A common piece of advice for life is to not compare yourself to others. It seems a bit ironic though when comparison is present in everyday life.

When we were students, we were judged based on performance compared to others. We are ranked by our grades. When applying for jobs, we are compared to other candidates. After getting a job, we are compared to our colleagues. Siblings and cousins are often compared to one another. You may even be compared to your friends by your parents.

Social media brings comparison to a whole new level. It’s easier to compare yourself to others when everyone’s life is one click away. Social media platforms will show you when your friends went to an amazing resort, ate at a Michelin rated restaurant, or bought a new car. There seems to be a constant need to “keep up with the Joneses.”

This is not anything new. In 1954, social psychologist Leon Festinger, developed the social comparison theory. He theorized that individuals compare themselves to others to determine their own social and personal worth. It’s a method we all use to self evaluate. This makes sense, because how else would we establish a baseline on how our lives are going? As humans, we would naturally evaluate ourselves to other humans.

But this is where the dark side of comparison steps in and why we’re advised against it. While some may use comparison to fuel their motivation for self improvement, others struggle because it may seem that everyone is doing better than they are. Comparing themselves to those that are in a better position in life can lead to feelings of envy, low self-confidence, and even depression.

But why am I writing that it’s okay to compare?

Because I believe that being told not to do something, when it’s ingrained in our culture and human behavior, is a set up for failure. This is similar to being told to not think negative when our minds evolved with a tendency of negative bias. It’s not a helpful mindset to take.

A healthier mindset is to understand that comparison is natural. We will never be able to fully distance ourselves from it, which is okay because it can actually be a good thing. It gives you something to aim for. And instead of comparing to someone else, compare yourself to yesterday. Clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson’s fourth rule of life is to “compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.”

He said it best:

“Personal responsibility is to compete with yourself, is to be slightly better than yourself the next day and better in some way that you can actually manage. And that’s humility. I’m a flawed person and I’ve got all my problems. Could I be as good as “X”? That’s not the right question. The right question is, could you be slightly better tomorrow than your currently flawed self. And the answer to that is, if you have enough humility to set the bar properly low, then you could be better tomorrow than you are today.”

Think back to a time when you were sitting in science class. When running scientific experiments, there’s the control group and the experimental group. You only make changes to the experimental group, while the control group is what you measure against. This is the only fair way to judge how an experiment is actually progressing.

Here’s a very simplified example. Let’s say we are growing a bamboo plant and want to see how much it grows over a week. After seven days, we see that it grew a foot! Amazing. Compared to a week ago, the plant grew so much. What amazing progress. Now, would it make sense to compare it to a bamboo tree that’s been growing for a year? No!

Apply this same idea to yourself. Improving ourselves is a daily experiment where the control group is the prior version of yourself. The improvements we make should only be measured against yourself. Comparing ourselves to someone who may have been doing the same daily exercise for a year would not be fair.

But let’s be real for a moment. Just because we know to compare ourselves only to ourselves, doesn’t mean that comparing to other people will magically go away. A trick to using comparison to our advantage is to have a learning mindset. Instead of viewing that person as a competitor, try to view them as a mentor. Ask yourself what that person has done that could help you along your own journey? What are some things they did to get to where they are? Are there mistakes that they made that you could avoid? Then apply those lessons to yourself, one day at a time.

Now just because we know a trick or two, doesn’t mean that comparison stops. What’s frustrating is how loud and overpowering our judging voices can be.

When negative comparison creeps up, remind yourself that the person you’re comparing to went through unseen struggles to reach where they are now. Remind yourself that it’s unfair to you to judge against someone that’s on a different timeline. Your path is one that has been forged by you, and as long as you’re one step ahead of yesterday, that’s all that matters. It will always be difficult to see how far you’ve come if you compare to someone else’s journey. Look at your own path and see all the struggles you’ve overcome to be where you are today.

Remember, your journey is your own, and no one can replicate what you’ve done. It’s up to you to keep stepping and improving on your own path, one day at a time. Everyone has struggles and will naturally compare themselves to someone else. When this happens, remember that it’s okay to compare but to learn from them, and measure your growth to yesterday’s version of you. Take a deep breathe, and keep going. You got this.

The title may be an unpopular opinion, but hear me out.

It’s okay to have negative thoughts because it’s actually normal. It may not feel normal living in a culture of “positive vibes only” and scrolling through everyone’s best life moments on social media. Someone struggling with any form of mental illness or depression may feel broken. They may feel like an outcast because they can’t get the negative voices out of their head. How does everyone seem to be so positive?

But what if I told you that everyone has negative thoughts? Even the happiest people that seem to have it all figured out will have negative thoughts. I say this confidently because humans are wired to pay more attention to negative stimulus. In psychology, this is called the Negative Bias.

As humans evolved, the ones that focused more on dangers were the ones that survived. Those that kept their guard up and ears open for any strange noises were the ones that stayed alive to pass on their genes. The other ones were distracted watching Caveflix and got eaten by raptors. Thousands of years later, we have a human mind that was evolved to be on high alert for threats and dangers.

We are subconsciously tuned to be on alert, meaning we are automatically focusing and impacted more by negativity. Research shows that even babies as young as 3 months old can show signs of negative bias. The part of our brain that regulates our emotions and motivation, the amygdala, uses about two-thirds of its neurons to detect negativity. It then stores it into long-term memory.

This is why it’s okay to have negative thoughts. Our minds were built to focus on the negatives.

But that doesn’t mean we have to live our entire life through a negative lens.

For those struggling to view positives in the world, trying to not think negative can be extremely frustrating. The difficulty of trying not to think negative, comes from trying so hard to not think negative! That might not make sense right away, so let’s dig into why this might be.

The human mind can be a predictable machine. What it thinks, it tends to see. For example, if we had a conversation about a Honda Civic, all of a sudden we see Civics everywhere. Tell someone not to think of elephants, and they think of elephants. Apply that same logic to negativity. You may go through the day telling yourself “don’t think negative thoughts,” and then all you think are negative thoughts!

The trick to living with our negative bias isn’t to try to avoid negativity or force positivity. It actually starts with acceptance and patience.

First, remember that it’s okay to have negative thoughts. Accept that negative thinking is natural. Our thoughts come and go as they please. A thought doesn’t define who we are. Our reactions to the thoughts define us. Just because we have a thought doesn’t mean we have to react to it. For example, do you always eat if you have a thought about food? If you see a sign at a museum that says “do not touch,” and it makes you want to touch the painting, do you actually touch it? No! At least, hopefully.

We may not have complete control over our thoughts, but we have control over our reactions. When we come across a negative thought, accept it and allow yourself to feel it. It’s okay to feel negative. Like a leaf floating away in a river, our feelings and thoughts will also float away. A negative mindset does not form by thoughts alone. It develops from repeated reactions to the negativity.

The next time you have a negative thought, allow yourself to feel it, but refrain from reacting with it. This practice will be very difficult, but just like learning anything new, it becomes easier with repetition.

Be as patient with yourself as you would if training a new puppy. We might not want to hear this, but negativity will cause us to stumble from time to time. Forgive yourself over and over for reacting to the negative thought. Remember that the thought is just a thought, and that it’s natural.

On the flip side, when you do have a positive thought, hold it in your attention for just 10 to 20 seconds. Replay the thought in your head. Feel yourself have a slight smile. Allow yourself to feel good. Shake your fist in celebration. You might feel silly. Laugh at the silliness. Doing this for a short 20 seconds starts the process to recode your mind to look for positivity. At first, you may not have very many positive thoughts, and that’s okay. This is natural because of our negative bias mindset. But have patience, that with repeated reinforcement of positive thoughts, your mind will recalibrate to see more of it in the world.

I want to stress that this will take time. Forgive yourself when you have a reaction to a negative thought. Celebrate when you have a positive thought. Be patient. Negative thoughts are normal and not something you have to beat yourself up over. You are not a negative person because you have negative thoughts. You are simply human and learning how to react differently to what comes naturally. With acceptance and patient practice, you’ll be able to recode your mind to see life in a positive lens.

Having a daily routine could sound like it would make life rigid and inflexible. Maybe we imagine a routined life to feel like prison and not allowing for any spontaneity. Our day to day seemingly could be trapped within a program that allows for no freedom or adaptation.

But the truth is the opposite. Having a routine actually builds freedom.

While having a structure to the day may sound inflexible, it actually gives your mind more space to be free.

It’s sort of like the rules in a game. They aren’t in place to make the game less fun but to provide a framework of how to play the game. Imagine a game without any rules. It would be chaotic and somewhat pointless.

What rules are to a game, a routine is for the day. It allows you to navigate it with purpose and direction. When our minds are without guidelines, every thought could pull us in any direction. Time seems to slip away if we allow random thoughts to dictate our attention. This is why sometimes you may look up and it’s later in the day then you expected, having accomplished little of what you wanted to do. Repeat this type of day enough, and you wake up one day wondering how you ended up where you are. You wake up living a life that you didn’t want, feeling trapped and lost, hoping that something will change.

As counterintuitive as it may be, the change to free yourself from a trapped life begins by building a routine.

With a routine, we define the type of day we want, give it a structure to stay in our designed lanes and keep moving forward. We move with purpose and start to reclaim our life.

Start setting a routine by beginning with waking up and going to bed at the same time every day. It may sound simple, but it will be difficult in practice. If that’s too difficult, start with something else that may already have a set time, such as meals.

Then start to add in blocked times for specific things you want to get done. Have a blocked time for your morning ritual. Set aside time for prepping and eating meals. Block off time to take care of the most important thing each day. And don’t forget to block off time for entertainment and relaxing, guilt free.

Blocking time for specific activities allows you to be present and eliminates the hardest part of taking on any task, which is the decision to start, especially if it’s something we do not want to do. By eliminating the decision to start, we save ourselves mental bandwidth and save time by not procrastinating. It’s those precious moments between tasks where we seem to get distracted most easily.

When in your time block, give your full attention to what you are doing. A good time block could be set to 25 minutes. Our focus tends to dip around that time, so reward yourself with 5 minute rest periods between blocks to recharge, and then get after the next block. Some tasks may require multiple hours with high focus, so it’s best to break those up into smaller blocks with rest periods in between.

Building a routine will take time. Remember to start small, and add to it as you go. As the routine develops, you’ll find that it will give you more freedom to pursue other things in life. It will save you time, give you a sense of accomplishment, and keeps you moving forward. In a way, you are designing your own freedom. You will no longer be trapped in a loop created by others, but enjoy your free life that you’ve designed.

Let’s talk about goals. If you’re like me, we would shudder together at this word. Like setting KPIs at work or making New Year resolutions, setting goals can be a painful, fruitless experience. We begin by setting a lofty goal for ourselves. Motivation drives us for some time, but eventually it withers and our goal seems far and unobtainable. Let’s look at an example.

A common New Year resolution is to exercise everyday. The new year brings motivation and drives us to commit to the gym. We envision ourselves doing all the things that other gym goers do. Go on a run, lift weights, stretch, walk 10k steps everyday. But after a few weeks, many of us end up missing days here and there, then multiple days in a row, and eventually give up all together.

Maybe we try again and the goal is set to just 3 times a week. This seems much easier, but even then, we inevitably fall back into our old sedentary habits.

I’ve personally fallen into this trap for so many of my goals, that I shy away from setting goals at all. But I recently listened to a Tim Ferris interview with Jerry Seinfeld that got me rethinking goals. In the interview, Seinfeld says:

“It’s like you’ve got to treat your brain like a dog you just got. The mind is infinite in wisdom. The brain is a stupid, little dog that is easily trained. Do not confuse the mind with the brain. The brain is so easy to master. You just have to confine it. You confine it. And it’s done through repetition and systematization.”

The comparison of our brain to a dog triggered my first memories of playing fetch with my brother’s dog, Miggy (who is super awesome as you can tell from his Instagram).

When I was first started playing fetch with him, I would throw the ball pretty far. I thought that would give him more joy since he could chase the ball further. I noticed however, if I threw the ball too far, he wouldn’t chase it at all. He’d see how far the ball was traveling, then look at me with an expression of “wtf, I’m not getting that.” We’d have a staring contest and I’d sheepishly retrieve the ball. I quickly learned that there was a range from too close to too far, and that too close was better than too far.

What the ball is to Miggy, our goals are to our brain. We have to set goals that are just far enough to create a challenge, yet not too far to seem impossible.

This doesn’t mean we should aim lower. We should always aim high, but be able to break down the goal to smaller goals that are just enough for us to chase and be satisfied. Over time, the mini goals evolve as we progress towards the ultimate goal.

I seem to always come back to starting small, but that’s been the most helpful when starting anything. We can’t expect to become an exercise enthusiast over night. The goal may be to go to the gym everyday, but we can start by going on a walk everyday. Or maybe even just putting on sneakers. As you progress, you shift your mini goals just enough to keep you challenged. Over time, you’ll have developed the repetition and systematization to keep you moving forward.

So set your goal, break it down into just enough mini goals (starting small), and adapt as you progress. As Jerry Seinfeld says, train your brain just like you’d train a dog. Now go play fetch with your brain.

On March 4, 2021, I published my first Thursday post titled “How I’m Fighting Depression.” I explained how 4 things were helping me to beat depression. They were:

1. Write
2. Exercise
3. Meditate
4. Affirmations

Six months later, I have barely been able to keep up with these daily practices. Lots have happened that contributed to the derailment. But you know what? Aside from some catastrophic accident, I could have been doing these practices. Even if I only spent 10 minutes on each of these, it still sums up to less than 1 hour. To say that I didn’t have time would be a lie. So if I had the time to do them and knew that these practices were healthy for me, why would I not follow them? I reasoned that I was lazy, a procrastinator, it wasn’t helping. Excuses.

After some thought, I believe there are two reasons why I haven’t been able to keep up.

1. I am comfortable being depressed.
2. I’m trying to do too much.

The body gives off a lot of signals for us to understand what it wants/needs. A basic example would be touching something hot. If we drink really hot coffee, we burn our mouths and our mind tells us that this is way too damn hot and what the hell were you thinking by putting this scalding liquid into our mouth?! So we learn to not do it again, or at least, drink carefully next time.

I believe depression is another type of signal, just like if something is too hot. But it feels that depression builds over time. We’re able to adapt and we are just comfortable with what is happening. Our state has become depressed, but we accept it. I believe this happens because it’s our amazing ability to cope with whatever comes our way. It can work for us and unfortunately, also against us.

So from years of negative thinking and becoming acquainted with negativity and depression, I’ve just accepted that this is my life. Is it really comfortable? It’s not uncomfortable all the time. I’ve become numb enough, but still, I can feel that this is the wrong cycle to be in.

Part of me is screaming everyday begging to change. But I’ve associated so much with depression, that even if I wanted to change, the other part of me does not want to because it’s all I know. It’s almost as if I’m afraid to not be depressed.

The part of me that wants to change, wants to change so quickly that it wants to do everything. So whenever I hear about something that could make me not depressed, I immediately read up on it hoping that this will be the thing that changes me. “This new practice will change my life,” I tell myself. I wrote articles about methods to get out of this depressed state. But months later, everything’s the same.

The reason why none of them worked is because by trying to do them all, I did not do any of them. I kept reprioritizing what was important day by day, week over week. By doing so, I’ve successfully prioritized nothing. And surprise, nothing has changed.

So what to do from here?

Begin again and commit. Be present, even just for 10 minutes, for each practice. Start small and celebrate each win. Mark it as a success. Remember what it feels like to be not depressed. It will feel foreign, not welcome, an intruder. It will be different and only over time will it become familiar. Just like how depression slowly became normal, our minds can build a new normal. So let’s begin again.