The Me-Versus-Them Trap

(transition whooshing) (mouse clicking) (gentle music) Headspace Studios. (gentle music continues) Hey, friends, it's Rosie. Welcome back to Radio Headspace. So the other day I caught myself doing that thing. I opened Instagram just to check one thing. Famous last words, right? 10 minutes in, I wasn't checking anything, I was comparing. Scrolling through a highlight reel of other people's vacations, book deals, glowing skin, picture-perfect morning routines. And instead of closing the app, I stayed. I kept scrolling, kept comparing, kept making everything about me. Why don't I look like that? Why isn't my project moving as fast? Why do I always fall behind? And just like that, I was trapped in what Buddhist teachers call the secret enemy, self-obsession. The secret enemy isn't someone out there. It's the way we get so wrapped up in ourselves that we disconnect from the world. We start seeing everything through the lens of me versus them. Their win is my loss. Their happiness highlights my lack. Their success is proof of my failure. And here's the paradox. The more self-focused we are, the lonelier we feel. The tighter we spiral around our own story, the smaller our world becomes, and the less room there is for connection, empathy, and joy to get in. The social comparison theory is the way we measure our own worth by stacking it against others, and it's amplified 1,000 times by social media where people are literally curating their best selves for us to scroll past at 11:00 PM in bed. The problem isn't that we compare. Comparison is human. The problem is when we believe the comparison defines our value. That day, as I kept scrolling, my whole body started to feel heavy. My chest tightened, my mood sank, and I realized I wasn't actually looking at them anymore. I was obsessing about me. And look, self-obsession isn't always obvious. It doesn't always look like arrogance or narcissism. Sometimes it looks like shame. When we're caught in self obsession, everything gets filtered through a harsh lens. If someone doesn't text back, it must be because of us. It must be our incompetence. If a friend cancels, it must be rejection. It isolates us, because when it's all about me, we lose sight of the bigger picture, that people are living their own complicated lives, with joys and struggles that have nothing to do with us. So as I sat there with my phone in hand, spiraling, I remembered something I had learned on a retreat, shift the lens from me to we. So I put my phone down, close my eyes, and silently repeated, "Just like me, they want to be happy. Just like me, they struggle. Just like me, they're doing their best." And within a few breaths, the tightness eased. Because compassion interrupts the loop of self obsession. It widens the lens. It reminds us that we're not separate, we're connected. So the next time you catch yourself comparing, obsessing, or making everything...