One of my all-time favorite quotes is from Theodore Roosevelt.
“Comparison is the thief of joy.”
I thought about it all day yesterday, as the theme of comparison kept coming up.
One of my BFFs mentioned that she no longer posts pics of her vacations on social media because her “friends” make snarky comments.
They say things like, “Wow! You’re always traveling! Do you EVER work!?!”
and
“It must be nice to be on vacation all the time!”
Yeah, that’s why I put quotation marks around the word, friends. Because true friends don’t make comments like that.
Then I was dm-ing with an Insta friend and heard a similar story.
The haters were saying mean stuff about him.
Comparison leads to jealousy, which leads to depression.
I talked about the research surrounding this topic in my Blue Christmas? Two Research-Based Hacks for Beating the Holiday Blahs podcast episode.
It’s important for us to understand what we do to ourselves when we play comparison games.
We get petty and jealous.
And as Teddy said, we lose our joy.