How are you doing, relative to others? Do you measure up? Are you at the top of the heap, in the thick of the pack, or lagging behind?
You know where to place yourself if you want to be miserable. You need to look bad. One solution is genuinely to lag, but this is hard to do on every possible measure. Just when you succeed at berating yourself for your uselessness at volleyball, some cheerful spark within will remind you of your shining knowledge of astrophysics.
Instead, compare yourself to others in such a way that you almost always look worse. There is a fiendishly clever way of doing so that those with an innate talent for self-deprecation learn without knowing they are learning it. Unfortunately, these kinds of machinations tend to work best if you don’t know that you are doing them. So if you read the strategy here, you must make its practice as automatic as possible and then forget that you ever heard it.
Imagine that you walk into a party. You have been casually following the recent election campaign, you are moderately competent on the guitar, and you are childishly pleased with the new jacket you are wearing. You look around. In one corner is a group of people chatting about the election, surrounding a party insider who knows intimate details of the polling, the issues, and the candidates. Out on the front porch, Eric Clapton, wearing a stained t-shirt, is strumming a guitar. In the inevitable kitchen crush, one couple is sporting immaculate tailored outfits that radiate cool without appearing obnoxiously flashy.
What do you do?
For maximum misery, spend the evening comparing yourself to others. But—and here’s the key—not to everyone. Choose carefully.
Remind yourself that you had made a point of brushing up on the latest political news so you might have something to talk about tonight. Compare your meager knowledge about the election to the obvious expertise of the insider in the corner. You have nothing to add that he doesn’t know already. Dwell on the idea that your self-congratulation for being so well informed now looks foolish.
In the back of your mind, you had thought that someone might break out a guitar, and you could impress with your country twelve-string rendition of Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face.” Compare this to what Clapton is doing and feel somewhat pathetic by contrast.
Compare your new off-the-rack jacket to the designer clothes of the power couple in the kitchen—you aren’t nearly as well dressed.
Keep going. Compare your hair, teeth, age, physical condition, social skills, job, income, travel experience, skill set, spouse, relationship history, friendship network, sense of humor, number of languages spoken, ability to dance, vehicle, choice of beverage, upbringing, education, address, and anything else you can think of with the other people present. It doesn’t really matter whether you know all of these details for the people around you. Make assumptions.
But do not compare your clean and new jacket to Clapton’s ratty t-shirt, your guitar skills to the tone-deaf political operative, or your election knowledge to the clueless power couple in the kitchen. Every comparison you make must be downward, with you on the bottom end.
Similarly, avoid comparing yourself to the group at large. If you do so, you may come across as better dressed, more musically talented, and better informed than average. You don’t know particle physics as well as Stephen Hawking over by the piano, but you seem to grasp the basics about as well as the person next to him. Your slacks are no match for Donatella’s leopard prints, but they’re fine by the standards of the group. This will not aid you in your quest.
Instead, choose the person representing the high end of the continuum on every variable, and compare yourself to them:
You don’t have to wait for a party invitation. You can do this anytime: at work, in meetings, walking down the street, in restaurants, meeting up with friends, watching people on television, or even just sitting alone at home. If you find it difficult, you might try specializing in a few categories: your weight, your thinning hair, your income, your inability to cook sambal green beans.
Practice downward comparisons with those few characteristics until you have perfected the art. Then you can branch out, generalize, and make yourself feel globally inadequate.
Sometimes you’ll realize that you are indeed at the bottom of the pack. All of these people are marathoners, and you haven’t jogged in decades. Carefully avoid reminding yourself of your other qualities. While they were out running, you were raising children and learning bookkeeping. These observations will only lessen the sting. You must also avoid replacing envy with admiration. Feel crushed by their achievements, not inspired by them.
Should these downward comparisons prove beyond your talents at self-abasement, the opposite strategy may be easier. Find the person with the worst example of each characteristic instead. The poorest diction. The silliest look. The lamest jokes. Cultivate a feeling of smug superiority over them. You might think that this would make you feel happy, but no. Your attitude will seep into your interactions with others, and they will gently drift away, leaving you alone once more.