What Makes You Less? - by Crucible

There's that disconcerting feeling most of us have experienced at some point, either firsthand or through someone else. The next person might be doing better, or just is better than how we see ourselves, and that creates a false belief. You hear statements like she's better than me or he's better than me. Those thoughts are poisonous and once entertained have a strong likelihood of staying. This isn't about self-discovery or how to get out of it. It's more of a question: why do people assume that their entirety is less than another person's? Take bullying. It's a proven psychological track that bullying stems from envy, ironic right, that the one inflicting the pain is envious of the victim. Social media isn't helping, it's aggravating it. We have all these dopamine drivers and scrolling mechanisms showing us the lives of people. And it's become a thing where people genuinely believe that whoever they see is doing better. Not in one area. Just better. The scroll becomes a verdict. Most people have one thing or another they're uncomfortable about and seeing someone excel in that area creates that feeling of inadequacy. It doesn't stop at lifestyle and appearance though. The next comparison is money, who has more, who's further ahead. That one carries weight because it feels measurable, like there's a scoreboard somewhere and you've seen where your name sits. But the most diabolical comparison is the one that reaches your principles. When you start questioning not what you have but who you are. When someone else's choices make you doubt your own values, the code you've lived by. That's no longer comparison. That's erosion. We grow up in different environments and circumstances and those things influence us more than we can imagine. Our identities are slowly corroding in this global landscape because the next person seems better and we want to be them. Forgetting that we borrow from one, then another, sanding down the edges of ourselves trying to become a composite of everyone we've decided is more. Have we ever stopped to actually look at the people we think are better and ask what makes us less? Not as a defence. As a real question. Because the honest answer most of the time is nothing. A different path. A different timeline. A different set of circumstances. Not less. A world where we all believe the next person is better is a world where no one is.

Other insights from Crucible

Referral Earning

Points-to-Coupons