Your new post is loading...
Your brain is a comparison engine. In every new situation, it automatically rifles through your memory of every other situation you’ve encountered in the past. It swiftly finds one or a few that are similar to the current scenario, then uses that information to figure out what to do next. Most of the time, you do this without you ever realizing it.
Sometimes this cognitive reflex works to your advantage, and sometimes it doesn’t. But since it’s always happening anyway, you might as well make it work for you more often than against you–at least as best you can. Here’s how.
Via The Learning Factor
Social comparisons sometimes make us feel better and sometimes don’t. Here’s how to use that tendency to actually get better.
When you compare yourself to someone better than you on a dimension, that’s called an “upward social comparison”; when you compare yourself to someone you consider worse off on a given dimension, it’s “a downward social comparison.” So while these comparisons can be useful (in both directions) for figuring out where you stand, they can make you miserable, too. If you’re always making upward social comparisons and find yourself lacking something, you may start feeling bad about how you measure up.