How do I stop comparing my finances with other people's?

Comparison often begins as a search for information and quietly becomes a judgement about who you are. Someone else's holiday or home may seem to reveal that you are behind, even when you know almost nothing about the resources, obligations or compromises behind it.

It may help to identify the particular person whose position unsettles you. A stranger's wealth and a sibling's success can touch very different feelings. Are you afraid of exclusion, disappointed in your own progress, or reminded of an earlier competition that never quite ended?

Those feelings deserve attention without being accepted as an accurate account of your life. Consider what you would still want to change if nobody could see the result. That can help recover a wish from the contest around it. You need not stop noticing differences. You can practise refusing to let every difference become evidence that your own life requires an apology.

A comparison can be useful when the circumstances are understood and the question is specific. It becomes much less useful when a glimpse of someone else's consumption is asked to measure the adequacy of your life.

Return to what your resources need to do. Which commitments matter? Which pressures are real? Which pleasures do you actually enjoy? These questions may reveal something you want to improve, but they also give improvement a purpose beyond overtaking another person.

Jing would remove the audience to discover the wish. I would not require complete freedom from the audience. We live among people, and their choices influence ours. The practice is to notice that influence before obeying it. You can admire a friend's home, congratulate them sincerely and still return to a life arranged differently. Friendship need not become a continuous exchange of financial evidence, even when the conversation around you keeps inviting that exchange.

We must standardise the competition immediately. At present one person is displaying a kitchen, another a holiday and a third an unexplained afternoon off. Nobody has published the rules, yet everyone appears to be losing.

I propose an official Financial Comparison Uniform: identical plain trousers and a large card reading INSUFFICIENT CONTEXT. Participants may reveal one impressive purchase only after disclosing the invisible circumstances surrounding it. The ceremony will take several days and most guests will leave.

For fairness, inherited kitchens will race in a separate division. Holidays paid for by someone else must carry the sponsor's flag. An afternoon off may be disqualified if it was spent waiting for a plumber.

Jing wants you to discover what you want without the audience. I support the experiment. The audience has been extremely loud for a group that cannot agree whether the prize is a larger house or more time spent away from it.