Teddy Roosevelt said, “comparison is the thief of joy.”

To that I would add: if allowed space in our mind, comparison will trap us in a spiral, until we reach a point where the idea of contentment is foreign and the way we measure value is skewed.

It starts with the smallest comparison to others, our past self, or the expectations we had for our life.

There is a healthy level of drawing inspiration and motivation from someone who is more advanced than us, but when we compare our beginning to someone else’s middle, or our middle to someone else’s years of mastery, we set ourselves up for disappointment and dissatisfaction in our accomplishments and progress. We each require a different amount of time and dedication to advance and enhance our skills but comparison causes us to lose sight of that. We compare our lives to the false reality presented on social media, and compare our bodies to the photoshopped models who don’t even look like their pictures in magazines. We compare our adult body to our teenage self, forgetting we were once a two-sport athlete and that teenage body was still growing and maturing. We overlook the milestones and/or traumas in our life since that time.

We so quickly scrutinize and compare our bodies which have carried us through the highs and lows and challenges of life, instead of treating them with compassion. And we wonder why happiness is so fleeting and why we can’t find joy in our lives.

Because rather than finding the value in who we are, simply for existing, we measure our value through the lens of comparison. There will always be someone more talented, more accomplished, more organized and fit. So, let’s stop comparing ourselves to others, and start living a life full of joy.