In this solo episode of the Optimizing Beyond podcast, host Josh Negron explores how the habit of comparison can simultaneously rob high‑achievers of joy and lull them into complacency. He explains the two sides of the trap: looking up at more successful people can trigger envy, inadequacy, and regret, while looking down at less successful peers can foster a false sense of satisfaction that stalls growth. Negron offers a series of mindset reframes and practical tools to break free. He introduces the “bigger pond” filter, urging listeners to seek larger, more challenging environments but only with discernment that aligns with personal values. He recommends a “truth‑replacement” technique—speaking concrete, forward‑focused truths into moments of envy or regret—to counteract negative day‑dreaming. The episode then shifts to the importance of an inner circle, contrasting paid mentorship (high‑ROI, transactional) with the concept of a “running mate,” a complementary peer relationship that multiplies growth. Finally, Negron provides a four‑point audit for listeners to assess their current state: (1) joy‑thief/complacency check, (2) speaking truth into day‑dreams, (3) applying the bigger‑pond filter to room selection, and (4) evaluating the presence and quality of a supportive inner circle. He closes with a call to action for listeners to pick one audit item, implement a change, and keep moving forward.
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Welcome to the Optimizing Beyond podcast. I'm Josh Negron, and this show's all about sharing lessons, ideas, and strategies that sharpen your thinking, strengthen your habits, and push you to grow beyond comfort zones. Let's dive in. Comparison is the thief of joy and the cause for complacency at the same time. How can this be? It seems like it might hem you in from both sides. Here's the main idea. We're told to measure our progress, but what happens when we mistake outperforming the average for actually reaching our potential? Today, we're gonna talk about the trap of relative success. We're gonna cover how to stop looking at the wrong scoreboards, how to filter the rooms you put yourself in, and how to find the right people to keep your momentum alive. Welcome back to the show today. As I was prepping for this episode, I was just captivated by that unique idea That we can both be trapped by overperforming and underperforming at the same time. And I thought that was really an interesting dual-sided trap. And this all hinges on the idea of comparison. And you may be asking yourself, how does comparison actually hem in high achievers from both sides? And that's a really good question. And I would say from the very beginning here, it'll hem you in from looking up or looking down. And let's break that down. So looking up, you may have heard the quote before, comparison is the thief of joy. And that's the idea of you might be successful, you might've reached a certain level of success. However, there's always gonna be somebody who's more successful than you. And if you look at them in the wrong way, look up, and you don't have enough discipline to fight the negative thoughts of looking up and you're overwhelmed with envy, inadequacy, And regret, then that's the consequence we're talking about right here, the looking up and having it steal your joy. Now, conversely, looking down, what does that look like? I think we all know looking down is something that breeds complacency. You look at someone else who's not as successful as you, or maybe doesn't have the same things, and you might look at yourself and say, well, at least I'm not like that guy. You could use that with your relative success, maybe with your health, or any sort of things that you wanna justify why you're at where you're at, and you're pretty comfortable there. At that point, you're just looking at the average person and you're just saying, well, I'm better than most and that's good enough. So that consequence is you're looking down and you're allowing the comparison to hem you in on that side to justify you to stop pushing, which essentially takes your foot off the gas and stops you from getting better that 1% every single day we always talk about. So then how do you address this? Now, as I mentioned earlier, it also depends on your mindset. So when you're looking up, you don't always have to have those negative emotions. You don't always have to wrestle with inadequacy, envy, or regret by what you I'm sure most of you have heard of the idea of fish in the pond, and it's often said that if you find yourself being the biggest fish in a pond, then you need to find a bigger pond. And this touches on multiple areas of like mentorship and having the right inspirations in business specifically, where this is most often used. And this has so much truth and it's why it's so widely used. But by that very same token, it addresses one very glaring limitation. If you've done a good amount of work on Regardless of your actual success level, maybe from an external standpoint, just going to a larger pond does not always guarantee you what you're looking for. In other words, when you go to a larger room, as they say, you're going to be encountering people who are more successful, at least from a worldly standpoint. But successful people are unhappy all the time. We have endless examples of celebrities and famous people that have all the wealth and success that they could possibly dream of, and they are absolutely miserable people. But hey, we all want a shot, don't we? Aside from that, that's the danger of just searching the bigger room. I'm arguing that it also requires a certain amount of discernment from you. Just because somebody is a millionaire or even a billionaire doesn't necessarily mean their advice is for you. In other words, just because they have more doesn't mean they're more fulfilled. And this is where discernment comes into play. If you have been optimizing your mindset for a long time, then this is my encouragement to you. There's nothing wrong with you seeking to filter out those people that aren't really going to offer you anything, even though from an external standpoint, you'd almost be silly not to listen to them. So at this point, you're looking not just for bigger fish in general, you're looking for bigger fish that have what you are looking for as far as what matches up with your values, your mindset, and your ideas of fulfillment. Now you might be saying to yourself, well, sure, but you said at the very beginning, looking up is one of the things that can be a trap. And you might be saying, for me, when I do that, that's when I have the negative emotions you talked about. So how do we address those things? And that's a super good question. I would always encourage someone to stretch themselves by putting themselves around people in bigger rooms and challenging themselves to think bigger around people who naturally think that way. So that's always gonna be in my advice. But when you catch yourself regularly slipping into envy or maybe getting trapped in this self-abusive cycle where you look at your own past and you're filled with regret and frustration of, again, what you This takes practice. I hear so many people say, oh man, I'm so behind. And yet you can find plenty of stories of successful people who didn't quite break through until after 40 and even 50 and beyond. So I think the first thing is recognizing that this is a self-critical spiral or how you are daydreaming yourself with what they have. None of these things are gonna lead you to anywhere constructive. So the first step is recognizing when you're having those moments and speaking truth into those moments. Remember, removing something that you don't want gets a lot easier when you're able to replace it with something that you know is true. So if there's a lie, you need to have a truth on quick draw to put in there. So for those of you who are looking at your past and being really self-critical, you can't control anything back there. You can only learn from it. So you can only control today and beyond. So plant that truth in there and move forward. What can you learn from them today? So in summary, Saying something like, I cannot change the past. I can only focus on my decisions and my actions in the future. And this will help you fight regret, kill covetousness, and forces your focus back to what you can actually control. Now, I know a lot of small business owners, and one of the things that I hear more often than I'd like is the discouragement of just having to do it all alone. And they're doing awesome. They're already outperforming the average. But how do they keep their daily progression when there's nobody around to help them grow? It's literally just their sheer willpower. And at some point when it's all you and all by yourself, it can get pretty exhausting. And so for me, that's where it's important to really begin to focus on your inner circle. They say you will become who you are around the most. The show me your 5 friends and I'll show you who you're gonna become. Those kinds of concepts that we've talked about before. Now, there's really 2 ways that you can do this. The first one is mentorship. We've talked about this before in previous episodes. This can be a paid mentor, some other types of mentorship. The easiest, quickest path to getting high yield is going to be paid mentorship. If you're a business owner, good news, that can be something that your business pays for. And this is often the highest ROI mentorship, just simply because there is an established transaction. A lot of times, if you're not paying somebody, then they can reschedule, they can push you off. And really, what are you going to call them to? They're giving it to you for free. And so paid mentorship really puts an expectation for them to deliver, for them to be present and to offer value. If not, then the deal's off. So if you are looking for an easy, quick boost, a paid mentorship is one of the easiest ways to do that. But that isn't the only way. It's the easiest, it's the quickest, certainly isn't the cheapest, but it's an avenue that if you wanna snap your fingers today, you can have a mentorship tomorrow. But another solution is finding what I like to call a running mate. This is somebody who's likely pretty close to the same area you are in so many respects, in mentality specifically, and then likely somebody who has different strengths than yours and likely strengths that will shore up some of your weaknesses is one of the ideal ways that you can do this. And this creates a type of mutual momentum that is really, really unique. One of these relationships is often described in the book Traction with the relationships between Visionaries and integrators. And this is where this complementary relationship in business really is what Gino describes as rocket fuel, where it's beyond addition into multiplication, to where 1 1 does not equal 2. It is an exponential number. And as these 2 people continue to grow, then that causes a tremendous amount of friction, which isn't always pleasant, by the way. You have to be willing to lean in and commit to it instead of walking away. But if you're willing to put in the work, put with the uncomfortability and sometimes the intense tension that comes with that, what you can find is the compounding growth becomes absolutely unchartable. Now, I happen to have a relationship like this, and I've heard people say, man, I wish I could find something like that. And I'll tell you, there isn't a completed menu that you can find somebody who's a perfect fit for this and then can suddenly make all things right. That doesn't work with any relationship. So sometimes you may be surprised who might be a great candidate for something like this. That being said, I've said before that if you don't have something like this, then I encourage you to spend time making yourself the best version of you that you can possibly be. Because if you're not a significant asset or an addition to somebody else, then your ability to find a running mate like this, that kind of idea, is going to be very, very slim to none. You have to also be somebody who somebody would want to choose if the roles were reversed. So I cover that in several previous episodes, and I'll link them below, where you can work through how to potentially attract this type of person to help you scale and help you grow as well. So how do you find out where you're at? If you're like, yeah, I mean, sometimes I take my foot off the gas, other times I just go bananas. So like, how do I know where I'm at? So this week I want you to run through an audit of your progress, your circle, and your mind in these 4 practical areas. Number 1 is run the joy thief and complacency check. So do you ever look up and lose joy on a regular basis? Do you look at people who are more successful than you and think, gosh dang it, if I only had this, or I'm so behind, I wish I wouldn't have done XYZ when I was this years old. Do you find yourself getting frustrated in that way? Or do you find yourself taking your foot off the gas because you look at people who are just not doing much of anything and you're like, you know, I'm pretty good. Do any of those resonate with you? And if so, that's the first step in recognizing which side of this trap we're talking about is catching you. So then number two is speaking truth into the daydream. So when envy or regret creep in, I'd like you to stop and say, "I cannot change the past. I can only focus my directions and my actions in the future." Remember, keep yourself grounded. Looking back at shoulda woulda couldas is not going to help you here. The way to remove those negative energies, those negative emotions, is going to be to replace them with truth. And number three, let's apply the bigger pond filter. Take an audit. What kind of rooms are you getting into? Are you comfortable in the rooms that you're in? Are you being challenged? Are people pushing you? Then you may need to find a different room. But remember, be selective. You don't have to settle for somebody who's more successful but is on his 5th marriage. No, no thanks, dude. I don't need that. Now, that isn't to say that somebody who is very successful but maybe has a shattered home life cannot offer you anything. One of my rules personally is that I think I can learn something from almost anything and anybody. But that takes a tremendous amount of attention to detail in recognizing when I can find those little nuggets of truth that are hidden everywhere. But that isn't somebody that I'm necessarily going to want to be that close to for everything, if that makes sense. So be selective in the rooms that you choose. If it's full of people who you just don't respect for a myriad of different reasons, there's plenty of other rooms with successful people that share your values and your views. And then the fourth one, are you constantly running this race alone? Who's helping you out? Who's in your corner? If there isn't anybody, let's take some consideration. Do you need to consider hiring a mentor? I know a lot of times small business owners are very, hmm, let's be nice, very frugal individuals, as am I. And the idea of paying a mentor can sometimes be challenging. I totally get that. But remember, that is the quickest way to not be the only one. That being said, is there also somebody around you that can be that running mate for you? It doesn't even need to be someone like a business partner. It could be another business owner. You don't have to go into business together, but you're doing a similar thing and you're sharing what you're experiencing, how you're managing employees, how you're creating culture in the way that you want it, and how you're handling challenging situations. That can be an amazing running mate scenario. So put yourself out there. Again, also working on, are you the person that someone would wanna choose? So if there is an awesome business owner in your town that you're like, man, I would love to have that person as my running mate, as my brother in arms, through this race, if you walked up to them right now and asked, would they say yes? Would you offer them any value in return? That's an amazing question. And that's why we're always pushing to do the things daily that can help us be better tomorrow, because you never know what's around the corner and what opportunities you might leave on the table if you're not the best version of you that you can possibly be. And so that's it. I want you to look at your life and reflect on these 4 things and see, are any of these challenging you today? Just pick one and see what you can change in order to stop being trapped by looking up or looking down. Thanks for listening to the Optimizing Beyond podcast. Remember, growth happens when you take action. So subscribe, share this with a friend, and most importantly, put what you learned into practice. Until next time, remember, keep moving forward because daily anything changes everything.
