‘Circling Back’ to Yourself Is a Powerful Form of Self-Care

An exercise to stop sabotaging your own happiness

Illustrations by Kaki Okumura

It just happens sometimes. I’ll be scrolling through Instagram and see that someone went on a luxurious vacation to a country I’ve never heard of, or see on LinkedIn that an old classmate got a great job promotion at a fancy tech firm. Sometimes it’s not even someone I know, but it’s an article titled “How this 22-year-old made millions in revenue in just 6 months” or “These 2 teens are changing the world with their innovative app idea”. I don’t even need to read the full print, I’ll just suddenly feel a bit inadequate, a bit ashamed.

What am I doing with my life?

We’re all heard the old adage — comparison is the thief of joy — but just because we know it’s true doesn’t mean that we are impervious to it. Humans are naturally wired to compare and compete, and we often do it against the people who we determine to be in better standing than us, whether this be physically, financially, or socially.

Some might say this helps motivate them to do better and to be better, but if you are not comparing yourself to the right measures, you end up preoccupying yourself with measures that will never matter.

In my life, I have given a f- about many people and many things. I have also not given a f- about many people and many things. And those f-s I have not given have made all the difference. -Mark Manson

So if you find yourself comparing yourself to someone else that you know you have no reason to measure yourself up against — whether it be a high school classmate, an old co-worker, or some stranger on the internet — I like to engage in something I like to refer to as distancing myself from myself.

What is distancing yourself from yourself?

It might seem odd that when you are trying to be more mindful of your own thoughts, that the precise thing to do is try to get as far away from them as possible. But we can be terrible at assessing our own reality, and we are often much harsher at judging ourselves than we would be our…