E216 | Comparison Is The Thief Of Joy

Today's topic is something fairly broad but I think a lot of people in our field need to hear this loud and clear.  Comparing what you're doing to your peers and colleagues can have a lasting negative effect on you and your business.

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Episode Transcription:

Hey, what's going on, guys? Doc Danny here with the PT Entrepreneur Podcast, and I am looking in or looking forward to digging into this topic with you guys today. Something that I talk a lot about within our mastermind, within a coaching client that I have consulting work that we do, and even with my kids, and it's something that I've had to work hard on improving in myself.

And this topic is. Something that's pretty broad. It's not just business-related, but I think it will directly affect your business, but also relationships you have in ways that you look at what you're doing in your career or, you know, things that you accomplish in life and whatnot. And, and it's sort of broad.

And that is this idea of comparison. And I've talked about this before, and I think it's something that. Is something that I probably need to talk about quarterly, on the podcast and bring up because of how problematic it can be for you to sit around comparing what you're doing to what other people you know, or your colleagues, peers, whatever it might be, are doing as well.

And this is something that I have done my entire life, and I think that. If you're a competitive person and you like to win, or in many cases, I feel like I probably hate losing more than I want to win. Do you know? That's perhaps a better way to put it. And when I see what other people can accomplish or have accomplished, or the perception of what they've accomplished, it's, it's always been very hard for me not to compare myself to them because, in some capacity, it's basically like, okay, who's winning?

If life is a race, who's winning? Right? And that's such a stupid ass silly way to look at it. If you think about it, like who's happier? Who's got more money, who's traveled more? You know, who, who, who has whatever kids that are smarter or better at whatever it is. And like, if you think about this, that is a great way to be a miserable human being.

And there's a quote that I love, and it's Teddy Roosevelt. And he said comparison is the thief of joy. And, and. It's probably my favorite quote I've ever heard. And you know, for me, it struck me as something so right for myself. This idea of comparison is the thief of joy. And as I look back in many cases when I got, I was frustrated or was dealing with, you know, just trying to figure out how to work through something.

Often it was because of comparison. Whether it be in business, and then this happened to me early on in the market, and it still happens to me sometimes. I'm just much better at dealing with it, you know? And, and comparing where I'm at in my business with where other people I know are at in their business and, and you're always going to find somebody that's further along than you like, that's a thing in sports, it was like this for me.

There's always somebody that was going to be better than me at something. I was just never going to be the best baseball player in the world. Right? Like, could I. Play at a certain level? Sure. But was I going to be playing major league baseball and an all-star team? No. that was just wasn't in the cards.

It wasn't going to happen. And so for me to be able to compare myself to other people athletically was detrimental. You know, I think it's nothing positive about that necessarily. When you look at your standpoint on related business, it's damaging. And the reason why is. You have to look at your time and resources, time being probably the most scarce resources that you have, the most valuable resource that you have to protect.

If you are taking your just finite amount of time to be able to work on things that directly push your business forward and you're making that precious time, that valuable resource, and then you're putting it towards. You are looking at what other people are doing, comparing yourself to them, and probably feeling bad about what you haven't accomplished.

You are squandering the one thing that everybody wakes up in in a day and has the same amount of, I wake up, I have 24 hours to do things right. Whatever it is, I need to do or want to do. Jeff Bezos, who owns Amazon, wakes up, he has 24 hours. Elon Musk wakes up 24 hours, you name him, same, same. Everybody's the same.

It's the most precious resource that we have. And yet you, especially sitting online looking at what somebody else is doing and thinking to yourself and comparing where you're at or where you'd like to be, where they're at, or the perception of where they're at and where they, you know, are going, or things that they're doing, people that they're connecting with.

All you're doing, all you're doing. Is you are comparing yourself to somebody else, and it is a waste of your time. It's a waste of that resource that we all want so much more of. And I can tell you, you know, for me, when I first started my business, I just wanted to make money. I just didn't want it, and I just didn't want my family.

I want to support my family. That's the biggest thing I wanted to replace my income of, of being a captain in the military and, and be able to do that via this practice that we started. That was goal number one. Then it was getting busy so that I could make more money than whenever I was in the army. Then you hit the stage where it's like, Holy crap, this is not what I signed up for.

I'm time reduced as can be now. Yeah, I'm making more money, but I'm time poor. I have no time even to enjoy it. Then, the people around me that I now have like more resources to be able to do fun shit with. So you're time-poor, and all you do is you try to get more and more of your time back as that goes along.

It's this fallacy of this idea of business ownership. You can get trapped in this place where you become time-poor, and you know, as you do that you have to think about is if this is such a precious resource, why are you wasting even a minute of that? Comparing what you're doing to somebody else that you have no control over whatsoever.

Instead of focusing on the things that you actually can control, the things that you can indeed dictate whether they occur or not, based on your efforts, your intelligence, your willingness to take a risk on yourself, develop relationships, build services, and product channels. Fulfill on that and focus on those things instead of, Oh, so-and-so, I think is, you know, whatever.

Seeing this patient that I used to know, I wonder what they're doing. I wonder what kind of certification they've gone to. I wonder, you know if they've got like, you know, connections with this other gym and then next thing you know, you're on social media for a fricking hour. Looking at somebody that, trust me, it doesn't fucking matter what they're doing.

Not one bit. It doesn't change anything. The only thing that changes that, you know, you've taken that hour away from doing something that could have been very beneficial for you and your business and or the people that you're trying to support and you've wasted it on looking at what other people are doing.

I look at it like trading, like, like it's a transition or a transfer as it's a better way to put it. It's the transfer of your energy one way or another. You either put your energy towards the things that you can control, and we all have a finite amount of bandwidth. You know, you can't be high energy work, super detailed solving problems all day.

You have a finite amount of energy and time where your brain is functioning at a super high capacity. And if you are taking time away from that and you're stressing yourself out by comparing what you're doing to other people, you're transferring that—same energy to someone else and PR in particular.

I look at it like I'm transferring energy that I have and, and capacity and efficiency that I have to this person that now I'm comparing myself with, so I'm shooting myself in the foot. What an actuality, if I would not have compared myself one bit to anybody and just focus on the things that I can actually.

Control and build the build on those things and work hard on those things. I would be so much further along, and not only that, I'd, I'll be way happier. Way happier because, again, we go back to the quote from Teddy Roosevelt. Comparison is the thief of joy. How do you feel when you compare yourself to other people?

Unless you're just like crushing somebody and then you want to compare where you're at to somebody, and in actuality that just makes you an asshole because you're gloating, you know, you're like, Oh, this person is, they're not figuring shit out. It's like, well, dude, okay. Are you, are you happy about their lack of success?

Like is that the best place for you to be spending your time. Probably not in 90% of the cases, we're comparing ourselves to other people because we feel like they're doing something better than us. This can be from a business standpoint or like professionally like we're talking about, this could be a lifestyle, this could be, Oh, so-and-so looks like they're in way better shape than me.

I don't know if I could ever get there. I'm going to, I'm going to just go down the rabbit hole of looking at like what kind of supplements they're taking, what kind of workouts are doing, and you're just comparing yourself to somebody else, and instead of that hour you spent comparing yourself, somebody get down in the fucking gym and do something about it.

Like, take that energy and put it towards something you can change instead of just squandering your time. The same thing happens with relationships. You see somebody, and they're with another person, you know, and you're wondering, man, how do they like that person's attractiveness?

Like how does that person end up with that person? And like other kids look smarter than my kids, and other kids look like they're better at soccer than my kid, and Oh man, their kid speaks two languages. My kid only speaks one language. Is my kid an idiot? Like this is the irrational shit that we think about.

And that we go down the rabbit hole on it and it's a massive waste of time. I mean, for god sake, it's the most critical asset that we have, and we are wasting it all the time. And when I hear people telling me, they don't have enough time in the day, and I understand this always, Oh, I just don't have enough time in the day.

I just, I feel like I need like an extra hour or two hours. Okay, here's a great way to find it. Anytime you find yourself doing something that doesn't relate to the thing that you want to improve, most don't do it. Just spend your time on the things that actually add to the longterm changes you're trying to create and now look every like you don't have a finite amount of energy either, by the way.

So yeah. Do I like to sit down in the evenings and watch madmen with my wife? Yes, I do. Does she have? Maybe like a somewhat of an odd obsession with Don Draper probably. That's okay. Cause I'm the one that's there. You know, in the evening, not Don Draper, I'll take it. So here's what I want you to think about.

Like, you enjoy your life and other things around it. You can't just be 100%. Focused on like success in your business or progress in your career because then you'll have nobody to hit the finish line with, and you'll just be a miserable, lonely human being. So you have to be able to enjoy these other things, but don't waste your time on these things that you cannot change on these things that just do nothing but creates additional stress in your life.

And I don't know about you, but like I don't want and, or need any additional stress in my life. I'd prefer not to have it. And as health practitioners, we know full well what that ends up doing to people. It's the silent killer. It takes him out, you know, stresses that variable that many people just don't talk about.

And one of the best ways to stress yourself out is to sit around comparing yourself to where everybody else is, instead of focusing on what you can do about bettering your position in life, period. Improving your situation in life, bettering your business, building your relationships with your family and your, your spouse, your, you know, extended family, friends, whatever it is, things that are going to bring.

You know, health, happiness, enjoyment into your life. That's what you got to focus on. So my point of this rant, I guess at this point is, is just this. It's what Teddy said, and it's enormous. And I wholeheartedly believe it. Comparison is the thief of joy. And if you are sitting around comparing what you're doing to everybody else, you're robbing yourself of a happier life, more efficiency, more success.

More impact on others and all the things that you want. And if you can start to realize at the moment that you are comparing and it was beginning to make you unhappy, it's the first place to start to be able to stop it. So that's it, guys. I love that one. So again, thanks for listening. As always, we'll catch you next time.

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