On the afternoon I caught myself scrolling, comparing, and quietly handing my joy away

I need to tell you about a moment I had this week, because it is a little embarrassing and completely human, and I have a feeling you will recognize it.

I was on Instagram. Just scrolling. And somewhere in there I started comparing myself to other creators, other practitioners, other women doing what I do. Her reel did better. Her feed looks more polished. She seems further along, more confident, more whatever than me. And within about ninety seconds of this, I felt genuinely worse than I had before I picked up my phone. Smaller. Behind. Not as good.

And then, thank goodness, I caught myself. I actually said it out loud: what are you doing? You are standing here measuring your whole real life against a stranger's highlight reel, and letting it steal your joy.

Because that is exactly what comparison does. It is a thief. And what it steals, more than anything, is your confidence and your joy.

Which, if you know your Chinese medicine, is a very specific kind of theft. So let me put my practitioner hat on, because this is the perfect note to close out the season on.

Joy is the emotion of the Fire element

In Chinese medicine, we are in the Fire element right now. Fire is the element of summer, the most yang, the brightest and warmest and most active time of the whole year. And every element has an emotion it governs. For the Fire element, that emotion is joy.

The Fire element lives in the Heart. And in Chinese medicine, the Heart is not just a pump. It houses the Shen, which is the closest thing we have to a word for the mind and spirit together. So joy is not a small, fluffy thing here. It is a Heart thing. It is central.

When the Fire element is balanced, joy shows up beautifully. In its right measure, joy warms and enlivens you. It opens the Heart, it draws you toward other people, and it spreads, the way a real belly laugh is contagious and suddenly the whole room is lighter. Balanced Fire feels like passion, connection, clarity, intimacy, and that vibrant, engaged, glad-to-be-here aliveness. That is the gift of the season.

And comparison is a direct assault on all of it.

What comparison does to your Fire

Here is the clinical part, and it is more interesting than you might expect, because comparison does not knock the Fire element out of balance in just one direction. It can push you either way.

It can fire you up. This is the version I felt on Instagram. Comparison lights a hot, agitated, wired feeling in the chest. Your thoughts start racing, you feel behind, not enough, vaguely panicked, and you keep scrolling looking for more evidence of how you measure up (spoiler: you always come up short, that is the whole trap). In Fire element terms, this is the excess side. The qi rises, the Heart heats up, and you get that restless, anxious, can't-quite-settle agitation. It is the doomscroll state, and it is your Fire element burning too hot.

Or it can deflate you. The other version is quieter and heavier. Instead of firing up, you go flat. You compare, you decide you will never catch up, and something in you just dims. The joy drains out, motivation goes with it, and you land in a kind of "why do I even bother" apathy. In Fire element terms, this is the deficient side. The fire diminishes, and with it goes your capacity for joy and connection.

Two opposite feelings, one root. Both are the Fire element pulled out of its balanced center. And both start the same way: you took your eyes off your own life and put them on someone else's.

That is why comparison is such a thief. It does not just make you feel bad in a vague way. It reaches right into the Heart, the seat of your joy and your spirit, and it robs you of the thing the Fire element is supposed to give you.

The part that actually matters

Here is what I reminded myself of, standing there with my phone.

That polished feed I was comparing myself to is a highlight reel. It is the three good seconds out of someone's messy, ordinary, taco-fighting day (yes, I am still thinking about that taco). It is not real life, and it is definitely not the whole of that person. Measuring my actual, complicated, real self against someone's curated best moments is not just painful, it is dishonest math.

And more than that, comparison pulls me away from the only thing that has ever actually mattered in this work: how I show up, and how I serve my people. Nobody else can do that the way I do. The moment I am busy trying to be more like her, I am not being me, and me is the entire point. My clients do not need me to be the most polished practitioner on the internet. They need me to be present, warm, and genuinely theirs.

And the same is true for you. Nobody can do what you do the way you do it. Your presence, your hands, your particular way of seeing a person, that is not something anyone on that feed can copy, and it is not something you can grow by trying to be more like them. It is already yours.

Comparison forgets all of that. It has to be actively set down.

Try This: settle the over-fired Heart

So when you catch yourself in it, when you feel that hot, wired, not-enough feeling rising in your chest, here is a beautiful way to bring the Fire element back toward center.

The point is PC6, called Neiguan, which translates as the "Inner Pass." It sits on the inner forearm, about three finger-widths up from the wrist crease, right in the middle between the two tendons. PC6 is one of our best points for opening the chest, calming the Shen, and settling an agitated, over-fired Heart. When your inner world is racing, this is a gateway back to calm.

Pair it with ylang ylang. Ylang ylang is a soft, floral heart-opener. It relaxes that tight, guarded, wound-up feeling in the chest and gently brings an over-fired Heart back down toward balance. Wherever you have landed on the Fire pendulum, a calming floral like this one is a safe and lovely choice for coming back to center.

Here is the practice. Put one drop of diluted ylang ylang on PC6. Then hold it. Gentle contact, no pressing, no tapping. Just rest your fingertips there and let the oil settle in. Do both arms. Breathe slowly, and while you are there, put the phone down and come back to your own actual life for a minute. That is the real medicine. The point and the oil just help the door open.

For your clients

You will start seeing this everywhere once you look for it, because your clients are doing exactly what you and I do. The client who is anxious and wired and constantly measuring themselves against everyone else. The one who has gone flat and joyless because they have decided they do not measure up. Both are comparison stealing Fire element joy, from two different directions.

PC6 and ylang ylang is a gentle place to start with them, and it is easy to send them home with. But the bigger gift is the reframe: their joy is not gone, it has just been handed away to comparison, and it can be reclaimed. And if someone's flatness runs deep or has been there a long time, keep asking questions and stay curious about what else might be going on. This work is real support, and it is also completely okay to be the practitioner who notices when something needs a closer look.

Closing the season

I opened this Fire element season back in early summer, and now, even though it still feels like the height of it out there, we are quietly beginning to close it. The most yang time of the year is starting, ever so slightly, to turn.

Which means something is coming next. And here is a little something to sit with until then: did you know there is a fifth season? Not spring, summer, autumn, or winter. A fifth one, tucked into the turn, with its own element and its own quiet medicine. We will step into it together next week.

For now, the Fire element still has some warmth left to give. So take the joy that is actually yours. Put your phone down. And let your own real, un-polished, one-of-a-kind fire be the thing you bring to your people. That is more than enough. It always was.