Ep 135 | Comparing Yourself To Others and What To Do About It

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick and welcome to the No Days Off podcast. We believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let's get into it. Today I'm going to be discussing comparing ourselves against others, comparing ourselves against others. And I'm going to do this by telling a story. Frankly, it's this story that brought this subject to mind for me. And it has to do with this guy. Let's call him Rob for sake of this conversation today. This guy that I coach in business, his name's Rob, and Rob recently attended our Built How event here in Phoenix. For those that were not at Built How, Built How was an event that we broke down, we discussed how individuals are building big businesses, what they're doing right, what they're doing wrong, steps that we could all be taking and applying in our respective worlds. We heard from Sarah Blakely and Jesse Itzler and Colin O'Brady and a whole host of others. The idea being, you know, the title kind of gives it away, Built How. We're trying to deconstruct how a number of individuals achieve success and get it into bite-sized, uh, pieces that we could all take back and apply in our respective worlds. Anyhow, Rob goes to the conference and he and I had not had a chance to catch up since the conference had ended. And so early last week we were chatting and I said, so Rob, how'd the event go? How'd you like, how'd you like the Built How event in Phoenix? And he said, the event was awesome. I loved it. I got so many pages of notes. I learned so many things. And I said, that's awesome. I love to hear that. Right? Like, so it was a trip worth taking. He's like, yeah, absolutely. I said, cool. So you got home and you did what with all those notes? And Rob said, well, that's kind of where I'm stuck. I said, well, what do you mean? He said, well, the event was great. And while I loved being there and while I loved learning, I got home and I was actually kind of bummed out. Dare I say depressed? And I said, I don't understand what happened. And he said, I went there and I felt kind of, I kind of felt like I was failing. Like I went there and saw all of these other people having, you know, a lot more success than me and making bigger strides in their business than me. And I thought I'd come home fired up. And I, and I actually arrived home a little bummed out. And I said, tell me more about that. He's like, man, I just, I just go there and I think, God, I could be so much further along than I am. Now I'm going to pause the story. I'm telling this right now because I think that many of us can relate. As a matter of fact, I would bet we can all relate. We've all gone somewhere or been in a crowd somewhere or attended an event and we're excited to be there. Took all these great notes, but had this moment. Maybe it lasted 10 seconds. Maybe it lasted 10 minutes. Hell, maybe it lasted 10 hours or 10 days, but had this moment where we said, Man, why am I so far behind? Why am I not progressing like so-and-so who has the microphone in their hand? And I think we all experienced this. I think this is a very common feeling. It's not judging that person. We're maybe judging ourselves and we're disappointed with where we're at. And so back to the story, Rob was feeling this way and he said, what do I do? And you know, I wasn't necessarily planned for this conversation, but It was a really interesting and important one to have. And you know, the first thing I shared with Rob, I said, Rob, I think we got to bring some awareness to this. You feel like you're behind based on what you're perceiving of others. Okay. I could, I could see, I can see why that happened. But from an awareness, awareness standpoint, you're behind relative to what? Like against what are you grading your pace or your success or your, you know, path to achievement against? What, in other words, what are you judging yourself against? What are you making this decision against? What goals have you outlined and can compare against? What, what's your life plan? What's your purpose? How are you judging yourself? Like, what are you judging yourself against? Like, let's bring awareness to this. Right? Because if you're comparing yourself to others' goals, others' ambitions, well, that's going to be a lost cause. So step 1, Rob, let's go through an awareness exercise. What are you aiming to achieve in business and in life? And forget about the conference. Forget about all you heard. Where do you feel you stand relative to that? And he gave me an honest answer. And I think he's probably a heck of a lot closer to, you know, the desired outcome that he's aiming for. I said, cool. Is the goal, is the life plan big enough? Do you feel like it's truly part of you where you want to go? He said, yeah. I said, cool. So number 1, awareness. Where do you stand against your goals? Let's start our grading there and not against anybody else, which brings us to number 2. I said, Rob, Let's remember this game of life, this game of business, this health game, this relationship game, all these things we talk about at No Days Off. It's a game of you versus you. In other words, every day, like we talk about here at No Days Off, every day we're aiming to get better against where we stand at this moment, right? Like, I want to get a slight bit smarter in this area. I want to make a slight bit more progress in that area. And every day it's not you versus the world. It's you versus you. And when you win against you, when you compete against yourself and you win against you on a daily basis, the output of that would— will end up being a success that quite possibly others envy. Not that that's, that's the objective, but the output, what others will see is just the, the equation or just the, the, the output of the equation. That is how you are getting better every single day, how you are stacking wins each and every day. In summary, it is you versus you, which led me to the third point I made in my conversation with Rob. So Rob, not only do you have to have awareness as to where you want to go and how you stand relative to that, and not only, not only do you have to remember this is a game of you versus you, I want to strongly encourage you to maybe make your mantra what I made my mantra this year, which is less window and more mirror. Less window and more mirror, which we've talked about on a previous episode or two here at No Days Off. Less window, less focus on what's going on outside of you, less focus on what's going on outside of your business and your family and your life, and more focus on on what you see in that mirror, which is kind of another variation of you versus you, but less window, more mirror. If we had a little bit less FOMO and a little bit more focus on what we're doing and the enjoyment we're having in our own world, I think that your feelings of feeling less than would subside. And then the very last thing I said to Rob, and this is actually, I guess, a commercial for a future episode that'll be coming up here. This last thing I said to Rob, I want you to keep this in mind. I said, Rob, I want you to know that delay does not equal defeat. Delay does not equal defeat. You can never be defeated if you simply do not quit. So when you win, it may not be on the timeframe that I win at, or that your neighbor wins at, or your peer, or your friend, whatever it may be, your competition wins at. People progress at different paces. But just because you feel a little bit delayed does not mean at all that you're being defeated, because you're never gonna quit. And when you never quit, you can't be defeated. Now I'll go back to a previous episode. There is a difference between losing and getting beat. Losing is when you are not prepared mentally, when you're not at the level you need to be to win. Getting beat means just simply not winning on the scoreboard that day. So going back to the statement, delay does not equal defeat. Right? Just because it's taken a little while doesn't mean you're defeated. You can't be defeated if you don't quit. Now, you could be losing, you got to be careful around that. And if so, fix your mindset, fix your attitude, acquire new skills, and get after it. Because you'll never be defeated if you don't quit. So in summary, if you go away to a conference, or you're looking out the window and seeing somebody else have success, I want to call your attention back to number 1, what are you judging yourself against? What are your goals? What's your purpose? Where do you stand relative to that? Number 2, remember, this game is you versus you, which leads to number 3, less window, more mirror. And then lastly, number 4, delay does not equal defeat. You're on your own pace. Whether you win in 25 years or you win today, it's irrelevant as long as you never quit. We're going to wrap it up. That's all we have for today, the No Days Off podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better, so let's get after it.