How to Overcome Social Comparison

Daily Devotional – Wednesday, July 19, 2023
Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else.
Galatians 6:4 (NIV)

Social Comparison is the inclination to equate oneself with others. It is a natural human tendency for evaluating our progress in life. While doing so can help us raise our performance levels in various spheres of life, it is often detrimental hence the need to understand how to overcome social comparison.

Be Yourself

In many cases, when people regard themselves as poor or rich, backwards of advanced, educated or illiterate, they do so based on how their peers or total strangers are doing. When you weigh yourself up against other people’s achievements, you end up either feeling superior of inferior.

Upward social comparison occurs when you measure up yourself against someone who is better off than you are. This tendency will make you feel inferior, dissatisfied and frustrated. You might also end entertaining jealousy and hatred, vices that the Bible condemns.

Don’t Die a Copy

Downward social comparison entails judging yourself against someone who is faring relatively worse than you. It makes you feel superior and may result in arrogance and aloofness, which are vices in the spiritual realm.

John Mason, the renowned speaker, minister and author once said, “You were born an original. Don’t die a copy.” Mason was alluding to the perils of comparing oneself to others to the point of losing one’s unique identity. Whether we are engaging in downward or upward social comparison, we end up hurting ourselves.

Do Not Compare Yourself With Others

Consequently, it is important to heed Apostle Paul’s counsel, when he states, “Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else.” (Galatians 6:4). Paul underlines self-examination and self-criticism as the antidotes to social comparison.

Genuine self-assessment will reveal to you who you really are. You will realize that above everything else, God created you to be a unique individual. He has endowed you with a set of skills and abilities that no one else possesses in the same measure. You should be proud of who God has created you to be, irrespective of the endowments and attainments of others.

How to Overcome Social Comparison

Additionally, self-criticism will keep you from concentrating on the weaknesses and sins of others because you realize how weak you are, too. As you measure yourself up against the perfect character of God, you will appreciate the need to work on the speck in your eye and not the log in the other person’s eye.

Therefore, instead of engaging in social comparison, embrace self-examination and self-criticism with the help of the Holy Spirit. Do not be bothered with what others possess or have attained. Rather, focus on becoming the person God created you to be. Make Christ your standard of life. That is how you overcome social comparison.

Prayer
Holy Spirit, lead me into self-examination that I many know my worth in You and eschew social comparison.