Comparison is the Thief of All Joy

I saw a meme a while ago that said, “My friend got a tattoo on his arm that said, 'Comparison is the thief of Joy, ' and I’m thinking of getting the same tattoo but a little bit bigger.” Though humorous, it cuts to the heart of why measuring yourself against others robs you of peace, purpose, and joy.

Considering this, you must understand that human psychology is very complex. It’s easy to indulge in the compulsive drive to compare while knowing it only douses you in the stench of emotional turmoil. 

You often don’t even realize you’re comparing yourself as it’s subterfuged beneath the guise of envy, jealousy, and wanting more for yourself and those you love, leaving you wondering why others seem more fortunate. 

You must also understand that comparison wasn’t born through our modern world and inventions; it’s as old as time. As long as humans have walked this earth, comparison has been by their side. 

But the advent of the Internet and social media has drastically increased our proclivity to obsess and compare ourselves to others at epidemic levels. 

Much of what you see on the internet and social media is an illusion. It’s a smorgasbord of happiness, joy, achievement, and success without revealing the shattered hopes, failed attempts, and quiet desperation haunting your dreams.

The real danger of comparison is when you look at another person’s situation and think the grass is greener on the other side without understanding what was used to fertilize it in the first place.

The Grass Isn’t Greener

I recently listened to a podcast in which a top-level executive who helps companies go public shared what she tells founders who complain about another company’s success, “The only reason the grass looks greener on the other side is because it is growing on a pile of shit.” 

The harsh truth is that the grass only looks greener because you can’t see the struggle, personal failure, setbacks, and pain those individuals have endured. If you knew what they went through, or might even be going through right now, you’d probably have a different perspective, and maybe even a little admiration for their strength instead of envying their success.

The Danger of Comparison

This is why comparison is so dangerous; it’s a seductive distortion of reality. You see someone’s life and assume they’ve simply glided through with the driving wind of ease, favor, and fortune at their back. 

What you don’t see is the price they’ve paid, and everyone is paying a price—you, me, them. No one gets a free pass in life. 

It’s a dangerous illusion to think that someone is merely skipping through life without baggage, struggle, regrets, and pain of their own. 

Most people carry burdens they dare not speak about. Some are too heavy or traumatic to even discuss. Even in their brightest seasons, many people constantly walk through shadows you cannot imagine. I hear or see stories almost daily of tragedies befalling individuals from every walk of life. When you multiply that across the world, it’s staggering that any of us keep going, and yet we do.

Others' success may seem to shine, but it’s usually forged under pressure through sacrifice, suffering, failure, and setbacks. What sets them apart is an indomitable will to keep going, to keep striving and pushing forward no matter the cost.

This is the crime of comparison: it’s the thief that steals joy by feeding you a lie. A lie that someone else’s path was easier and cleaner than yours.

It’s only when you believe this lie, though, that you begin to resent your own process of growth and maturing instead of rising through it. 

Comparison is Not Clarity; It’s Distortion

When you compare yourself to others, you aren’t presenting yourself with the truth; you merely see a projection of what they want you to see. If they told you about all the failure, pain, and turmoil they’ve endured, you might not envy their “success.” 

If we shared our lowest moments, we’d all be drowning in despair, but that’s not what we do; we constantly present our best moments, and as such, comparison becomes inevitable. 

After all, if you drive a Corolla, the guy in the Lexus looks like he’s ahead. If you’re in a Lexus, the person driving the Ferrari can make you feel like you’re falling behind.

Whether you live in a one-bedroom apartment or a mansion, struggle to pay your bills, or are financially free, comparison will find a way in if you let it. Most people try to prove their worth at each stage because if they can show how well they're doing, then maybe life isn’t as bad as they think.

But you can’t compare your behind-the-scenes moments to someone else’s highlight reel. That’s not reality. It’s a recipe for stagnation.

Comparing Your Behind-the-Scenes to Someone’s “Best Moments”

We do this because we think our bag is full of rotten and broken things: heartbreak, past hurts and wounds, broken promises, pain, and suffering. Although our bag seems moldy and falling apart, we’re doing our best to keep it all together, clutching it to our chest like a survival kit, afraid to let anything spill out.

When you see someone with what you lack, you think their bag is pristine and polished, and there’s a tendency to envy them. After all, they drive a nicer car. How could their life be as miserable as yours?

Yes, money can alleviate pressure, but it can’t fix the soul. 

Not all wealthy individuals are happy. While the car, the house, and the lifestyle may serve as surface signals, they don’t show the loneliness, pressure, and fractures beneath the carefully placed facade. Wealth can disguise despair, but not everyone is filled with joy or satisfied with what they have. 

Even fiction tells the truth: everyone suffers. No story worth watching or reading is truly compelling without pain because no life comes without it. It’s why we love stories about the underdog, rising above their struggles to achieve their goal at the end. It’s a timeless tale.

Why You Compare Instead of Grow

Since you can’t see behind the veil into someone else’s personal life, you assume their life is whole and compare your baggage to their “perfection.”

However, you are not them. Your timelines are different, and your callings are different. Instead of honoring your path and doing what’s necessary to make a better life for yourself, you compare.

You don’t ask what they sacrificed or what they lost to get where they are, yet you blame your circumstances and allow envy to convince you that you’ve been left behind.

By doing so, you abandon your becoming, trading pain for blame and potential for bitterness, which ultimately leaves you holding onto regret.  

Comparison is a Joy Killer, Not a Tool for Growth

You can study others and even aspire to their success, but the moment you start judging your worth by their results, you begin to spiral. Comparing yourself may work initially to get you moving, but what happens if you surpass them? What happens if you fall short instead? 

If you spend your whole life measuring yourself against others, what will you have to look back on when you reach the end? Will it be happiness, or will it be regret?

Growth is an internal process. You don’t grow by chasing someone else’s blueprint. While you can use their blueprint as a guidepost, your journey is your own, and just because someone else experienced a particular outcome doesn’t mean you’ll experience the same or in the same way. 

Letting go of the need to match someone else’s achievements opens you up for greater success in your own life. Life improvement thrives on self-awareness, not competition. Competition may light the fire, but self-awareness keeps it burning and gets you where you want to be.

Kobe Bryant loved competition, but he didn’t just compete, and that was not what made him successful. Rather, he embraced his flaws and studied his weaknesses. He was obsessed with overcoming himself and worked harder than anyone else to get there, and that’s what made him a champion. He didn’t compare himself to others; he made others compare themselves to him.

Your ultimate growth begins with brutal honesty. If you continually compare yourself to others, it will gradually erode your gratitude and skew your perception of progress. You’ll continue to lag behind—not because you’re incapable but because you’re too distracted and unfocused.

Comparison is the Fastest Way to Forget Who You Are

Comparison isn’t always about success. Sometimes, it’s far more subtle and wily, quietly sneaking into your everyday life. Take this for example: You finally take a well-earned vacation, then scroll online and see someone lounging on an Italian beach. You buy a new outfit or car, then feel small next to someone in designer clothes and a nicer car, and just like that, what you had is no longer enough. 

This is how it starts—the slow poisoning of your own joy. 

The moment you say, “I wish I had what they have,” you short-circuit gratitude, which only serves to pull you out of the present moment.  

But it’s in the present moment that you feel joy, that you feel alive, and that you have a sense of who you are. If you look back on your life, any time you’ve truly felt alive, it’s because you were focused on the present moment. 

It’s the reason all the past, present, and future sages teach the same lesson: to ground yourself in the present because it’s the only thing that’s real. 

Most people struggle to live in the present, though. Instead, they drift into regrets of the past or fears about the future. This is where comparison slips in gleefully, almost excitedly, because it enjoys walking hand in hand with strife, struggle, worry, and fear. 

The longer you entreat with comparison, the faster you begin to lose sight of your own values. Life, as it is, no longer feels sufficient. You start trading alignment for approval, and ever so slowly, almost without realizing it, you begin to accept the lie that you’re not enough. 

This is why you need to let go of comparison.

Letting Go of Comparison

One of the best ways to do this is to practice gratitude—to be thankful for everything you have and be content with your life, even if it’s not where you’d like it to be. This doesn’t mean you don’t work toward bettering yourself; it simply means you stop judging yourself based on others' standards.

When you let go and truly appreciate what you have, life opens in ways you never expected. Something changes within you. When someone else achieves what you once longed for, you no longer harbour envy or jealousy; you feel joy for them and genuine gratitude for their success. 

This is when everything starts to shift because it’s no longer about attaining or achieving. It’s about living, and living means being grateful regardless of the situation or circumstances. 

It’s accepting what is because your heart is still beating inside your chest, and there’s still breath in your lungs. You can open your eyes and smile because it’s another beautiful day, and there’s nothing better than that. 

Comparison is a Symptom, Not the Root

The need to measure yourself against others is usually rooted in the soil of insecurity, scarcity, and a fear of irrelevance or being forgotten. Culture wires you this way. You’re programmed to believe that if you’re not the best, then you don’t matter. You’re nothing. But that’s the lie. 

This sentiment doesn’t even need to come through an outside voice. Your inner voice will drive that point home repeatedly without any qualms until you finally learn how to face yourself. To accept yourself for who you are without the mask. 

Healing comes by recognizing your worth outside the metrics of societal programming. It comes by learning to love and accept yourself. By letting go of the judgments you hold onto so tightly because you think you deserve to feel the pain, or maybe because you’ve grown comfortable in it.

It’s being willing to go in and deal with the root issues, your insecurities, and fears. To peel back the outer layers and pierce into the darkness of your soul to find your true self just waiting to be seen, and then bringing that self into the light.

Comparison is Optional

We often forget this truth: you don’t have to play the game. You get to choose if you want to play, or you can choose to opt out. 

Remember, comparison only serves to pull you out of the present. It traps you in longing. And for what? What have you gained? In what way is your life made better through comparison?

The longer you hold onto comparison, regardless of what it’s aimed at, the more you suffer and expend your life’s energy chasing things that don’t matter.

Life isn’t waiting for you to have it all together. It’s moving on whether you’re ready or not. If you want to enjoy your life and experience it to the fullest, stop comparing yourself to others. The sooner you can do this, the happier you’ll become.

If you enjoyed today’s message, I’d be honored if you shared it with a friend. Thank you for reading, I appreciate you.

Until next time,

Josiah

For more information and resources, visit josiahthibodeau.com