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Laozi2026-08-20By Anderson#stop comparing yourself to others#comparing yourself to successful people#laozi#taoism#tao te ching chapter 20#feeling behind in life#social comparison#ancient Chinese philosophy

Stop Comparing Yourself to Successful People? Laozi

衆人皆有餘，而我獨若遺 — "The multitude of men all have enough and to spare. I alone seem to have lost everything." (Tao Te Ching, Chapter 20, trans. James Legge)

Stop Comparing Yourself to Successful People? Laozi

Laozi wouldn't tell you to stop. The Tao Te Ching contains exactly one chapter written in the first person, and in it Laozi compares himself to everyone around him and loses every line. Chapter 20 doesn't cure comparison. It shows you what the measuring is made of.

Key Takeaways

  • Chapter 20 is the book's only first-person passage, and it's a comparison Laozi loses.
  • Chapter 2 says high and low are produced by the act of measuring, not found.
  • Chapter 24: standing on tiptoe is the one posture nobody can hold.
  • The repair isn't winning the comparison. It's changing what feeds you.

Does Laozi tell you to stop comparing yourself to others?

No. He does it himself, at length, and comes out worse. Chapter 20 of the Tao Te Ching is the only passage in the book written as "I," and almost every line is a measurement against other people. Scholars treat the text as a composite work rather than one man's memoir, which makes the choice of voice here deliberate.

衆人熙熙，如享太牢. The crowd looks satisfied and pleased, Laozi writes, as if at a banquet. He is 怕兮其未兆, listless, showing nothing. Then the sentence that gives this article its epigraph: 衆人皆有餘，而我獨若遺. Everyone else has enough and to spare. He alone seems to have lost everything.

It keeps going. 俗人昭昭，我獨若昏 — ordinary people look bright, he alone seems dim. 衆人皆有以，而我獨頑似鄙 — they all have their spheres of action, he alone is dull and useless.

[UNIQUE INSIGHT] Every English guide treats this feeling as a bug to uninstall. The founding text of Taoism (also spelled Daoism) records it in the sage's own voice, at length, and never resolves it in his favor.

Why does the comparison always come out against you?

Because you built the ladder in the act of climbing it. Chapter 2 makes this structural rather than psychological: 長短相較，高下相傾. Legge renders it as length and shortness fashioning each other, height and lowness arising from the contrast of one with the other.

Read that slowly. There is no "behind" sitting in the world waiting to be noticed. "Behind" appears the moment you pick a dimension and lay two lives along it. You didn't discover the gap. You produced it, then read it as news.

And the dimension is never neutral. On r/AskMenOver30, a 35-year-old asks how to stop comparing himself to people clearly doing better, listing "marriages, families, houses, jobs, holidays, savings, investments." The thread drew 264 comments. Six yardsticks, all borrowed, all pointed the same way.

What's wrong with just trying harder to catch up?

The posture can't be held. Chapter 24 opens with two images: 企者不立；跨者不行. Stand on tiptoe and you don't stand firm. Take long strides and you don't walk far.

Tiptoe is exact. It works — you really are taller — and it costs you the thing that made standing possible. Every hour bought back from sleep to close the gap is a version of it.

The chapter then names four moves, and they're the four you make when you feel behind: 自見者不明；自是者不彰；自伐者無功；自矜者不長. Display yourself and you don't shine. Assert yourself and you don't stand out. Boast and you get no credit. Preen and you don't last. Laozi calls the whole set 餘食贅行 — leftover food, a growth on the body.

One writer on r/selfimprovement put the tiptoe in one sentence: "I internalized a belief a long time ago that I must 'make it' young."

Why doesn't counting your blessings fix it?

Because gratitude usually runs on the same machinery, pointed downward. Chapter 46 ends with a line built on one word: 故知足之足，常足矣. Legge: the sufficiency of contentment is an enduring and unchanging sufficiency.

常 (cháng) is constant, unchanging. That word is doing the work. Telling yourself you're luckier than most is a price quoted against a market, and prices move. The market shifts every time someone in your feed buys a house.

Chapter 46 also gives the diagnosis: 禍莫大於不知足；咎莫大於欲得. No calamity greater than discontent with one's lot, no fault greater than the wish to be getting. Note that it names wanting to acquire as the fault, not the acquisition. The person on r/DecidingToBeBetter with 1,204 upvotes wasn't poor. They wrote: "I'm literally making myself physically sick doing this."

What does Laozi do at the end of chapter 20?

He changes what he eats. After eight lines of losing, the chapter closes: 我獨異於人，而貴食母. I alone am different from other men, and I value the nursing-mother — 食母, the feeding source, which readers have long taken to mean the Dao itself.

Look at what he doesn't do. He doesn't win. He doesn't withdraw the comparison or decide the crowd was wrong about the banquet. 我獨異於人 stands: still different, still by the chapter's own accounting the one who looks worse.

[UNIQUE INSIGHT] Chapter 20 never asks you to stop feeling behind. It leaves the feeling untouched and swaps out the supply line. Every modern answer works on the emotion; Laozi works on what nourishes you, and lets the emotion sit there unaddressed.

That's a smaller ask than "stop comparing," and a harder one. You can put the question to Laozi directly if you want it in his own words.

Is this the same as not caring what people think?

No, and the difference decides which answer applies. When other people hold a verdict over you, the problem is a courtroom you keep attending — that's how to stop caring what people think, where Zhuangzi asks why the judgment holds your attention.

Comparison is stranger, because nobody is judging you. You're running the measurement yourself, alone, usually at night, and nobody asked. There's no room to leave.

Two more nearby feelings differ. Being respected only when you have money is a room using the wrong yardstick on you. Arriving at everything you planned and feeling empty is what happens after you win — chapter 33's split between mastering others and mastering yourself. And if you already have the position but suspect you don't deserve it, that's impostor syndrome, which runs the opposite way.

How does Laozi's answer differ from standard advice?

Almost line for line. Common advice works on your feelings about the gap. Laozi works on the measurement and the supply.

Common adviceWhat Laozi asks insteadSource
Comparison is the thief of joy, so stopChapter 20 does it in the first person and doesn't stopch.20
Run your own raceNotice the race appeared when you measuredch.2
Work harder and close the gapTiptoe buys height and costs you the stancech.24
Post your wins so people see your progress自伐者無功 — the one who boasts gets no creditch.24
Count your blessingsEnough that's priced against others moves when they doch.46
Fix how you feel about itChange what feeds you and let the feeling sitch.20

The last row is the one people argue with. Laozi offers no way to feel better about being behind. He offers a different thing to be fed by, and treats the ache as weather.

What can you actually do this week?

Three moves, each tied to a chapter above.

  1. Name the yardstick out loud. Chapter 2 says the dimension makes the gap. Write down the one you're measuring on — salary, houses, age at first book. Most people find it's a single borrowed number doing all the damage.
  2. Cut the supply for seven days. Comparison needs fresh data, and the feed exists to deliver it. Chapter 12's warning about the five colors blinding the eye is the same mechanism, worked out in Laozi on quitting the endless scroll.
  3. Feed one thing that produces no number. 食母 means a source, not an achievement. Pick something this week that can't be ranked — a walk, a language, a repair — and notice how strange it feels to spend time on it.

None of this makes you the person in the banquet scene. That was never the offer. What it does is stop you standing on tiptoe long enough to find out what your actual height is. Laozi's full profile and the ideas behind his answers sit alongside the Taoist reading of anxiety, which shares chapter 16's stillness.

FAQ

Which Tao Te Ching chapter is about comparing yourself to others? Chapter 20. It's the only passage in the book written in the first person, and it consists almost entirely of Laozi measuring himself against the crowd and coming off worse: 衆人皆有餘，而我獨若遺, "the multitude of men all have enough and to spare, I alone seem to have lost everything." Chapters 2, 24 and 46 supply the mechanics.

Does Taoism say comparison is bad? Not quite. Chapter 2 treats comparison as how distinctions get made at all, which makes it structural rather than sinful. What Laozi objects to is living inside one borrowed dimension and taking its verdict as a fact about your life. The measuring isn't a moral failure. It's just a poor thing to be fed by.

Isn't some comparison useful motivation? Chapter 24 answers this with a physical test rather than a rule. Tiptoe works. It also can't be held, and you can feel which one you're doing. If the comparison sends you toward work you'd want anyway, fine. If it sends you toward display, assertion, or boasting, chapter 24 lists all three as self-defeating.

How do I stop comparing myself to people on social media? Laozi has no line about feeds, but chapter 12 covers designed stimulation, and chapter 46 covers the appetite it feeds. The practical order is supply first, feeling second: cut the data, then see what's left. The same logic applies to breaking the scrolling loop.

Is wu wei the answer to comparison? Chapter 20 doesn't use the term, so it would be overreaching to claim it does. What the chapter offers is narrower and more usable: keep the difference, change the source. Anyone selling wu wei as a cure for feeling behind is adding something the text doesn't say.

Sources

Chinese passages are quoted from the Chinese Text Project edition linked above. English renderings are James Legge's translation as printed on those pages, except where a phrase is glossed inline for clarity.

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Stop Comparing Yourself to Successful People? Laozi · Hundred Masters