I remembered a funny conversation I had with my secondary school buddy Raja, back in secondary school.

Raja was tall, muscular and handsome.

He was really good at sports and I always envied him for his athleticism and physique.

How could I not?

I was the polar opposite: meek, skinny and I spent more time on the bench than the field.

Even though Raja never had a girlfriend, I always had the impression that the girls at school found him very attractive.

I wasn’t very lucky with girls, so I secretly harboured jealousy towards him. Despite that, the two of us shared a close friendship.

A year after we graduated, I sat down with Raja to catch up over coffee.

That day, I finally admitted to Raja that I had always felt jealous of him for being better looking than me, and thus more popular with the girls.

Upon hearing this, his jaw dropped.

Stunned, he replied: “Are you kidding me?”

“I always thought the girls never paid attention to me because you were always impressing them with your words and your talents.”

I couldn’t believe my ears.

Turns out he was secretly jealous of me as much as I was of him.

We both laughed.

But the joke’s on us both.

Because despite thinking that the other was more popular with girls, at the end of the day, we were both still hopelessly single.

Why We Compare Ourselves To Others

Logically, a part of us knows that we shouldn’t be comparing ourselves to others and that everyone has their own path.

But why do we still do it anyway?

First off, understand that we all compare ourselves to others.

And we’ve been doing this even before we were civilized!

As a species, we evolved to be social creatures who had to survive in tribes. Times were tough back then and our survival largely depended on our ability to function in groups.

In order to survive, we had to learn to evaluate our individual worth to the tribe so that we don’t get outcasted by our tribe mates – which meant certain death.

To be worthy, you needed to be able to lift boulders, make medicine out of berries or throw spears at sabretooth tigers.

Whatever it was, you needed to be useful.

The only reasonable way to do this was to have a point of reference. And the most convenient point of reference we had was… each other.

So we would compete to see who could lift the heaviest boulders, find the best quality berries or kill the most sabretooth tigers.

We compared ourselves to each other because we needed to determine who was useful… and who wasn’t.

So if you’ve been beating yourself up for comparing yourself to others, don’t do it. Accept that as long as we’re living in communities, we’re wired to look for ‘clues’ to assure ourselves that we’re useful to the people around us.

In 1954, social psychologist Leon Festinger came up with the Social Comparison Theory.

Social Comparison Theory states that people determine their own social and personal worth based on how they stack up against others.

It is a normal tendency in human beings to rank ourselves and our peers on various metrics such as intelligence, status, attractiveness and material wealth.

The problem is not the comparison.

The problem is when the comparison leads you to develop negative emotions that limit you from becoming your best self.

Maybe it’s feeling anxious about your own progress in life and you feel like you’re falling behind.

Maybe it’s feeling envious of someone who seems to be more fortunate than you.

Maybe it’s feeling insecure that someone “behind” you is catching up and will one day take your place.

Regardless of what it is, if your tendency to compare yourself to others is making you resentful, judgmental or deeply dissatisfied, then here are some tips you might want to consider.

3 Tips To Stop Comparing Yourself To Others

Tip #1: Be 100% committed to outdoing yourself.

At 15, if you were to compare yourself to your peers, it’s like comparing apples to apples.

You’re young. Your range of life experiences compared to your peers are not that much different.

But at 30, if you were to compare yourself to your peers, it’s like comparing apples to oranges.

Or carrots. Or even pizza.

You may have started at the same place as your peers, but your lives have taken such different trajectories that objective comparison becomes impossible.

When you compare yourself to others, it’s a game that you can never win.

Because the rules are not the same for you and the person you’re comparing yourself to.

Since we all have a need to evaluate ourselves and cannot get rid of our innate tendency to compare, the question then becomes: who is the best person can I compare myself to?

You know the answer.

It’s yourself.

“Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.” – Jordan Peterson

As individuals, the most objective and reasonable standard we can benchmark ourselves against is the person we used to be.

Commit to outdo yourself.

Challenge yourself to become a superior version of yourself every single day through small, daily improvements.

Become so busy at improving yourself that you no longer pay attention to the achievements of others.

What worked for me was to practice gratitude and positive expectation.

I am grateful that I have come a long way from being the person I used to be.

And I get excited about the person I am becoming in the future.

Tip #2: Create your own path, not follow someone else’s.

“Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde

Whoever you are comparing yourself against, remember this: their path is not yours to take.

From your point of view, it may look like what they have is awesome. You may think if you were given the chance, you’d swap lives with them in a heartbeat.

But you have no idea what their struggles are.

The person might be a successful multi-millionaire with a fancy beach villa and a line of luxury cars. But you don’t know about the inner demons they have to face on a daily basis.

The person might be in a loving relationship with a gorgeous partner who looks like your ideal mate. But you don’t know about how toxic they can be behind closed doors.

The person might be your idol whom you and millions of people admire. But you don’t know how much abuse they had to endure to get to where they are.

Understand that when we compare ourselves to others, we only see the tip of the iceberg. We are taking only a slice of their reality and comparing it to our entire reality.

Once you understand this, you’d realize that you are much better off using the time and energy you spend thinking about others, on bettering your own life.

Know that whatever you covet which you see others enjoy, it comes at a price. And you may not be ready to pay that price, even if you may desire what they have.

So stay in your lane. And focus on creating a path that is uniquely yours, while allowing other people the freedom to walk theirs.

Tip #3: Reduce time on social media.

Love it or hate it, you have to admit it.

Social media has aggravated our tendency to compare ourselves to a whole new level.

With so many new-age metrics as Likes and Followers, it’s so easy to go berserk with the endless myriad of ways we can justify how worse or better off we are compared to others.

For me personally, quitting social media has alleviated 90% of my own tendency to compare myself to others.

Yes, it’s that effective (read about my social media detox here).

Understand that the process of comparing yourself to others happens unconsciously. As you scroll through your news feed, negative emotions can bubble up to the surface as you get triggered by someone’s post.

Whether it’s jealousy, anxiety or insecurity, it doesn’t matter.

What matters is knowing where and when you often get triggered with comparison-itis, and what those triggers are.

If social media is where you often get triggered, then take responsibility for it and take precautionary measures.

For me, I think the danger lies specifically in the news feed.

You can continue to post freely and update your profile, but try to reduce the time you spend scrolling through your news feed.

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The bottom line is: true freedom comes when you stop competing with others and start competing with yourself.

If you have to compare, do it wisely and objectively, not by making general impressions or assumptions.