To stop comparing yourself to others, catch the measuring while it's happening, check whether it holds anything you could learn, and set the rest down. Comparison is often a measuring stick picked up in a classroom, where ranking was part of the day. It's a habit rather than a flaw, and it doesn't have to stay in your hand.
Seven pages lie side by side on the long table, and Cosima has ranked them before the teacher reaches the far end.
It's the last Saturday of an eight-week calligraphy course in a studio in Satwa. Every week the teacher hands round wooden rulers so the class can pencil in guidelines, and every week Cosima ends up measuring more than lines with hers. Today it's the pages. Hers is fourth. Possibly fifth: the man by the window has finally got his letters to lean the same way.
The teacher walks the table slowly. To one woman she says her strokes have settled. To the man by the window, that his ink is still too wet. At Cosima's page she taps one long, curving stroke near the bottom and says, "That one's yours now."
Cosima nods. She's still working out whether she came fourth or fifth.
That evening the man by the window posts a photo of his page online. Cosima zooms in on his letters, then holds her phone beside her own page on the kitchen table and lines the two up, edge to edge.
The teacher never once put the pages in order.
How do you stop comparing yourself to others?
You stop by catching the comparison while it's running and asking what it's measuring. If it holds a question you can learn from, keep the question. If it only hands you a place in a line, set it down and return to whatever you were doing.
Comparing yourself now and then is part of living among people. If it has become constant, or it's tangled up with low mood, with eating or with how you treat your body, or it has brought thoughts of harming yourself, a doctor or a mental health professional is the right first call. If you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services.
Putting down a habit like this one never means putting down treatment, medication or support, and recovery work goes on. What I teach isn't therapy or medical care, and a doctor's or therapist's advice comes ahead of anything on this page.
Why do I always compare myself to others?
Because, for a long stretch of life, measuring yourself against the people next to you earned its keep.
Classrooms run on measuring, and a lot of that measuring helps. A mark in the margin shows what to practise next. A test handed back tells you what you've understood. A great deal gets learned that way, from reading to long division, and most of us use it every day.
Somewhere along the way, though, the measuring stops being only the teacher's job. Pupils start glancing along the row of desks: who finished first, whose writing is neater, where they come in the line. The measuring stick has changed hands. In a room built around marks, that made sense. It showed what was expected, and how close you were to it.
Once it's in your own hand, nobody has to ask you to use it. It measures quickly and unasked, the way a hand finds the light switch in a house it knows. The teacher in Satwa handed out rulers for the guidelines. The one Cosima used on the pages, she'd brought with her.
A habit carried that long can feel like part of you. It's more like chalk dust on a sleeve. You are not broken. You are buried.
A habit with that much practice behind it rarely drops away in a day, and how long it takes to change a pattern looks at why. For how a habit can fade while the lessons stay, see my article on unlearning.
GIFT26 is the code that makes my Who Am I? masterclass free, and its subject is one no ranking has ever settled: who you are. If you've ever felt detached or unreal, or a doctor treats you for that, check with a doctor before its guided session or skip it, and anyone may halt it partway. Receive the Masterclass. Or read on.
Is comparing yourself to others always a problem?
No. A lot of comparing is how people learn. Watching how a colleague handles a difficult meeting, asking a friend how she trained for her first ten kilometres, studying the man by the window to see how he gets his letters to lean: that's learning from someone a little further along, and it's among the best things other people have to offer.
You can tell the two apart by what a comparison leaves in your hand. A useful one leaves a question. How did he do that? Which part could I practise? It tends to end once the question has an answer, often with you a little better at something.
The other kind leaves a position. Fourth. Possibly fifth. A position has nothing to teach, so it simply waits for the next page to measure.
Cosima had both kinds within reach on Saturday. She could have walked over and asked the man by the window how he gets the lean. She worked out her place instead, and the one remark meant for her, "That one's yours now", went by.
Why does comparing yourself on social media feel so much worse?
Partly because of the numbers. A feed brings more people to measure against in a few minutes than a classroom ever held, and many posts arrive with a count beside them: likes, views, followers. That's a lot of measuring for one pair of eyes.
Partly because of what gets posted. People tend to share the finished page, not the dozen practice sheets in the bin. Set beside those, your own unedited week will come up short every time, and that tells you about the comparison, not about you.
Counting comes easily in a place like that, and it isn't a weakness of yours. If some accounts leave you learning and others leave you counting, keep the first kind, and feel free to mute the second. You get to choose which rooms you spend your evenings in.
Is there a question in your last comparison?
This exercise is for small, everyday comparisons. Keep your body, food and weight out of it, along with drinking, drugs and self-harm: a doctor or a professional can help with those. Leave out, too, any comparison that involves someone who frightens or harms you, because keeping safe is the first job there. In the UAE, the Dubai Foundation for Women and Children takes calls on 800111, for free, day or night; in other countries, the nearest domestic abuse service is the one to contact; and should you be in danger at this moment, or in crisis, contact your local emergency services.
You'll need a pen, the back of an envelope and a spare ten minutes, at whatever time of day suits you.
- Bring one recent comparison to mind. Keep it small and from this week: a colleague's presentation, a friend's cooking, a neighbour's balcony plants.
- Write down the two things that were measured. Only the pair, such as "my presentation, her presentation". Leave off who came out ahead.
- Look for a question in it. Is there something you'd like to know how to do, or understand better? If there is, write it under the pair.
- Take the question to someone who knows. Ask the person, a colleague or a teacher, or look it up. Learning from people further along is time well spent.
- If no question turns up, notice what's left. A place in a line, with nothing to learn from it. Cross out the pair and carry on with your day, unless it touches a worry about money, work, health or safety. Those never get crossed out: take them to someone who can help, such as a doctor, an adviser or someone close to you.
Stop the exercise the moment you've had enough. For this or anything else, your doctor or a counsellor can help.
Where could you look once the measuring stick is down?
In three cases, the Who Am I? masterclass is worth its ninety minutes.
- Your place in a line has stopped feeling like an answer. The masterclass page describes its reader this way: "You're ready to stop looking for yourself in the next achievement, the next relationship, the next version of your story."
- A ranking has started to feel like a label. Among the things the page says you'll discover: "Why the labels, roles, and stories you carry are real, but they are not you."
- There's a quiet stretch in your week for the guided part. It comes after the reading and the video, and it needs twenty minutes when nothing else is pulling at you.
Before that guided session, a health note from me that applies to everyone: if you've ever felt unreal, detached or distant from your own life, or a doctor is treating you for anything like that, talk it over with your doctor beforehand, or skip that part. And anyone can halt the audio partway, open their eyes, notice the floor beneath them and let someone they trust know how they are.
Comparing notes is one of my favourite things to do with other people.
Rayyan's opinion of my book, left on Amazon.com: "If self-improvement has stopped working for you, this explains why."
Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.
P.S. The teacher in Satwa took each page on its own and never put them in order. If ninety minutes of looking inward appeals, Receive the Masterclass.