One of my favourite authors is Malcolm Gladwell*. I read his first book The Tipping Point about 10 years ago and was instantly hooked.

I’ve just finished reading his most recent release David and Goliath. It looks at how unfortunate scenarios and seemingly bad circumstances can actually be advantageous. Just as things that appear like an advantage, can actually be a hindrance.

A concept that Gladwell talks about is the idea of “relative deprivation”.

This is the idea that our impressions or feelings about a situation are not about absolutes, but are in comparison to the social norms that we are exposed to. Rather than comparing ourselves globally, we compare ourselves to the people in the “same boat as ourselves”.

Let me demonstrate this idea using two examples that Gladwell cites and then using a third of my own, making it relevant to the concepts I regularly write about.

What’s the best university to go to?

When most people think about what college or university to go to, often the idea is to pick the places that are the most prestigious. Places like Harvard, MIT, and Yale in the US, or places like Oxford or Cambridge in the UK.

Now, not everyone who signs up to a college degree finishes it. Sometimes they will drop out of college completely; other times they will transfer to a different major (often something that is seen as “easier”).

This drop out happens across all universities and colleges, whether we are talking about the most prestigious places or some “lesser” community college.

Interestingly, it’s often pretty predictable who will succeed and who will fail.

It’s based on how someone is doing in his or her class. With those sitting in the bottom third being significantly more likely to drop out.

When Gladwell talks to some of those who had gone to prestigious universities, found themselves in the bottom third and subsequently changed majors, they all typically say the same thing.

That the course was too hard.

That they couldn’t get their head around it.

That they used to love chemistry but now they were out of their depth.

Comparison is relative

But these feelings are all to do with whom they were comparing themselves to.

They were amongst the best in the world and felt like a failure. In reality, they would probably have still been in the 99^th percentile.

If this same person had instead gone to a less prestigious school, they would have been the top of their class. In comparison to everyone else, they would have felt like they really got it.

It’s highly likely they would have therefore continued on and finished their degree in their chosen major, rather than transferring because they felt like the class dunce.

There is a famous quote by Jim Rohn that states, “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”. I agree with this sentiment and the company you keep can be helpful to spur you on. But there is a point on the bell curve when this stops being the case and where this actually becomes demoralising and demotivating.

Income Inequality

The next example Gladwell uses relates to income and I’m going to directly quote from the book:

Who do you think is happier: a poor person in Chile or a poor person in Honduras? Logic would say Chile. Chile is a modern developed country. The poor in Chile make somewhere close to twice the amount of money that the poor in Honduras do, which means that they can live in nicer homes and eat better food and afford more material comforts. But if you compare the happiness scores of the poor in both countries, Hondurans trump Chileans handily. Why? Because Hondurans care only about how other Hondurans are doing. Because average country income levels do not matter to happiness, but relative distances from the average do, the poor Honduran is happier because their distance from mean income is smaller. And in Honduras, the poor are much closer in wealth to the middle class than the poor in Chile, so they feel better off.

So what does all of this have to do with health or nutrition or what I do on a day-to-day basis?

It all has to do with comparison.

Relative deprivation is all about people who are “in the same boat as ourselves”. But this is not as straightforward as it used to be.

Think back to 100 years ago and when people were evaluating themselves in different areas of life, it was an evaluation based on their peers. People they went to school with, who lived in their neighbourhood, their extended family.

Yes, there would have been differences within these groups, but these differences would have been fairly minor, relatively speaking, for most people.

Today things have drastically changed. You can follow celebrities and models on Instagram and Facebook. We are in a sense invited into their world and become their “friends”. Our day-to-day life is awash with advertisements, featuring beautiful people who’ve been made up and photoshopped to perfection.

Unfortunately what happens is that all of these people then make it into the category of “in the same boat as ourselves”. We now evaluate our lives based on the experiences of those we never would have thought about before.

And while I think there are always problems with comparison and what it robs from us, this is multiplied exponentially when we hold up the best of the best and assume that they are just the norm.

I’ve worked with actresses and models and they perfectly exemplify this point. Many people think they would trade anything to look like them. But because these actresses and models spend their days surrounded by other beautiful people, they feel worthless and unattractive.

The same can happen in the area of business, relationships, money, and so on. People don’t care about these things in a vacuum, they care about them because of status or how they feel others are doing.

Who do you compare yourself to?

But if you are going to make this comparison, how about including the whole world in your evaluation?

Would someone in the third world be caring about being slightly heavier than before Christmas or would they just like to find some clean running water? Would a Syrian refugee care about the fact that they shouldn’t have eaten that cupcake or would they be just hoping the boat doesn’t start taking on water?

My assumption is that if you are reading this blog, you probably have it better than 95% of the people in this world. This doesn’t mean that you can’t want for more or that life isn’t tough a lot of the time.

Just that you should be mindful about who you are comparing your life to because this will dramatically affect how you feel it stacks up.

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