在社交網絡高度發達的時代，人們很容易去過度關注周圍人的生活，由此產生的攀比無處不在。生活中，人們都習慣將自己最風光的一面展現給大家，可是有誰能看到風光背后的東西呢？很多時候，得到的多意味著承擔的也多。可能是我們知道自己的缺憾，所以總喜歡拿那些看上去完美的人和自己做比較，把他們當作人生的榜樣和坐標。不要羨慕別人的精彩，也不要嫉妒他人的成功。

By David White
李殊 選 張利華 注

First thing in the morning, I check Twitter, only to have it list off for me all the ways I’ve already fallen behind. A colleague has released a new e-book. Two of my design heroes are announcing a collaborative project. One of my old college buddies has posted a video trailer for an upcoming online program, and she looks phenomenal, polished, charismatic (I’m still in bed, bleary-eyed, and definitely not at my most telegenic.)

Am I really falling behind? Is anybody actually keeping score? Did any of these people post any of the updates with the intent of making me feel bad? Of course not. But if I’m not careful, it’s terribly easy to view my social media streams as a constant reminder of all the stuff I’m not doing, dreams I’m not fulfilling , and rooms I’ve failed to decorate.

This isn’t a social media problem. It’s a comparison problem. There isn’t a single thing about Twitter—or any of the other social media platforms I use—that’s designed to make me ask how I’m measuring up. That’s all me—an automatic, internal mechanism. It’s part ego, part creative drive, and part deep soul yearning.

And I know it’s not just me. I’ve spent the past year collaborating with leadership coach Tanya Geisler on researching how comparison works , what it costs us, and what it can teach us—and we’ve discovered that it runs rampant among just about every creative, growth-oriented person we know. In our comparison-soaked culture, it’s hard to avoid looking around at what other people are doing with their short time on earth, and slipping into “How am I stacking up?” mode. Here’s what we learned:

Don’t compare your insides to someone else’s outsides.

The first time I heard this excellent, if hard-to-implement, advice, I was suffering from a terrible case of envy. Some competitor or other had achieved an inspiring degree of success and I was complaining to a mentor about how unachievable it seemed to me. Her warning took me aback . “Look,” she told me, “You have no idea what it took for them to get there. Don’t act like this was unearned, effortless, or pure dumb luck. And for Pete’s sake, don’t go thinking that because you read the press release, you have a single clue about what’s really going on behind the scenes.”

She was absolutely right. I knew better, yet in the moment that I’d heard the news, I fell prey to reactive thinking and over-simplification. Because it’s much easier to look at someone “up there” and envy what they’ve got than it is to ask the tougher questions:

? What do they have that I wish I had?

? What do I admire about them? What are they modelling for me?

? What have they done to get where they are today?

? How does this relate to my own values?

When we reflect on these questions, we shift immediately out of comparison mode and turn inwards, to face the heart of the matter: our own desires and fears.