Comparison Is The Thief Of Joy—6 Smart Ways To Avoid It

Comparison is a real killjoy. You might be bouncing along in your day, feeling pretty good, and then suddenly you see an image, hear a piece of news (or celebrity gossip), or see a post in your social media scroll…and boom! You are triggered back into an old, unwelcome yet pervasive pattern of comparing and contrasting your life in some way to someone or something else.

Suddenly, your feelings turn from happy, joyful, and light into dark, heavy, and murky. The bounce in your step is now squashed. It's a negative pattern for sure and one that many of us feel stuck in.

However, it doesn't have to continue at the same intensity, though some balanced levels of social comparison are part of our normal behavior strategy as humans.

The key is to not allow comparison to dominate your day and adversely affect your moods and sense of self-worth. The way out of the cycle is to connect to a deeper place inside of you, where your intuition, unique voice, inner validation, peace, and creativity live. When you ground more and more deeply into that place, the noise of the outside world has less of an effect.

Just like breaking any pattern, repetition and replacement of a new pattern and new ways of being have to be instilled over time. There's contention in the scientific community about how long a new habit or pattern of thinking takes to be established, but on average it might take about 66 days.

Research has found1 that improvising, or "creating something new on the spur of the moment," can help break away from set patterns of thinking. Start to notice when the signs of comparison start to set in. It may feel like a sense of constriction in your gut, a tightening in your shoulders, or a hollow feeling in your heart.

The great yoga guru Paramahansa Yogananda talked about "superficial flux," meaning we all get caught up in so much activity, including memories of the past and imaginings about the future. When we do this, we are in our heads versus being present to what is here now, and we start to wander over into what other people are doing. This can quickly devolve into comparison.

The way out is to find the grounded place of good old right here, right now, known as the present moment. The more we find a way to connect to now, the more we train ourselves to be in a more peaceful place of being and observing, and the more we loosen the grip of the ego, which tries to create safety from the futile means of separation and comparison.

Duh! You may say to yourself. I already know that. Yes, but do you actually try to experience this truth in your daily life? If not, the world, full of external imagery and marketing messages designed to get us to buy more things, will make us believe we have to keep comparing.

The great yoga guru Paramahansa Yogananda’s teachings on effective affirmations advise us to best practice them after meditation, when the mind is more settled. Start with repeating the affirmation out loud, then increasingly quieter, then silently, making an effort to merge with the energy behind the words. For more information on this, refer to my book, You Are More Than You Think You Are.

Research finds we are more prone to anxiousness when our gut microbiomes are off-kilter2, and this imbalance can further contribute to a less sturdy, stable mindset that can therefore make us more prone to judgment and comparison.