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Growing up, I wanted to be someone else. Not any one person in particular, just someone other than who I actually was. I wanted to live in Birchwood, the neighborhood in Queens, NY with houses instead of the tiny apartments where we lived. I would cycle by those Birchwood homes imagining how happy the people were that lived there. I felt this craving for our dwelling and my life to be different for much of my childhood. I wondered why I wasn’t as tall, as athletic, or as smart as others. I somehow ignored all I did have: an intact family, a warm home, enough to eat, new clothes when we needed them.
Then, in my early twenties, I came across a quote, often attributed to Oscar Wilde: "Be yourself, everyone else is already taken." I started reciting it to myself, and over the years it turned into a personal mantra: Be yourself, Spencer, everyone else is already taken. It became my go-to whenever my mind slipped into comparison mode.
The Measuring Mind
In Pali, the language of early Buddhist texts, the word for comparison is mãna, which translates as "the measuring mind." It's what shows up when a friend shares some good news and, instead of feeling happy for them, you feel a flicker of something else... envy perhaps, or a kind of flatness.
We've all experienced something like this. A colleague gets the promotion you quietly desired. A friend buys the house you've been telling yourself you can’t afford. The news itself is neutral but the feeling you experience is the measuring mind doing its work, sizing up their gain as your shortfall.
Wishing People Well, On Purpose
When māna turns into envy, the antidote is mūdita; the joy we can feel when another is joyful.
Joy is a precursor to many beneficial states of being, and it multiplies when we can experience the joy of others. The more joy we can feel, the better for our health, vitality, and financial success.
When we hear a baby laugh, or our dog learns a new trick, that joy is easy for us to feel.
But when a co-worker gets that promotion, it’s not as simple.
In those harder moments, turning envy or that “what about me” feeling into joy requires that we do something counterintuitive, like the way we’re instructed to steer into a skid on ice instead of away from it.
Here’s a simple practice—bring to mind a person you envy (someone who has something you want) and offer these wishes:
May your success continue.
May you flourish forever.
It might feel like you're faking it at first. But with practice, it becomes easier to say these phrases with real sincerity. And when that happens, you have the potential for experiencing exponentially more joy.
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