Rule 4: Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today

The title seems straightforward, take a look at yourself and see if you've improved since yesterday, but why is it a bad idea to compare yourself with someone else (today)?

I know that comparing yourself with others often leads to jealousy, depression, emotions that are not conducive to your growth. Then again, why don't we feel competitive doing so?

The argument Jordan Peterson makes is that in a world where everyone is digitally connected, whatever profession you're in, whatever skills you're trying to learn, you can ALWAYS find someone better than you on the internet.

Think you're good playing the guitar? Well there are hundreds, if not thousands of professional guitarists showing their prowess on Youtube.

By that logic, you're never going to feel good about yourself because there's always going to be someone that's better than you.

So instead of always being jealous, or feeling bad about yourself, You can gain confidence by improving your skills, relationship, career etc even if its tiny bit improvement. You'll feel good about yourself knowing that you've become better.

The second argument made was that everyone's circumstances is just too different. There's more than 1 dimension to a person's life: Health, family, career, finance and so on...

When you're envy of someone's career, ask yourself would you trade your live with that person? What if that person has an amazing career but a broken family?

While you're not trying to disparage someone for what you don't/can't have, you should understand there are tradeoffs for everything in life, you can't have it all.

So instead of comparing with someone who you have no idea anything about, compare yourself with that one person who you know, that's you.

Set a goal/aspiration you want to achieve and break it down into (better) versions of yourself which you can achieve a step at a time.

Compare you with yourself not because you are less than someone else, but because you are not who you want to become - Jordan Peterson.