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

Jordan Peterson

It’s a common trap to start comparing ourselves to others. We think this or that person is more successful and happier than us.

Do we really know this for sure?

We can really only see one aspect of a person’s life. Maybe we are only seeing their curated Instagram feed. This is not real life. The person may “appear” to have it made. Really, we know nothing about their whole life. What about their relationships or their health? They could be failing majorly in other areas we know nothing about.

Often we only see the “highs” but not the “lows”. This tricks our mind into thinking that they have it better than us, because when we look around into our own reality, we see the truth. We see our own struggle and all the uncertainty. We see everything we haven’t figured out yet. We feel like we are barely hanging on and keeping things together. 

A better way

As Jordan Peterson establishes in his book 12 Rules for Life, this kind of thinking is unproductive and can be downright destructive. 

As we get older, our lives get more complex. We become even more unique through what we pursue and the experiences we have. It is not reasonable to compare our whole life against one aspect of some other “successful” person. It just leads to more suffering. There is a better way to look at things. 

Instead of comparing yourself to others, compare yourself to who you were yesterday.

This line of thinking brings the power back in your court. Now you have something you can control. You can look at the decisions you made yesterday and think “how can I make better decisions today”.

You can make small improvements each day, and over time, you will be a new person. A better version of yourself. Then you can look back to who you were yesterday and take some pride in how far you have come. This is much more fulfilling than comparing against someone else.

Reflection

• What is one thing I can do today that would be an improvement on yesterday?
• How can I make this improvement mindset a daily practice going forward?