Comparison: A friend or foe?

Competition and comparison can work as fuel. Propelling our industry forward, driving business growth and pitch wins. Getting you that higher salary. A better deal on your car insurance. That personal best. So far comparison, so good.

However, there is a darker side to comparison where the balance tips from being useful and productive to unhealthy and destructive. This is what we refer to as the Comparison Trap. It’s in part driven by our internal narratives and is exacerbated by external pressures.

Have you fallen into the Comparison Trap?

Have you ever started idly thinking about someone and 20 minutes later realised you’ve been doomscrolling through their social feeds considering their lives, achievements, appearance or impact and finding yourself falling short?

Do you ever compare yourself to friends, family and colleagues? People on social media? Strangers perhaps? “I’m not productive/talented/attractive/successful/happy [delete or add as appropriate] enough?” Sound familiar? As you may have guessed, you’re not alone.

The internal battle with comparison is universal

Bloom launched an anonymous online Booth of Truth prior to our event to enable people to share their stories. We received 70 confessions with wide ranging topics; competition with peers, pressure felt from industry ‘awards’, pay, fertility, appearance and sibling rivalry.

One Booth of Truth participant wrote, “(I’m) always comparing myself to those who do more with their 24 hours than I can! Succeed in their career, launch a side hustle, a work/life balance, even a relationship.”

We chose four speakers for our event who each had different life experiences and career paths, asking them to share their vulnerable and honest stories of how comparison had impacted their professional and personal lives.

Both our panellists and the Booth of Truth confessions served to highlight that comparison truly is universal. Whether you’re at the top of your game or experiencing an excruciating life low, we all can and do fall into the Comparison Trap.

Becoming aware of your inner comparison narrative

Sometimes the forces of the Comparison Trap can rise up from within us, our own negative innermost thoughts stewing, benchmarking and feeding our feelings of Imposter Syndrome and self-doubt. One participant noted, “the loudest voice in my head is sadly my own! Comparing me to the better version of what I could be.”

Sarah Jenkins, panellist and Managing Director at Saatchi & Saatchi, identified the power of taking control of our mindsets: “I’ve got a wicked job, I’m a confident person but it’s never absolute confidence. I am constantly comparing but there is so much we can do cognitively to take control of our emotions”.

Is your internal narrative reliable?

Often the stories of comparison we tell ourselves are just that, stories. Just as social media often only tells us half-truths through the curated shiny highlights reel, when we compare ourselves to snippets of other people’s lives, we are backfilling the gaps with consistency, ease and contentment that isn’t based in reality.

Keri Jarvis, mindset coach, panellist and workshop leader for our event, shared a personal experience of comparison about a mother and her child she had noticed in a café years before. This fellow mother appeared glamorous, effortless and in control and her young daughter, well-behaved and clearly potty trained. Jarvis felt a wave of shame about her own appearance and the bulging nappy of her two-year-old. She admitted, “I had created a whole story based on five minutes in the café”.

When by chance sometime later Jarvis and the woman from the café became friends, the latter revealed she had been struggling with motherhood. She realised the story she had constructed just wasn’t accurate.

How often do we backfill the details and say ‘it’s alright for them’, when we don’t know or see the full picture?

Jarvis advised us to give ourselves a break and to allow moments of comparison to arise. She pointed out that comparison and judgement are normal evolutionary urges and appropriate for survival.  It’s just what we do with them that matters.

But wait, there are external catalysts of comparison 

Ok, that sounds manageable. Experience comparison, interrupt the urge, identify the unmet need, switch to inspiration. But what about when the pressure of comparison is coming from the outside world? When the dominant culture both exacerbates comparison and results in an unequal experience?

Through the Booth of Truth and our panel's experiences, we heard of how industries are set up to foster competition, and societal expectations around age, gender, success and progression all feed into the narrative of comparison. “I compare myself to the expectations that people have for me whether it be friends or family and often put that at a higher importance than my own happiness,” one Booth of Truth confession read. Another wrote, “Our industry feeds this; from chemistry meetings where clients 'judge' you, to award worthiness of work. You can't escape.”

External forces beyond the internal narrative

One part of the answer to this is to ‘run your own race’, working to tune out those external pressures. Take some time to reflect, identify what is important to you, work on understanding your personal strengths, goals and your superpowers and focus on moving forward with your own journey regardless of external pressure. Jarvis’ tips for dealing with the residual internal comparison can help with this.

However, sometimes comparison is compounded by inequality within our society, families and businesses. It can become painfully evident that comparing can feel like a trap, not just because of an internal monologue, but because we have unearthed that we are not being measured by the same scale.

When your experience isn’t comparable

Each of our speakers shared personal stories which highlighted how external forces exacerbated their feelings towards comparison. These experiences shaped their resulting career paths, whether that be due to gender, race, motherhood or mental wellbeing.

Dan Furlong, Founder of Male Anxiety and Depression and mental health advocate shared that his earliest memory of comparison was from when he was just 11 years old. He was experiencing OCD intrusive thoughts which he said, “fill you with fear and make you question who you are as a person”. Furlong believes that “the term ‘mental health’ leads to more comparison”, and stats such as one in four adults experience mental health issues create a them and us comparison mindset. We should acknowledge that we all need to look after our mental wellbeing. Furlong suffered in silence for 20 years but is now on a mission to break taboos and champion emotional fitness free of comparison.

Although our challenges and life experiences often become our superpowers, Nicole Crentsil, Founder of Black Girl Festival, BIG SIS and Unmasked Women said, “I don’t want everyone to have to carve their own way; it’s not easy, it’s not a clear route, it’s challenging.” She spoke powerfully of how she decided to create her own path when racial bias made the comparison she experienced with fellow students seem futile.

In her final year of university, Crentsil followed her tutor’s advice to attach her photo with the portfolio she was sending to prospective employers. Over 200 applications were sent and not a single response received. It was only when her mum suggested that she remove her photo from the portfolio to see if it would make a difference that responses started trickling in.  

“It’s not fun to realise that the industry you are so excited to be a part of actually doesn’t involve you, doesn’t include you and there isn’t anyone that looks like you and you have to do things by yourself. For women there is a glass ceiling; for Black women there is a brick ceiling,” says Crentsil.

Sarah Jenkins picked up on the need for more diverse role models too, explaining, “There should be many more black senior women in advertising and marketing but quite often I'm the only black woman in a room and so I’m constantly representing. When you're representing you can't help but compare.”

Onwards, moving away from the Comparison Trap

Whether comparison is typically a friend or foe, we can all take simple steps to avoid falling into the Comparison Trap:

Listen to our internal narratives of comparison: Pay attention to the unmet needs driving comparison and shift our mindsets and goals to address these internal struggles.

Address the external drivers of comparison: Be aware of biases and unfair processes and shift into active allyship to empower others to have a comparable chance to succeed.

Transform comparison into something new: Turn our negative experiences of comparison and competition into opportunities for inspiration, positive action and collaborative energy.

Keep an eye out for Bloom’s next flagship event BloomFest, The Reset, from 10^th – 12^th November, a festival of provocation, up-skilling and joining together to overcome industry barriers to rise stronger. Visit Bloom's website for more information and sign up for updates.