And hello to you and welcome to the Richard Nichols podcast, the personal development podcast series that's here to help inspire, educate and motivate you to be the best you can be.

I'm psychotherapist Richard Nichols, and this is episode 218.

It's titled Comparison.

And if you're ready, we'll start the show.

Comparison is the thief of joy, said Theodore, over a hundred years ago,

"'he knew it then, and we all still know it now.

"'But do we remember that?

"'Probably not enough, I'd say, "'especially when we so often compare ourselves the wrong way,

"'in the wrong direction.

"'We compare everyone else's best to our worst. And focusing on

the things that we see as the worst part of ourselves is not an ingredient in the recipe for success.

Social comparisons can be useful, though. They can inspire us and show us what we're capable of.

Social comparisons can help us to say,

that could be me when we see someone achieve something,

which is why athletes don't like going first in group competitions,

because they set the bar for everyone else to then aim to beat, which is so often the case.

We see it in so many places. You can watch films that have been talked about for decades,

as being the best films of all time, the best TV shows of all time, and most are very good

for their time, but re-watching decades later, it's easy to think

that they could be better, like that section dragged on longer than it needed to, and that

acting was a bit stiff. My son's really into Star Wars, has been for years, and I know it's a controversial thing to say, but I think it's overrated.

I mean, they're all right films for what they are, but do they really deserve such an enormous fan base?

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