Comparison is the Thief of Joy
A big thing a lot of my clients struggle with (and people struggle with in general) is comparing themselves and their individual journeys to the journeys of others.
I have to admit, I have been this way. I was this way for years.
If you knew me a decade ago, every time someone I knew would achieve some sort of “win,” I would feel this little tinge of anger inside.
The anger would usually be followed by a “well, that fucker probably grew up with money. They don’t know how hard I worked just to get out of that deadbeat town in Northeast Pennsylvania. They don’t know how difficult it was when you don’t have a single relative that ever left there. They don’t know blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.”
How ugly is that?
Not only was my behavior ugly, but my life was ugly.
I was waking up at 3:00 p.m. with a yeasty mouth, trying to get my pounding head together so I could swallow an acidic Starbucks (which I’d feel in my esophagus for three hours) before sweating profusely on the train no matter the temperature on my way to my awful job.
I was never really angry about people I knew winning. I was angry because I was not living the life I loved. I was living a life I created, that I had full control over the entire time.
Needless to say, it’s a decade later, and my instances of comparison are few and far between. They are not non-existent, though.
I have come to realize that now is where the juice is. The goal is not to structure your life to achieve a result someday, but rather, for every day to be a day that you’d say “you know what, that was great. I’d love to do that again.”
I succeed at that probably 99% of my days.
Even ondays where I’m at my side job at the bar, I always try to look at how that job is making my life better. (And it is… I’ve met so many great people in just three short months of working there part-time.)
Then, there’s that 1% of my time where I fall into the comparison trap…
I’ll tell you my most recent story about comparison.
It started maybe two weeks ago.