How to Stop Comparing Yourself to Others Who Seem to “Have It All Together”

What this is: A compassionate, research-informed exploration of why successful people struggle with comparison—and a practical roadmap for redirecting that energy into genuine self-knowledge and resilience.

What this isn’t: Another hollow “just be grateful” lecture, a collection of platitudes about self-love, or advice that ignores the very real pressures of high-achievement culture.

Read this if: You’re exhausted from the mental gymnastics of measuring yourself against colleagues, peers, or the curated perfection on LinkedIn. You’re ready to stop the comparison carousel and build something more sustainable—starting with honest self-reflection.

Time investment: 23 minutes that could save you years of wasted emotional energy.

Five Key Takeaways for Successful Professionals

1. Comparison is a survival mechanism gone rogue: Your brain is doing exactly what evolution designed it to do—it’s just catastrophically misapplied in a world of highlight reels and selective sharing.
2. The “having it all together” mirage is costing you: Research shows that 67% of executives report increased stress in 2025, yet we continue to believe everyone else has cracked the code whilst we’re barely keeping our heads above water.
3. Your reference group determines your suffering: Comparing yourself to the most successful people you know creates a systematically skewed dataset that guarantees dissatisfaction—it’s bad science applied to your self-worth.
4. Upward comparison without reflection breeds burnout: When you look up without pausing to understand what you’re actually seeing (and what you’re not), you fuel the very stress that’s already threatening your wellbeing.
5. There’s a third option beyond comparing up or down: Lateral curiosity—learning from others without the evaluative sting—offers a way forward that builds resilience rather than eroding it.

Introduction: The Exhausting Mathematics of Not Measuring Up

If you’re reading this, you’re probably brilliant at what you do. You’ve achieved things that would astound your younger self. You’ve built something: a career, a reputation, a life—that functions, mostly, on the outside.

And yet.

Yet you’re still calculating. Still measuring. Still running the mental spreadsheet that compares your chapter three to everyone else’s chapter twenty, your messy middle to their glossy finale, your 3 am panic attacks to their seemingly effortless competence.

Stress destroys Lives. To find out what you can do to safeguard your sanity by taking my curiously confidence-boosting quiz, subscribe to my mailing list.

The exhaustion isn’t from the work itself. It’s from the endless mathematics of measuring up—an equation that never balances because you’re comparing variables that were never meant to be compared in the first place.

In a world where 82% of executives at larger organisations report high stress levels, where burnout has become the water we swim in rather than the warning sign we heed, the question isn’t whether comparison is happening. It’s whether we can redirect this deeply human impulse before it dismantles everything we’ve worked to build.

Because here’s what I’ve learned in twenty years of working with high-achievers in crisis, in hosting stress management retreats where guests walk the Camino de Santiago, and in writing eight books about navigating life’s inevitable upheavals: the people who seem to “have it all together” are usually just better at hiding the cracks. And the ones who actually thrive? They’ve stopped trying to measure up to an illusion in the first place.

The Woman Who Always Fell Short

Aline Hodgkins stood in her corner office on the forty-third floor, forehead pressed against the window glass, feeling the coolness seep through to her skull. Below, the city sprawled in its Tuesday morning efficiency—cars and people and purpose, all moving with the kind of certainty she used to feel.

Used to.

Her phone buzzed. Another notification. Jennifer from her MBA cohort had just been appointed CFO of a company Aline had never heard of but immediately researched. Series C funding. Exponential growth. The kind of trajectory that made Aline’s own career, solid, respectable, well-compensated, feel like a participation trophy.

She could taste the coffee she’d drunk too quickly, bitter at the back of her throat. Her assistant had commented on how tired she looked this morning. At the school gates, another mother had mentioned, ever so casually, that her daughter was “thriving” in the accelerated programme whilst Aline’s son was still struggling with basic maths. Even the woman who cleaned their house seemed to radiate a kind of contentment Aline couldn’t locate in herself.

The mathematics started automatically now, unbidden. Jennifer: CFO at forty-one. Aline: Vice President at forty-three. Jennifer: featured in Forbes. Aline: not. Jennifer’s Instagram showed a kitchen renovation, a skiing holiday, a husband who looked at her like she’d hung the moon. Aline’s own feed, when she bothered to check it, which she did compulsively, which she hated herself for doing, showed a carefully curated version of competence that felt increasingly like a costume she couldn’t quite fill out.

She’d started waking at 4am, her mind immediately racing through the inventory of everything she hadn’t achieved, everyone who was ahead, all the ways she was falling short. The weight of it sat on her chest like a physical thing. Her doctor had suggested it might be anxiety. Aline had laughed, a sound without humour, and said she was just busy. Stressed. Fine.

She wasn’t fine.

The smell of her own perfume suddenly seemed cloying, too sweet. She’d chosen it because a colleague wore something similar, a colleague who always seemed unflappable. Aline had thought perhaps the scent held some secret, some alchemy of confidence she could purchase at a department store counter.

It didn’t work like that. Nothing worked like that.

Her hands, she noticed, were trembling slightly. She pressed them flat against the glass. Beyond her reflection, professionally dressed, outwardly successful, the city continued its indifferent Tuesday. Someone down there was probably looking up at these offices, at windows like hers, imagining the people inside had it all sorted. Had cracked some code Aline was still desperately trying to decipher.

The irony wasn’t lost on her. She could hear the hum of the air conditioning, feel the expensive carpet beneath her shoes, smell the leather of her briefcase: all the trappings of success that had once mattered terribly and now felt like props in a play she could no longer remember her lines for.

Her phone buzzed again. A meeting in ten minutes. She needed to sound authoritative, certain, like someone who had it together. Like someone who wasn’t spending every spare moment scrolling through other people’s achievements, trying to locate the precise moment when she’d fallen behind.

Aline straightened her jacket, tasted the metallic edge of adrenaline mixed with that morning’s coffee, heard her own breath: shallow, quick—and made herself walk towards the conference room. Each step felt like a small betrayal of the exhaustion she couldn’t admit, the inadequacy she couldn’t shake, the comparison trap she couldn’t—wouldn’t—escape.

Because if she stopped comparing, if she stopped measuring, what would she use as proof that she mattered at all?

The Architecture of Comparison: Understanding What’s Actually Happening

Let’s talk about what’s really going on in moments like Aline’s. Because comparison isn’t a character flaw or a sign of weakness—it’s a fundamental human mechanism that’s been catastrophically amplified by the conditions of modern professional life.

In 1954, psychologist Leon Festinger introduced Social Comparison Theory, which posits that people evaluate themselves by comparing their abilities, opinions, and circumstances to those of others, particularly when objective standards are unclear. This was, and remains, a crucial insight. We’re wired to look sideways at our fellow humans to gauge whether we’re on track, whether we’re safe, and whether we belong.

The problem? Festinger developed this theory in an era when your comparison pool consisted primarily of people you actually knew: neighbours, colleagues you saw daily, perhaps a handful of visible public figures. Today, you’re comparing yourself to thousands of carefully curated highlight reels, algorithmic suggestions of who you “should” be following, and an endless stream of other people’s victories with none of the context that would make them comprehensible.

Research into social comparison has revealed something particularly relevant for high-achievers: we tend to engage in upward comparisons—evaluating ourselves against those we perceive as better off, far more frequently than downward comparisons. And whilst upward comparisons can occasionally motivate us, they more often trigger feelings of inadequacy, envy, and what researchers delicately call “reduced subjective well-being.”

Here’s where it gets particularly brutal for executives and professionals: the very traits that propelled you to success, ambition, competitive drive, high standards, make you especially vulnerable to the corrosive effects of comparison. You’re comparing yourself not to your actual peer group but to the absolute top performers in every domain, creating what I call the “Pinterest Effect”: a life assembled from everyone else’s best moments, which no single human could possibly achieve.

And the stakes have never been higher. Recent data shows that 67% of executives report increased stress in 2025, with economic uncertainty, labour shortages, and the relentless pressure to do more with less creating a perfect storm of comparison triggers. When everyone around you appears to be handling the chaos with grace whilst you’re barely holding it together, the comparison trap doesn’t just affect your mood, it affects your health, your relationships, your capacity to actually do the work you’re here to do.

But here’s what might surprise you: the solution isn’t to stop comparing altogether. That’s neurologically impossible and, frankly, not even desirable. The solution is to understand the mechanism well enough to redirect it, to move from reflexive comparison to conscious curiosity, from measurement to meaning.

This shift is the beginning of something profound. Because when you stop wasting energy on the endless mathematics of measuring up, you suddenly have that energy available for things that actually matter: innovation, genuine connection, the kind of leadership that comes from self-knowledge rather than performance. You become not just less stressed but more effective. Not just more content, but more creative.

And here’s the ripple effect no one talks about: when you stop performing the exhausting theatre of having it all together, you give permission to everyone around you: your colleagues, your team, your children—to do the same. You create what researchers call “psychological safety,” which is, it turns out, the single greatest predictor of team performance and individual well-being.

The work of unlearning comparison isn’t just personal development. It’s a radical act of leadership in a culture that profits from your perpetual sense of inadequacy. It’s choosing reality over illusion, substance over performance, your actual life over everyone else’s filtered one.

And it starts with one uncomfortable question: What would change if you stopped trying to have it all together, and instead got honest about what you actually have?

A Writing Prompt for Deeper Exploration

Set a timer for fifteen minutes. Put pen to paper (not fingers to keyboard—this matters). Write continuously, without editing, in response to this question:

“If no one could see me, measure me, judge me, or compare me to anyone else, what would I choose to do with my energy today?”

Don’t think about the answer. Let your hand discover it. Notice what comes up, especially the things that surprise you, make you uncomfortable, or seem “selfish” or “unrealistic.” Those are the breadcrumbs leading you back to yourself.

When the timer goes off, read what you’ve written. Then ask: What’s one small thing I could do today that honours this truth?

Not a grand gesture. Not a life overhaul. One thing. Perhaps it’s saying no to a meeting that drains you. Perhaps it’s taking a walk without your phone. Perhaps it’s admitting to one person that you’re struggling.

Further Reading: Five Unconventional Books for Those Ready to Stop Comparing

These aren’t the usual suspects in the self-help canon. I’ve chosen them because they approach the comparison problem from unexpected angles—angles that actually work for people who are too smart for platitudes.

1. “The Art of Living” by Epictetus (trans. Sharon Lebell)

Why this book: Written nearly two millennia ago by a former slave who became one of Rome’s most influential philosophers, this slim volume offers a radically different framework for evaluation. Epictetus argues that the only thing truly within your control is your response to circumstances—everything else is external noise. For high-achievers drowning in comparison, this ancient permission to focus solely on what you can influence is breathtakingly liberating. The modern translation by Sharon Lebell reads like a conversation with a wise friend who refuses to let you off the hook.

2. “The Wisdom of Insecurity” by Alan Watts

Why this book: Watts takes apart the very premise that security and certainty are achievable—or even desirable. In a culture where “having it all together” is the ultimate achievement, this philosophical exploration reveals how our pursuit of certainty actually creates the anxiety we’re trying to escape. It’s particularly valuable for executives who’ve built entire careers on appearing unshakeable. Watts suggests that embracing uncertainty isn’t resignation; it’s the only honest response to being human. The comparison trap relies on the illusion that someone, somewhere has figured it all out. This book dismantles that illusion entirely.

3. “Finite and Infinite Games” by James P. Carse

Why this book: Carse distinguishes between two types of games: finite games (played to win, with clear winners and losers) and infinite games (played to continue playing, with the goal of bringing more people into the game). Most comparison happens because we’re treating life as a finite game—measuring who’s winning, who’s ahead, who’s achieved more. Carse offers a completely different framework: what if the point isn’t to win but to keep playing well? This philosophical shift dissolves comparison at its root because you’re no longer competing in the same game everyone else appears to be playing.

4. “The Drama of the Gifted Child” by Alice Miller

Why this book: Miller, a psychoanalyst, explores how highly capable people often develop a “false self” designed to meet others’ expectations—and how this adaptation, whilst successful externally, leads to profound internal disconnection. If you’ve always been the achiever, the capable one, the person others rely on, this book will uncomfortably illuminate why comparison feels so urgent: you’ve been measuring yourself against external standards for so long that you’ve lost touch with your actual self. It’s not comfortable reading. It’s essential reading.

5. “Shop Class as Soulcraft” by Matthew B. Crawford

Why this book: Crawford, who holds a PhD in political philosophy and runs a motorcycle repair shop, explores the dignity and satisfaction of manual work in a culture obsessed with knowledge work and abstract achievement. Why include this in a list about comparison? Because Crawford offers a beautiful argument for work that has intrinsic rather than comparative value—work judged by whether the motorcycle runs, not by how your results compare to someone else’s. For professionals trapped in industries where everything is relative and nothing is quite real, this book offers a glimpse of what it feels like to do work that doesn’t require you to compare yourself to anyone.

P.S. If these books resonate, you might also find value in my 2-day online course, Road Map to Resilience: From Burnout to Breakthrough, which takes you through practical frameworks for building stress resilience that don’t depend on measuring up to anyone else’s standards.

What My Retreat Guests Have Discovered

“I arrived at Margaretha’s Camino de Santiago retreat utterly exhausted from trying to keep pace with everyone around me. My entire identity was wrapped up in being the person who could handle anything. The first day of walking, I kept checking my fitness tracker, comparing my pace to the other guests, mentally measuring myself against some imaginary standard of what a ‘good’ pilgrim should achieve. By day three, something shifted. Perhaps it was the rhythm of the walking, perhaps it was the storytelling circles with Margaretha’s horses—Twiss had this way of simply being present without judgment that undid something in me. I realised I’d been comparing myself to versions of people that didn’t even exist. The woman I thought was ‘thriving’ at work? We talked one evening, and she admitted she was barely sleeping. The colleague I envied? She confessed she felt like a fraud most days. By the end of the retreat, I wasn’t fixed—I don’t think that’s the point—but I had finally stopped running the endless calculation of who was ahead and who was behind. For the first time in years, I felt like I could just… be. That might sound simple, but it felt revolutionary.”
—Sophie B, Corporate Attorney, Age 47

“Joining Margaretha’s virtual storytelling circle was initially about finding community during a particularly isolated period. What I didn’t expect was how hearing other people’s actual stories—not their highlight reels, not their LinkedIn profiles, but their real, messy, complicated lives—would shift my relationship with comparison entirely. In the circle, there was nowhere to hide and, paradoxically, no need to. We weren’t performing for each other; we were simply sharing what was true. I found myself telling a story about a professional failure I’d spent two years trying to pretend hadn’t happened. The relief of not having to curate my narrative, of not having to be impressive or inspirational or anything other than honest, was profound. I started to see how much energy I’d been spending on appearing to have it together, energy I could have been using to actually build a life I wanted rather than one that looked good from the outside. The circle taught me that comparison thrives in isolation and dies in authentic community. Now when I notice myself starting the comparison spiral, I reach out to someone in the circle, and we get real. It’s the antidote I didn’t know I needed.”
—Janet K, Tech Executive, Age 39

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: But isn’t some comparison healthy? How do I know if I’m ambitious or just trapped in toxic comparison?

A: The difference lies in what happens after the comparison. Healthy ambition uses others as inspiration for growth you genuinely desire; it feels energising and clarifying. Toxic comparison uses others as evidence of your inadequacy; it feels depleting and leads to either self-criticism or performative achievement (doing things because you “should,” not because you want to). Ask yourself: Am I comparing because I’m curious about possibilities, or because I’m trying to confirm a story about not being enough?

Q: I work in an industry where comparison is literally built into the culture: rankings, performance reviews, promotion competitions. How can I stop comparing when my job requires it?

A: You’re right that some professional contexts require evaluation. The shift isn’t to pretend these systems don’t exist but to separate them from your self-worth. Practice what I call “contextual comparison”: yes, you’re being evaluated on these specific metrics in this specific context, but that evaluation doesn’t define your worth as a human being. It’s like playing a game—you track the score without believing the score is who you are. Also, consider: what would happen if you brought the same excellence to your work whilst caring slightly less about how you rank? Often, that reduction in anxiety actually improves performance.

Q: I’ve tried to stop comparing myself to others, but it feels impossible. Is there something wrong with me?

A: Nothing is wrong with you. Comparison is a deeply embedded neurological process—research suggests that as much as 10% of our daily thoughts involve some form of comparison. Trying to simply “stop” is like trying to stop noticing the colour blue once I’ve mentioned it. Instead of attempting to eliminate comparison, practice noticing it without judgment. “Ah, there’s my brain doing that comparison thing again.” Then, consciously redirect: “What do I actually know about this person’s reality? What do I want for myself, regardless of what anyone else is doing?” It’s a practice, not a destination.

Q: What if my comparison to others has actually motivated me to achieve important goals? Am I supposed to give that up?

A: No. But there’s a crucial distinction between using someone’s achievement as a proof of possibility (“if they can do it, perhaps I can too”) versus using it as a weapon against yourself (“they’ve done it and I haven’t, therefore I’m inadequate”). The first is inspiration; the second is self-flagellation. Inspiration feels like expansion; comparison feels like contraction. Notice which one is actually driving you. Often, what feels like motivation is actually anxiety wearing an achievement costume—and that’s not sustainable.

Q: I’m concerned that if I stop comparing myself to others, I’ll become complacent or lose my edge. Isn’t comparison what keeps me striving?

A: This is the fear nearly everyone has, and it’s worth interrogating. First, ask yourself: has constant comparison actually made you happier, healthier, or more fulfilled? Or has it just made you more anxious while you continue achieving? Second, consider an alternative source of drive: intrinsic purpose. What if you strived not because you needed to be better than someone else, but because the work itself mattered to you? That’s not complacency; that’s integrity. And research consistently shows that intrinsic motivation produces better outcomes — and better wellbeing — than external comparison. You won’t lose your edge; you’ll find a sustainable one.

Conclusion: Radiating Contentedness

Here’s what I’ve come to understand after two decades of working with brilliant, accomplished, exhausted people in crisis: the ones who seem to “have it all together” are either lying (to themselves, to you, or both) or they’ve discovered something the rest of us are still trying to learn.

They’ve stopped comparing.

Not stopped achieving. Not stopped growing. Stopped measuring their internal reality against everyone else’s external performance.

Because here’s the truth that takes most of us decades to accept: your life is immeasurable. Your worth is unrankable. Your journey is incomparable, not because you’re special in some Instagram-affirmation kind of way, but because no one else has your particular constellation of gifts, wounds, circumstances, and callings. The comparison you’re making isn’t just exhausting; it’s logically absurd. You might as well compare the ocean to the mountain and declare one of them inadequate.

The work isn’t to become someone who never compares. It’s to become someone who notices the comparison, understands what triggered it, and chooses—consciously, deliberately—to redirect that energy towards something that actually serves your life rather than depleting it.

This is the beginning. Not of having it all together (you won’t, and neither will anyone else, ever), but of building a life that doesn’t require you to pretend otherwise. A life where your energy goes towards what you’re creating rather than how you’re measuring up. Where your relationships are built on authenticity rather than performance. Where your achievements matter because they align with your values, not because they look impressive on paper.

And when you do this, when you finally stop trying to have it all together and start getting honest about what you actually have, something extraordinary happens. The people around you start to do the same. Your colleagues breathe a little easier. Your children learn that worth isn’t conditional on performance. Your community becomes a place where people can be real rather than impressive.

That’s the ripple effect of choosing to stop comparing. That’s how one person’s private decision to stop measuring up becomes a quiet revolution in how we all measure what matters.

You don’t need to have it all together. You never did. You just need to get honest about what you actually have—and then, perhaps, do something meaningful with it.

The mathematics can wait. The life you’re actually living cannot.

An Invitation: Walking Your Own Camino

If this article resonated, you might be ready for something more than reading about change. You might be ready to experience it.

For years, I’ve hosted stress management retreats in the rolling hills of south-western France, where guests walk sections of the ancient Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route. These aren’t wellness retreats in the Instagram sense, no juice cleanses, no forced positivity, no pretence that a weekend can fix what took years to build.

Instead, you walk. We practice mindfulness and meditation exercises designed specifically for stress management. We sit in storytelling circles with my Friesian horses, Twiss, Kashkin, and Zorie. (Horses, it turns out, are remarkably good at teaching humans how to be present without performing. They don’t care about your CV or your LinkedIn profile. They respond only to who you actually are in the moment.)

The landscape itself does something that offices and screens cannot. The rhythm of walking, the simplicity of physical movement, the space that opens up when you’re not reachable by email—these conditions allow something in you to settle. To stop running the comparison mathematics. To remember what it feels like to just be, without measuring whether you’re being enough.

I’ve watched corporate attorneys discover they can cry without the world ending. Tech executives realise they’ve been chasing a definition of success that was never theirs to begin with. Medical professionals find permission to be human rather than superhuman. They arrive exhausted from trying to keep pace with everyone around them. They leave with something more valuable than solutions: clarity about what they actually want, beneath all the noise about what they should want.

These retreats aren’t about fixing you. You’re not broken. They’re about creating conditions where you can finally hear yourself think, where comparison loses its grip because you’re too busy experiencing your actual life to worry about how it looks from the outside.

We keep the groups intentionally small. We balance solitude with community. We honour both the need to talk and the need for silence. And yes, the horses are there—not as therapy animals in any clinical sense, but as teachers of a particular kind of presence that humans have mostly forgotten.

If you’re reading this and feeling that pull—the one that says, “Yes, this, I need this”—I’d invite you to explore what a retreat might offer. Not as another thing to check off your list. Not as a way to become more impressive or more together. But as a radical act of redirecting energy from comparison to actual living.

You can learn more at by clicking here. Read the testimonials. Look at the landscape. Notice how your body responds to the possibility of stopping, just for a moment, the endless mathematics of measuring up.

Because here’s what I’ve learned: transformation doesn’t happen in your head. It happens in your body, in the landscape, in the presence of others who’ve also stopped pretending they have it all together.

It happens when you finally give yourself permission to stop comparing long enough to discover what you actually have.

Perhaps it’s time.