Comparison may be the thief of joy, but you can steal it back

Our brains are wired to compare ourselves with others — it's impossible to stop.

- Amelia Sim

Understanding the psychology of envy is the first step to reclaiming our peace.

Many of us are guilty of this: You're lying in bed, scrolling through your phone before you turn in. A colleague just got promoted. A university friend is on her third holiday this year. Someone you barely know has apparently renovated their entire flat and taken up pottery.

And by the time you put your phone down, you feel worse about your own life, even though nothing about your life has actually changed.

Sound familiar? You're not imagining it, and you're not being irrational. Your brain is doing exactly what it was built to do.

Social comparison is one of the most deeply human things we do. Psychologist Leon Festinger first described this in 1954, and his theory was that we have a fundamental drive to evaluate ourselves by looking at the people around us.

This made a lot of sense for most of human history. Knowing where we stood relative to others helped us navigate our social world, figure out what was worth striving for, and stay connected to our community.

The problem is that our brains evolved from a world where "everyone else" meant a few dozen people in your village — and you could see their struggles and setbacks as clearly as their wins.

Social media has blown that world wide open. Now "everyone else" is potentially millions of people, and we see only the version of themselves they've chosen to share — in essence, a curated highlight reel. That's why social media comparison stings so much.

THE THIEF OF JOY