#135: Do this instead of comparing yourself to others
We all have that one person, don't we, whose success makes us painfully aware of our own shortcomings? A person who serves as a reminder of all the great things we could have been, but aren't. Hearing news of their latest achievement is liable to ruin our entire day, as we rush headlong into reflecting on how flawed and disappointing we are. But what if it's not that simple? What if the reason that person is doing so well is not because they're better than you, but because the two of you have different values, and therefore different priorities? In this episode, I'm going to reframe your depressing comparisons and show you how you can use them to tune in to what you care most about. Turn that frown upside down, my friend, and settle in for some uplifting truth bombs.
You can find my Core Values exercise here, and the Wheel of Life here.
Episode transcript:
Why do you always make it about your flaws, eh?
You’re listening to The Academic Imperfectionist. I’m Dr Rebecca Roache. I’m a coach and a philosopher at the University of London, and in this podcast I draw on philosophical analysis and coaching insights to help you dump perfectionism and flourish on your own terms.
Hello, my friends. If I asked you to pause this podcast for 10 minutes and use that time to write down as many of your own character flaws as you can think of, do you think you’d be able to come up with enough flaws to fill up that time? Let’s not count the amount of time it might take you to find a pen and a piece of paper, which can be challenging for a lot of us these days. My impression, based on my admittedly imprecise idea of my audience demographic, is that you would have absolutely no problem rising to this challenge. Laziness, lack of discipline, time-wasting, inability to focus. You’d probably be scribbling extra fast to try to get down all your shortcomings before the end of the 10 minutes. Envy, negative thinking. You’d forget to unpause the episode again. Tendency to catastrophise, overthinking. You might even miss the next one.
Ok, I’m not actually going to ask you to do this, don’t worry. But before I move on, can you please take a moment to refocus, because I know you’re still doing a mental list of flaws in the background while you’re pretending to listen. Stop it. Give me your full attention. I’m having flashbacks here from when I was at school - did you ever have one of those teachers who wouldn’t tell everyone to shut up when the class was being noisy, and would instead just stand there at the front, arms folded, looking disapproving as they waited for people to notice and stop talking? Imagine me doing that. It’s your own time you’re wasting.
There’s actually a good reason why I’ve just primed you by drawing your attention to what you consider to be your flaws. I’m not just trying to make you feel miserable. It’s because I’ve noticed, with some of my coaching clients, and also from some of the ways I’ve thought about myself in the past, that a lot of the time, the aspects of ourselves that we think of as flaws are actually not flaws at all. They are simply understandable and sensible expressions of our values and priorities. So, the reason that you’re not as successful as you’d like to be in some area of your life is because you’re not prioritising it enough over other things in your life, and the reason you’re not prioritising it is because you’re not willing to sacrifice those other things, because they are important to you too. It often happens that when we shift to viewing what we think of as our problematic traits and behaviours in this way, we stop beating ourselves up about them, and in many cases we stop telling ourselves that we ought to change them. That’s a great outcome, because not only does it shut your inner critic up for a few minutes, but it enables you to refocus your energy on those aspects of your life that are worth changing. I mean, just think about how inefficient and exhausting and downright miserable it is to spend significant amounts of time telling yourself that you should change in ways that, on reflection, you realise don’t need changing.
Let me get specific at this point, because this isn’t just some glib, vacuous ‘accept yourself as you are!’ message. There’s a quotation attributed to Albert Einstein, which goes: ‘It’s not that I’m so smart, but I stay with the questions much longer’. It’s a popular quotation, I’m guessing, because it makes Einstein’s impressive achievements seem more attainable. After all, if those achievements are just a matter of investing enough time - and we all have time, right? - rather than some quality that he had and the rest of us don’t and never will have, then what’s to stop us from making the sort of mark that Einstein made on the world? This ‘I’m nothing special’ angle came out in other things Einstein reportedly said, too - like, ‘I have no special talents, I am only passionately curious’. So, there you go: Einstein was no smarter than you are. Any of us can become intellectual heavyweights, if we’re willing to invest enough time. And yet, most of us don’t. Why not?
Before you jump in with an answer like, ‘I’m too lazy’, or, ‘I don’t have enough self-discipline’, let’s think for a moment about what life would be like to ‘stay with the questions much longer’, like Einstein. The day is 24 hours for all of us. What’s stopping you from devoting much more of it than you currently do to pondering the questions that define your research? Well, there are a few answers.
Perhaps you have kids. Kids are very demanding on our time, and most of us who have them are not willing to neglect them. We care about ensuring they have enough to eat, that their clothes fit them, that they are happy, and even after their obvious bodily and psychological needs are met, we think there’s value in spending directionless time with them, just messing about and doing stuff together and making memories - even if we don’t always find space in our lives to do that. So, if you’re a parent, and if you care about being a reasonably competent one, then that’s something that’s going to make demands on your time and energy, leaving less time for pondering those big questions. You care about doing your research well, but even if your life consisted of nothing except research and parenting, these are two things that pull in opposite directions when it comes to deciding how to spend your time and energy.
Ok, maybe you don’t have kids. Or maybe you do, but you have other things going on in your life too. Sports. Hobbies. Chores. Spending time with friends. Maintaining your Duolingo streak. Being involved in projects in your community. Again, these are all things that make demands on your time. Some of them are compatible with thinking about the big problems - you can do that while you’re out hiking or while you’re vacuuming your home - but in many cases meeting one of those non-research demands involves not making progress on your research.
Or, how about the fact that, even if you’re an academic with a secure, adequately paid job - which I know is the holy grail for some of you listening to this - you’re not being paid to lead an ivory tower existence, where you spend your entire working day thinking about lofty matters? That mandatory online fire safety training course is not going to take care of itself. There are emails to answer. Students to look after. Seminars to organise. Grants to apply for. And so on. These are all things that take away from your ability to ponder difficult questions at length, Einstein-style.
Now, there probably aren’t many of you out there who are beating themselves up by comparing themselves unfavourably to Einstein. But there are plenty of you who compare themselves unfavourably to other people: that colleague who works harder and publishes more than you do, that old friend from your postgrad days whose career is taking off in a way that yours isn’t, that acquaintance whose life just seems to be so much more together than yours is. These are comparisons with people whose achievements you feel you ought to be able to match - you have similar resources, similar backgrounds, similar training, and so on. It’s common to jump from these unfavourable comparisons to the conclusion that you’re just not as good as these other people, in some respect. You’re lazier, less focused, less driven, and so on. But, actually, it’s often not that at all. You just have different values, and those lead to your having different priorities. Ask yourself: how is that other person spending their time - their 24 hours of the day - and how am I spending mine? Would you be willing to spend your time in the way that they do, or would that require making sacrifices that you’re not willing to make? Take that colleague who works harder and publishes more than you. Perhaps they’re always at their desk when you arrive at work, and they’re still there when you leave. If you were to live your life that way, what aspects of your life would you need to give up? Perhaps time with friends and family, time spent reading in the park, that DIY project you’ve been working on, those tennis classes you signed up for, that community project you’re involved in. Are you willing to give up these things in order to be more like your colleague? Well, maybe you are, or maybe you’re not. The point is that, when you ask yourself, ‘Why can’t I be more like that impressive person?’, don’t assume that the answer always comes down to your shortcomings. Sure, that other person’s career is really taking off, but that’s because they have made their career their main priority for the last few years. If you were to do the same, perhaps you’d enjoy the same success, but that would mean giving up other things in your life that you value, and you might care too much about those other things to want to do that. Your lives are different not because one of you is better, but because you have different values.
Framing these comparisons in terms of differences in values rather than differences in worth can be a really helpful move, for a couple of reasons. One is that it helps us avoid some of the destructive, negative evaluative judgments we make about ourselves when we compare ourselves to others. If someone else’s life is going better than ours because they’re just better than us, then that sucks for us. It’s hard to put a positive spin on that. It’s hard to feel good about it. But if our lives are different because we have different values, that’s easier to make peace with. If someone cares so much about professional success that they are willing to make sacrifices in other areas of their life in order to get it, then good for them. And if someone else has a more balanced set of values, where their career is just one of several things they care deeply about, then that’s fine too. Neither of these value structures is inherently better than the other. That’s not to deny that it’s possible to have bad values, but there’s no one single right set of values either, and differences between equally acceptable sets of values might be what’s responsible for some aspect of your life comparing unfavourably to some aspect of someone else’s life.
Another reason it’s helpful to focus on differences in values rather than differences in worth is that, if you want to live a satisfying and fulfilling life, tuning in to your own deeply-held values and being guided by them is a far more rewarding way to go about it than looking to someone whose life, from the outside, strikes you as ‘better’, and then trying to get what they’ve got, while ignoring questions about what they’re prioritising and what they’re sacrificing in order to get it. Now, plenty of people out there are not living in a way that is guided by their deeply-held values. Plenty of people out there don’t even know what their most deeply-held values are, let alone what it would be like to live in accordance with them. If that sounds like you, I have a couple of things that can help: see the resources page of The Academic Imperfectionist website (or check out the links in the notes for this episode) for my Core Values exercise and the Wheel of Life. And remember, that person whose life you’re coveting might not be doing a great job of living in a way that reflects their values either, despite how successful they are. Sometimes people pour themselves into their careers - or some other aspect of their life - because they’re depressed, or struggling with feelings of never being good enough, or because they’re hiding from problems in other areas of their life. They end up successful but unsatisfied. This is certainly the picture I’ve arrived at through coaching. For every person who gets in touch wanting help being more focused and intentional about achieving certain career goals, there’s someone else who wants to try to find more balance in their life because they’re investing so much in their professional life that it’s causing problems elsewhere. Allowing your life to be shaped by your values, not by what someone else’s life is like, is the way to go here.
Ok, finally, let me talk about an important but depressing point here. Sometimes, the reason someone else’s life is going better than yours has nothing to do with values. Maybe they just come from a wealthy background, and can work on their goals without needing to worry about paying the bills. Maybe they have good contacts that help them get fast-tracked to the shortlist for the best jobs. Maybe the usual sorts of biases and prejudices work in their favour, and work against you. I don’t want to gaslight you here, by encouraging you to think that it’s all about values. Of course it’s not that simple, and of course you can’t core-values-exercise structural inequalities away. It adds weight to my original point, though, which is that the fact that someone’s life is going better than yours in some particular domain does not entail that you are less talented, or less disciplined, or less-anything-else.
So, you want to have a go at reframing those painful comparisons you torture yourself with? Think for a moment about someone who you compare yourself with. Someone whose achievements you think you ought to be able to match, and who makes you feel bad about yourself when you think about them. Ask yourself: If I were to make it my goal to achieve the impressive thing that they have achieved, what sacrifices would I need to make in my own life? And then consider whether you’d be willing to make those sacrifices. If you would, then great - stop viewing this person’s achievements as a stick to beat yourself with, and start viewing them as an inspiration. If, on the other hand, you wouldn’t be willing to make the sacrifices that they’ve made - you’re not looking at your flaws at all. You’re looking at a difference in values.
Next time, my friends.
I’m Dr Rebecca Roache, and you’ve been listening to The Academic Imperfectionist. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe on whatever podcast app you use. I want to help as many people as I can with these episodes, and I’d really appreciate it if you’d share the podcast with any friends who you think might find it useful, and if you’d leave a review on your podcast app. If you’d like to support the podcast financially, you can do that at patreon.com/academicimperfectionist. For more information about me, the podcast, and my coaching, please visit the website - academicimperfectionist.com. You can find me on Medium too, as AcademicImperfectionist. If you have an idea or a request for a future episode of The Academic Imperfectionist, please drop me a line, either via the contact form on my website or via Medium. Thanks for listening, and see you next time!
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