look at this as a weakness on your part. A failure of sorts. The proverbial race, where you did not come in first. That is not motivational. It may make you feel less than. Not good enough.

If you want to resolve this dilemma, you have to make a decision as to where you are actually coming from. What I mean by this is where your sense of reality sits. What is your base level of being, where you feel is ground zero for you. This is psychologically and emotionally your resting place, your departure point. It is on this foundation that you build everything onto. This is analogous to the ground that you build a home on. The ground has to be leveled and packed, let’s call it the pad. It has to be prepped and leveled for a house to be built upon. This is the space where it all begins. It is your true birth place of your Self.

It takes courage to go there. This is how deep you have to look. It might seem scary but once you find this place inside of yourself you can decide what gets added to it as you build and expand who you are and want to be.

The reason I am talking about this is that comparing yourself to others can cloud or even negate this sense of who you are. We can easily layer in lies to keep up with others. There is room for all sorts of intrusive interferences that cloud who we really are.

So, what does the neuroscience tell us. It turns out that when we compare ourselves to others and the perceived difference between where you perceive yourself to be and where you place the other person, if the need for you to be like them is extremely high, you become very prone to take high risks. This is known as Risk-Sensitivity theory, originally founded in studies of evolutionary biology and animal foraging, states that “risk-aversion [shifts] to risk-preference in situations of high need, where need describes disparity between an individual’s present state and goal (or desired state). In a study conducted by Keith Payne, a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel, he found that riskier gambling decisions were much higher under the high inequality conditions, revealing that people feel the need to risk more when they are aware of others already having more than they do.

Again, this is a double edged sword. You are told to take more risks on one hand but on the other, taking extreme risks can be very detrimental.

So here we are. You have done the work and found that truly vulnerable space inside of you that is your most authentic place. In this place resides the Real