The Thief of Joy

Teddy Roosevelt once said: “Comparison is the thief of joy.” Meaning, if we try to live our lives compared to how other people are living their’s, we’ll make ourselves miserable.

Each life has it’s own
set of circumstances

We shouldn’t use other people’s lives as a measuring stick for our own. Holding someone else’s life up as a standard of greatness, something to chart your own life’s success, isn’t the way to find happiness. Each life has its own completely different set of circumstances that can’t be mirrored or duplicated from one person to the next.

But is there a way you can find happiness in comparing your life to someone else’s?

Our ‘bad days’ are the stuff of
dreams to some people

What if, instead of comparing our lives to people with ‘better’ lives than ours, what if we recognized there are people with lives ‘worse’ than ours? Our ‘bad days’ are the stuff of dreams to some people, and when we compare our lives to people like that, we recognize and appreciate more of what we already have. We see how great we already have it and that our lives aren’t as bad as we think.

It’s up to you

It comes down to a matter of perspective. You can’t choose what happens to you, but you can choose how you react and respond to it. Every minute of every day you have a choice – you can choose to see your life through the lens of what you don’t have, or the lens of what you already do. It’s up to you.

What do you do when you have a ‘bad day?’ How do you get rid of the blues and get back to a place of appreciation and gratitude? We’d love to hear your advice in the comments below.