ASK PHILIPPA
A reader feels dissatisfied with her life. It’s time to stop comparing yourself to others, says Philippa Perry, psychotherapist and Red’s agony aunt
Our agony aunt tackles your issues
Q Throughout my life, I have never been happy with who I am and what I have. Leaving interesting places and good jobs because I’m always chasing that mythical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I can never seem to appreciate the present, which looks great on paper – I have a good husband, two lovely children and a nice home. I should be grateful – and I am, but it all just seems so average and boring. I always wanted to be different, bigger and better, but I’m just an ordinary person with average intellect, average abilities and average looks. It seems the harder I try to become ‘something’, the worse I feel. Every day I’m consumed with jealousy towards people that I know, as well as those I don’t, but whose enviable lives I see via the media. Everyone else seems richer, has a more successful career, is prettier, or has a bigger house and a more successful husband. I feel my life is ticking by, and the reality that I will never be happy is getting me down. People think I’m happy and loved by friends and family, but they don’t know the real me. Name and address withheld
A You know that happy, popular and unique woman who is loved by her friends and family? She is the real you. Or at least as real as the woman who constantly plays this game of comparing other people’s external lives with your own internal one.
I’m going to recommend a book to show you that you aren’t the only one doing this. Written by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson, it’s called The Spirit Level: Why Equality Is Better For Everyone, and it explains the effects that inequality has on societies – how it erodes trust, increases anxiety and encourages excessive consumption (you can also visit equalitytrust.org. uk/about-inequality/spirit-level to find out more). But you are not alone in feeling dissatisfied, and you are not alone in playing the comparison game. I believe everyone in our consumerist society is playing it to some extent and, as the book shows, it doesn’t make anyone happy.
Daily, we’re bombarded with images of beautiful people in chic, spacious apartments, who are in love and living in harmony. We rarely see adverts showing ordinary looking people in average-sized rooms, learning to accept the inevitable pain that life brings.
We might play the comparison game differently. We could possibly delight in the fact that we’ve become aware of all this, that we can detach from the seductive thought that being the prettiest, richest, cleverest is the path to happiness, because we really know it isn’t. How much luckier we are than the suckers still caught up thinking there’s something called ‘the best’ – chasing a mythical perfection!
Even if we were the prettiest, cleverest, richest people on earth, we would not be the happiest if that happiness was still dependent on comparing ourselves with others. Happiness comes through our connection with people, rather than being better than them.
It could be, though, that you are depressed, and the comparison game is what your mood has attached itself to. If this idea resonates with you, get yourself to a counsellor (find one at welldoing.org) and listen to yourself talk, which can help you find new meaning for life.
You will still play the comparison game because it’s habit, but instead of fully involving yourself in it and becoming more and more dissatisfied, observe yourself playing it instead, and feel glad that you don’t have to buy into it. Good luck, from one ordinary person to another!