Keri Washington uses a yoga-mat metaphor to explain why comparing yourself to others derails focus. Evan Carmichael says true success comes from your unique qualities, not copying what works for someone else. Daily practices like meditation or talking to customers keep you believing in your own path.
Good morning, Believe Nation. Today's message is "Stay on Your Own Path." Over to you, Keri Washington.
I had a yoga teacher who said to me, "Always stay on your own yoga mat because sometimes if you're in headstand and you're too busy looking at the person on the other mat, you could literally break your neck. I feel like that's a really good metaphor for life. To stay on your own path, do what's right for you. You can't compare your insides with somebody else's outsides because you never know what's going on for somebody else, really.
So I think comparing yourself to others can be encouraging but also can be discouraging, and it's important to understand what kind of feeling you're getting from doing it. I think on the positive side, I think looking at what other people have done can be a source of inspiration. For me, watching the top 10 videos, the Unstoppable videos, the Believe Life videos, seeing these great entrepreneurs off doing amazing things, that's encouraging for me, that's inspiring for me, that makes me want to push harder, do more, not settle, break free from my environment and go off and hit that next phase. That's really encouraging for me. Even looking at other YouTubers who might be ahead of me in a different space, a different field, I might want to cross where they're at, beat their their subscriber numbers, their view numbers, right? It's like it serves as short-term motivation. That's encouraging for me. The downside is the discouraging part, which can impact a lot of other people, where if you look at a Steve Jobs and you say, listen, Steve Jobs was already a mega success in his 20s. I'm 45 and trying to launch my business. I'm never gonna make it because I'm not in my 20s, I'm not a young kid, so I can't do it. Or if you're starting something on YouTube, Well, look at that person, they started off and in 6 months they already had 100,000 subscribers. I'm 2 years in and I'm still struggling. That can be the negative side of it. And so paying attention to how you see those things in your environment matters because if you're looking at somebody else and that's discouraging for you, then stop it, right? Or just try to pull the positive out from them. You're never gonna have success being exactly like Steve Jobs or being exactly like me on my YouTube channel or being exactly like somebody else, right? At the end of the day, the message of stay on your own path is important because the only path for you to have massive success is to be you and to really embrace the special uniqueness about you and go all in on that to go create something that nobody else has done before. So you end up creating something new where you're playing in an environment that nobody can touch you because you're off being you and nobody can be you, right? Except for you. But I think looking at other people, I see a positive side to it if you can find it that encourages you to want to do more. So depending on your view, is it encouraging or discouraging to look at other people who've had success and potentially model them or potentially be discouraged by them is important. And for you to understand what is it that gets you motivated and excited and full of belief, whatever that is, if that's you meditating in the morning, if that's you watching other videos, if that's you having conversation with people, if that's you Looking at the feedback from your customers, if that's you tapping into the pains that you had in building this thing up and wanting to see this come together. Whatever gets you off on a high, whatever takes you from this flat emotion to up here, like I wanna go do something big, whatever creates that chasm for you, that great leap forward, then that's what you wanna inject daily in the morning into your life so you're off doing something amazing. So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, Does looking at other people who've had a lot of success, is that encouraging for you or discouraging for you or both? Let me know, I'm curious. Put it in the comments below, I'm gonna join in the discussion. Thank you guys so much for watching, I hope you have an amazing day. I believe in you, I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso. I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.
