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Compare Yourself to Others (Hear Me Out)

Name: Compare Yourself to Others (Hear Me Out)
Uploaded: 2024-07-31T21:00:03+00:00
Duration: 35 s
Channel: Shanli Liu, CPA, CTP
Description: In this short monologue, the speaker references a Harvard study that identified the five people you most frequently compare yourself to as the strongest…

31 Jul 2024 · 1 min

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In this short monologue, the speaker references a Harvard study that identified the five people you most frequently compare yourself to as the strongest predictor of your life outcomes. Emphasizing that these comparison targets need not be your closest friends, the speaker argues that deliberately looking upward—at individuals who are ahead of you in the areas you care about—provides a practical tool for assessing your current standing and identifying concrete steps for improvement. He suggests focusing on what successful peers are doing that you are not, while largely ignoring those who lag behind unless they excel in a specific skill you wish to develop. The speaker also warns against the common trap of equating comparison with self‑worth, cautioning that seeing yourself as "bad" or "good" based solely on these comparisons can be psychologically harmful.

Chapters

Harvard did this big fancy study, but basically the 5 people that you compare yourself to, not necessarily that you spend the most time with, but who you compare yourself to, has the highest predictor of your outcomes. The goal is to get around a whole bunch of people who are better than you, and the nice thing is that if you're a beginner, there's a lot of people better than you. Comparison is a very useful tool to figure out where you stand and where you can improve, and I think that's all it is. I always want to compare myself. I want to look at other people who are ahead of me and see what they're doing that I'm not doing so I can learn. And if someone's behind me, I don't really compare much at all because it's like, why bother? Or if they are by behind me but they're better than me at something, then I want to figure out why they're better than me at that thing. The part that gets people in trouble is where they say, "And therefore I am bad," or, "Therefore I am good."