Stop Comparing Yourself To Other People
Have you ever felt like everyone around is making so much more progress than you and like you’re lagging behind in this life race with no clarity about how you catch up?
‘I’m so behind’ — this is the statement that started a 2-hour conversation I had with a friend on FaceTime this week. He was sharing his frustrations with me, something we do to each other often. However, today was my turn to listen and so I listened. He shared about how is felt behind our other friends and how this year hadn’t shaped out the way he had planned. His voice was strained as he spoke and you could feel the frustration oozing from his pores. He really was disheartened.
My first role as a friend is to listen and so I listened attentively and I nodded. I could empathise with him because I’ve been there before, I’ve had the same feelings I understood what he was saying; I suspect you reading this do too.
Why was he frustrated?
The summation of his frustration was that his business was taking (in his words), too long to reach the profit phase. He had been building it for 2 years now and it just wasn’t having the success he wanted or had planned for. What made his life doubly difficult was that he was surrounded by lots of friends who also ran businesses. Their business appeared to be profiting and growing. This twined with how he was feeling meant he just wasn’t having a good time.
Some of you may be yelling a simple solution at your phones or laptops right now, ‘stop watching other people’. Well, you must also know this is easier said than done. In fact, many of us know that comparison is the thief of joy but that doesn’t stop us from nursing the self-destructive trait of comparison and jealousy.
A few weeks back, I wrote about our generation and how difficult it is to ignore other people. Social media means that building a business is now done in close proximity to other people who share constant updates and the best bits of the journey. How then in this climate can you break free from joy sealing comparison but also ensure these feelings of bitterness towards your progress don’t tarry and linger.
Ditch late and early
Alright, so let’s get meta for a minute. The concept of early and late are interesting ones. It’s always fascinated me. Time has always been generally defined as the measurement of an object moving through space. The concept of late and early only really applies when you consider the moment of other objects as well.
Put it this way, if it wasn’t for other people, you would arrive at places when you arrive at them. Time would just measure how long it took you. That’s all. It’s only because of other people that we have a sort of mental league table where we rank our times. How long it took us to get 10k followers, how long it took to build a sales funnel, how long it took us to get into a relationship. These league tables are arbitrary, unnecessary and toxic. They pit us against our friends, family and even strangers in a way that’s unhealthy. When you arrive in a place is when you are meant to arrive, when you start to profit is when you are meant to profit. Can you do it faster yes sure; faster than you did it. However, you don’t need to look at someone else’s times because that builds this distorted league table in your head which doesn’t help you in the slightest.
It sounds meta but consider it. If you couldn’t see what times other people did, would you have a concept of late or early? Probably not. Think about all the ways you can stop worrying about other peoples achievements and comparing yourself to them.
Don’t compare your insides with someone’s outsides
This is a golden rule I first heard when I was in year 8. Comparison is always unhelpful because of imperfect information or the information imbalances. You know everything about your processes, your impact, your failures. You know all of your insides. Because of this, when you compare yourself (your inside) with someone’s outsides, the comparison is often imbalanced and therefore unfair.
You end up beating yourself up for where you are now and overpraising someone for what they are telling you. As a general rule of thumb, always tell yourself that you are not in a good position to make comparisons because you lack the crucial context that would make your comparisons fair. Don’t trust your comparisons because they are simply unfair!
Good output doesn’t mean a good process
A bit more on outsides. Years ago, I remember speaking to a younger brother of mine about his university degree. He had this habit of starting essays days before it was due, pulling all-nighters, downing coffee and getting it done last minute. The thing is, he was quite brilliant and so would get a very good grade. He did this throughout his whole degree.
Now imagine him posting on social media 'just got a first-class degree' you, the reader would think ‘wow, what a smart individual.’ This is all true. But you might also think 'wow what a disciplined individual' this is not true. We often think a good result or a good outcome means a good process but this was not true. I remember later explaining to him that his process may be working for a university degree, but later when the stakes were higher, it was a dangerous way to work. Life would test his process and not just outputs.
This is another key reason why you should be careful about comparing yourself to other peoples outputs. It’s not worth your time and is a waste of your energy.
“They think that intelligence is about noticing things are relevant (detecting patterns); in a complex world, intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant (avoiding false patterns)”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Have an amazing week folks,
M.T. Omoniyi
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Are All Politicians Corrupt?
M.T. challenges Lord Michael Hastings on UK politicians and corruption, the royal family and also the climate emergency. Lord Hastings is the former global head of corporate citizenship for KPMG International. He was previously the BBC's head of public affairs and then the first head of corporate responsibility (2003–06). He was the second chancellor of Regent's University London.
Topics:
• Should MPs work second jobs?
• Is Owen Patterson actually in the wrong?
• The Royal Family
• Costs of the royal family
• Should we have an elected head of state?
• Is the royal family value for money?
• Advice for young changemakers
• What can we learn from the American system?
• Climate change