Why People Notoriously Compare Themselves

How to escape one of the darkest rabbit holes of our overthinking minds: Both a practical framework and the deeper path.

---

A really dark rabbit hole

Highly driven people often compare themselves to others.

“Others raised larger rounds than I have. They hit €1M ARR within months, while my startup is still searching for product market fit.”

“Just months ago, younger founders asked me for advice — now they’ve closed a round with a top-tier SF-based VC fund.”

We ask ourselves what’s so special about them. And what’s missing in us.

Years earlier, at the prestigious university: exams aced, top of class, leading a major university club and earning extracurricular prestige. All the internships paid off: a job at McKinsey, as the first from the peer group. But a year later, others followed, and now climb faster.

It can go so far that, deep down, without ever telling anyone, we hope others fail. Even friends. Then comes the guilt – for not being more genuine, because that’s what society expects from us.

That’s one of the darkest rabbit holes an overthinking mind can fall into: the need to stand out, colliding with the desire to belong.

A powerful framework

The good news: I’ve found a way to deal with that rabbit hole.
The bad news: a deeper shift is still required. But the positive first:

We must train ourselves to focus less on outcomes, more on what we can control.

I’m a terrible surfer, but even I know: the best surfers can’t ride a perfect wave if there are no waves. If there’s no momentum in the market, even the best founders won’t build a billion-dollar company.

Sometimes another founder just catches a better wave. But that doesn’t mean they’re more talented. Sometimes all a surfer can do is paddle hard and wait.

Only blaming the waves is victimhood. But sometimes the best surfers stand out not by paddling harder — but by switching beaches altogether. Letting go of a wave doesn’t automatically make you a bad surfer.

Hard work, patience, and the ability to accept bad momentum are all within our control. We can control how we paddle — but not the waves, not the market, not the competition.

It is very important to separate input from outcome.

Why we really compare ourselves

The metaphor helped me because it’s a cognitive framework that reframes a situation. As an analytically wired person, I like frameworks like that. They are actionable and safe, because I am used to solving my problems in my head.

But all they do is reframe, not heal what’s fundamentally missing.

Anything addressed only on the cognitive level will always be a “band-aid.”

Because beneath the fear of being “less than others” lie old emotions and rigid programs: Our nervous system still carries childhood wounds, when we learned how to behave to be loved and seen (see When Childhood Writes Our Story).

My drive to be exceptional, for example, came from a fear of not being seen after my younger sister was born. The possibility of not standing out is a threat — because I had learned that invisibility could mean neglect.

The constant need for validation is an addiction. Like any addiction, it comes from injury: the mind constantly trying to reassure us that we’re valuable and loved, because we once learned we’re not – unless we do, possess, or become something special.

The “Lucid Living” way

Focusing on input rather than outcome is a good start. But no framework can overwrite those deep-seated patterns for good.

There will always be moments when it breaks. And yes, sometimes others are simply better — more talented, more charismatic, more skilled. The path therefore can’t be to depend on frameworks.

Even worse is to lower our ambition to avoid comparison. The “slow down” advice from the mental health bubble misses the point. You can quit the race, but the pattern stays. And you can’t hide from comparison forever.

The only long-term path is to understand and live with what’s missing deep within — not by numbing the emotion or explaining it away, but by feeling it.

Expose yourself to comparison until the emotions grow so loud that the framework breaks, until you stand unguarded. Only then you’ll see: the emotions are not that bad. The obsessive urge to set ourselves apart serves an old story. When there are better surfers out there, it does not mean that you are not valuable.

Before, the pain was unspecified, unfamiliar. With more exposure to the pain and the willingness to understand where it really comes from, the pain turns into familiar emotions. Then, emotions lose their momentum, until we’re okay with being worse than others. Paradoxically, through that acceptance, by overcoming the limiting belief born from fear, we’ll have a much higher ceiling, and achieve much more.

In conclusion, Lucid Living means taking big bets, building things that truly matter — and even actively finding situations where we’re worse than others.

Because those moments are invitations to break free from patterns that quietly hurt us, our relationships, and the world we live in.

---