Ryan Daniel Moran gives a short motivational talk (recorded at an event in Bucharest, Romania) arguing that people’s happiness and sense of success are determined by the reference points they use to compare themselves. He contrasts 500 Eastern European sellers (average local income ~$300/month) who are excited by business growth with first-world audiences who compare themselves to celebrities or media-driven standards. He stresses choosing empowering comparisons (e.g., comparing current self to one’s past circumstances) and notes global shifts (half the world without Internet access today) that will change comparative baselines as more people come online.
Chapters
Are you poor? Are you ugly?
Are you lonely? Are you rich? Are you beautiful? Here's why I'm asking. I want to show you something, but we have to be vely, velly quiet. That's sea money, by the way. Be very quiet.
Okay? You see all these people.
And when you allow yourself 500.
People.
500 physical product sellers. I'm about to go on stage here in Bucharest, Romania, and the average income here in Bucharest is $300 a month. $300 a month. And all of them are sitting in that room learning how to run businesses. Some of them run multimillion dollar e commerce businesses. All of them are striving for that. And the reason I asked you at the beginning if you are poor or if you are ugly or if you are rich or if you're happy or lonely is because ultimately we are our comparisons. We are how we view ourselves in the context of what we compare ourselves to. I have a mentor named Travis Sago. I say pretty much everything I've learned about life I've learned from my mentors. Mark, Jenny, Jesse Elder, who's on stage right now, and Travis Sago. And Travis says every time I'm feeling down about myself, I ask myself the question, who am I comparing myself to? And this was on my mind this week because in the last couple weeks, I've been particularly hard on myself. I've been particularly hard on myself for the expectations that I had of a business that isn't going the way that I wanted it to, or the place where I thought I would be in my career or my expectations of what my body should look like. These are all things that I keep very high standards for myself on. And when I don't reach those expectations, my comparison to who I think I should be and when that doesn't match, tend to beat myself up. Or I look at my results and I compare them to my mentors or the people that I look up to. And you might look at me and compare yourself to my results or some celebrity and you're comparing yourself to how many social media followers that person has. And yesterday I was at dinner with that group out there, about 50 of them. And there was so much love and excitement about the growth that is happening of some people.
Their peers earning $300 a month and they're happy with life. And here they are running $100,000 a month businesses, and they're so excited, so enthused, because we make our assumptions, we make our judgments about the world based on what we compare it to. This is why we are more successful than ever and less happy than ever because we compare ourselves to our immediate surroundings, not where we came from. So when we look at our standard of living, for example, we, we live the lives of kings from a thousand years ago, and yet we compare ourselves to what we see on the news all the time, of what is battered into our brain, rather than comparing ourselves to someone who makes $300 a month.
I was talking with C Money back there last night and we were talking about what is the opinion of American politics here in Eastern Europe. And some people were saying actually they don't have an opinion. Oh, what's up guys? What's up? Upperman family? Some semi successful e commerce sellers over here. They do okay, I guess. We were talking about how in Eastern Europe they don't have an opinion of not only American politics, but any politics because they're so focused on putting food on the table. They don't have time to read clickbait, they don't have time to worry about how big Trump's dump was this morning.
They're busy surviving. You have the luxury of worrying about that shit. You have the luxury of stressing and worrying about the things that you do because most of the world. Do you realize for a second 3 billion people on the planet don't have Internet access? That's half the world. Do you think the world's moving fast now? Wait until the rest of the other half of the world.
Gets Internet access.
Those 500 people in that room who are used to making 300 bucks a month, who are now. Bye, Shauna. Who are now building multi million dollar e commerce businesses.
By the way they started, we found them when they were making like $100,000 a month. They went to like a million a month in like two seconds. They're rock stars. But anyway.
These guys in here, the 500 Eastern Europeans who are used to making $300 a month that are coming online and building million dollar businesses, they're so hungry, they have such hustle. When the rest of the world gets that, you think the world moves fast. Now.
If we don't get a hold of our comparisons, if we don't get a hold of what we compare ourselves to now, when the rest of the world starts doing this and current first world countries start falling behind or at least falling flat as the world elevates its total standard of living, we're gonna have some serious problems. So what do you compare yourself to? Do you compare yourself to what you see on the news? Do you compare yourself to where you came from do you compare yourself to the old you? Do you compare yourself to your parents generation? Where I have found a lot of healing, a lot of.
Happiness peace is comparing myself to the expectations that others had of me when I was a kid. I grew up lower middle class in Cleveland, Ohio on reduced lunch programs.
And no one in my family is an entrepreneur. And the fact that I've had any success at all is a miracle compared to. If you look at where most of the people I grew up with are now.
You are not the people you compare yourselves to in the future. You are the difference between who you are now and where you came from. That is an empowering comparison. But other people are operating with different contexts. People in there are in growth mode and happy as hell because they're just happy to be running something.
And if you came from that same context, the struggles that you have right now, the things that you're upset about that you beat yourself up over, they wouldn't matter at all because you would be thankful for the hustle. I remind myself of that every time I beat myself up over a sales promotion not going how I want, or a business not being in the deca millionaire sphere.
We're all operating with different contexts, different skill sets, different opportunities. And you are the difference between where you came from not to where you want to be. There is no such thing as success. There is no such thing as beautiful. There is no such thing as rich. There is no such thing as poor or ugly. These are all comparisons based on the context through which we operate. The beauty of this is that you get to control the game. You get to control what you compare yourself to. And what you compare yourself to ultimately determines whether you are happy with your progress or you are perpetually unhappy. It's why we are richer than ever in America and we are less happy than ever. And why some of the.
Third world countries that have nothing have the happiest people.
You are what you compare yourself to, so be conscious of what you're comparing yourself to.
