Dr. Frederik G. Pferdt argues that comparing yourself to others makes you miserable. He shares stories of Diana and Jan, who found freedom by stopping the race they never entered, and offers a weekly practice: when you compare, breathe, ask what you actually want to create, and send the person you're measuring against a kind note.
Chapters
I saw a word, just one word, outside a school in the Bahamas: "Compete." A few weeks before that, I was in Frankfurt, top floor of one of Europe's largest law firms, walking into the CEO's office. And there on the wall behind his desk, framed like a piece of art: "Compete." Then I thought about the school 5 minutes from my house in California. Every morning, kids walk past the same 3 words: respect, compassion, kindness. Same age children, different walls, different futures being quietly shaped inside them. And I stood there and asked myself, whose walls am I carrying? Because here's something I don't say enough: I compare myself to other people. Not loudly, not obviously, but I, I open my phone and I see someone doing that work that looks more meaningful than mine. Someone whose reach is bigger. Someone who seems to have figured out something I'm still working on. And for a moment, sometimes longer than a moment, I measure myself against them. Maybe you know that feeling. Lying in bed at midnight, scrolling through a version of the world that was literally engineered to make you feel like you are behind. The most unhappy version of yourself is the one constantly looking sideways. So what actually changes this? Not a strategy, not a system. A feeling. Compassion. The active kind. The kind that starts right here. With yourself. With a quiet willingness to say: I don't have to measure myself against this moment. When you stop judging yourself for falling behind in a race you never agreed to run, something loosens. You become less defensive, less desperate to prove something to people who are not even watching. And you start to see others differently. Not as competition. As fellow travelers, carrying the same uncertainty, hoping for the same things. I worked with a woman named Diana, 50 years old. Years of quietly measuring herself against expectations she never had chosen. One question in a hard moment cracked something open. Today she talks about building the future. Not carefully, not strategically. With joy. I coached a man named Jan, 42. Always a fixed target, always a defined path. The shift came at his friend's funeral. Standing up to speak about someone he had loved and lost, he discovered that releasing the outcome is not failure. It's freedom. And he told me: I have understood that I can make every day the best one yet. Not by outperforming anyone. By showing up fully for what is already here. So here's what I want you to try this week: The next time comparison finds you, wherever it finds you, put your hand on your heart. Take one slow breath. Ask yourself: What am I actually trying to create? And what is one thing I genuinely appreciate about the person I was just measuring up against? Myself. Then reach out to them today, not with an agenda, just a message that says, "I was thinking of you." And that small turn from measuring to reaching is where everything changes. The future is not a competition. It is something we build together, one reach at a time.
