January 2024 | The Grass Only Seems Greener

December 27, 2023

It’s a new calendar year and for many that can mean pursuing a ‘new you.’ While there’s nothing wrong with making changes in your life, and there are many situations where change is healthy and beneficial, if the newer version of you that you’re pursuing is based on comparisons to someone else’s life, you might want to reconsider.

Human beings are naturally inclined to make comparisons. Studies have shown that comparative thinking is part and parcel with our way of understanding ourselves and society. So it’s no wonder that we regularly compare ourselves to others, a tendency that’s become even easier in the age of social media. We’ve also come to understand that what is presented online is not always fact. There are entire cottage industries that help people doctor their lives for online consumption.  

Setting aside the extreme examples, what about the people you actually know, the ones who aren’t faking it? What about that former college classmate who posts their beautiful vacation photos regularly? Or the old high school friend who dresses their kids to the nines and has photoshoots done for every birthday and holiday? Or your cousin’s friend’s brother, who always seems to be surfing? 

While we can recognize that celebrities’ or “influencers’” lives are too different from our own to make comparisons, it can be hard to not wonder why you’re spending another evening watching TV while your online friends are on (yet another) scuba diving trip in the Caribbean. If you regularly feel bad about yourself due to comparisons to others, there are two CBT tools you can access in this situation to consider whether making changes to your life is the right choice.

Automatic Thoughts & What We Cannot Know

When we compare ourselves to others and end up feeling bad about ourselves, there’s a process at play in our minds that may not be apparent. Automatic Thoughts, which happen without our immediate awareness, can lead us to suppose that our situation is worse than someone else’s, and that we are therefore, as a person, not as good as someone else. For example, if your former college classmate posts photos of their trip to Tahiti and, upon seeing those photos, you instantly feel bad about yourself, your brain has told you that you are insufficient, less good, because you aren’t in Tahiti. Which is pretty silly, isn’t it? Whether a person is on vacation in Tahiti or not is not indicative of their value. These automatic thoughts are extremely common, though, and for some they can lead to intense anxiety and/or depression. 

These automatic thoughts also assume a great deal about a situation that we just cannot know. The thought assumes that your former college classmate could easily afford the trip, or loves traveling, or prefers being in Tahiti to other things that they could be doing. That’s intentional: social media is where people put the highlights. They don’t usually post the boring bits: the 16-hour flight, the jet-lagged wait at the luggage carousel, the fight for a taxi. They don’t tell you how long they might have saved up for the trip, or what they gave up instead so that they could take it. 

Clarifying Your Value Can Make Your Own Grass Greener

Speaking of giving things up, it’s important to once again turn our attention to how one’s values impact quality of life. We can’t value everything because then value itself becomes meaningless, so we have to choose what in life is most important to us. When we do that, we can navigate our lives by those values, putting our time and energy into pursuing what makes us most happy. If you consider what you value most and find that it’s traveling to lots of different places, then it makes sense that you may feel bad when you see someone else go to a far-flung destination instead of you. But if you’ve never been too interested in travel, ask yourself if it makes sense to feel bad about yourself for not vacationing in Tahiti. 

Let’s consider the example of the old high school friend and their family glamor shots. Everyone looks great in the photos, the matching puffy vests and backdrop of autumn leaves creating a sense of cozy togetherness. You might wonder why you didn’t do that, too. You love your family and wouldn’t it be great to have really nice photos of them? But you also have to consider what you value most in terms of where you put your efforts. All of our resources—money, time, energy, among them—are finite. While the photos look nice online or hung on a wall, you may prefer to spend your time with your family in ways other than posing in a leafy field for hours. 

Ultimately, if you want to make changes in your life this new year, those changes need to align with what you value most or they are unlikely to bring you much happiness in the longer term.