Social Comparison: Hit or Sh*t?

Suppose you are recently born and boom! The social world created its gigs and started looking for better outcomes on the first day of your life.

A baby next to you is crying way louder than you have ever thought but that’s no trouble!
The dilemma begins when your aunt starts to compare your identity next to that baby.

Now, go back to that time when it was arduous for you to read a sentence and the kid in your class was way ahead in his/her vocabulary, you might not have noticed but your teacher scolded you in front of the whole class and the world of social comparison started crawling it’s ways to your feet.

You thought there must be something wrong with you to fall every time on the troop, or to not behave like the kid who scores high every time in his/her examination, but then again you were just the teenager of glorious mind at that time who was occupied in his/her thoughts.

Now, you are an adult and the social comparison has become worse.
You cannot look at a flower to simply find its beauty instead you have started to compare it to the other flowers in the garden; neglecting its gleaming advantages.
And maybe that’s when it will hit you-
Did you forget to realize who you are in the process of comparing yourself to others?

Did you forget to optimize your passion and power?

You disregard that two unrelated things cannot be compared in the universe.
Suppose, you are an apple and your friend is an orange. Now, will you compare them to the norms of society?

You see, now the word of curiosity will hit you hard that you cannot even correlate anything to anyone. Everyone has the extraordinary power to rule and we as a generation have neglected to find our own identity.

However, the social comparison will make you grit your teeth, even more, when you have started picking up all the wrong points!

But first, we need to learn-

What is social comparison?

Social comparison is the determination of our social worth based on certain attributes, attitudes, and traits in comparison with others. And in most cases, we choose those attributes with which we relate more.

What are the types of social comparisons?

Upward social comparison- This takes place when we compare ourselves to those people who are better than us. We idolize them as they are superior to us and get inspired by them, we look up to their lifestyle to motivate us even more.

For example– one of your teammates In basketball always scores high in the playground while you are still stuck counting on the numbers, you may feel a little devastated by his achievements and think low of yourself then as time passes you will recognize- you can do anything you want to do with a great number of efforts and a little patience, so in this case, upward motivation will make you even more motivated and boost your confidence to work upon yourself.

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Downward comparison- This takes place when we compare to those people who are way behind us. We look to them and feel delighted by our achievement that is better than theirs. This comparison makes you feel satisfied with your personality while making you inadequate in achieving the big goals of your life.

For example– one of your other teammates scores low in the playground than you. So you look up to him to make yourself feel better and in the process, you feel comfortable with your result that isn’t up to the mark, now without giving any effort to nourish your thought you get satisfied with your present results.

The thing is social comparison brings both pros and cons and it’s a matter of fact you start improvising your skills for better outcomes, or you start to envy others while falling into the world of depression.

So, In my words, Social comparison is more sh*t than a hit.

I hope this blog will let you find out the adversity of comparison.