This is Killing Your Happiness

Hey, welcome to today's video. Today we're going to be talking about the thing that is stealing your happiness that you need to stop doing. Let's go ahead and dive in. We live in a world really right now where we can see everything that someone else is doing basically at all moments. But a lot of times what they're doing is they're only showing us the best parts of their life. They're usually not showing us the hard parts of their life. And so we tend to compare ourselves. That's just natural for humans to do. That's a natural thing. You know, we see where other people are. We see how they're on another trip and they're flying first class, and we're like, well, what the hell? I can't even afford to leave my house. Right? And you're thinking that in your head. We see what they're wearing, and they're wearing nicer clothes or more expensive clothes. We see what they're eating and they're out to nice restaurants. We see who they're with and what they're doing. You know, in natural. It's natural for us to see them and be like, oh, my God, I'm so far behind. That person's crushing it. Why am I not where they are? And if you spend time on social media, I bet you probably compare yourselves sometimes, even if you don't spend time on social media, I'm sure you're seeing other people. You're seeing what other people drive, where they live, what they're doing, how happy they look, and you're comparing yourself to them. And it's natural for us to do. But I want you to realize that comparison itself is not really a bad thing. There's a lot of good in comparison. You know, you can, if, speaking of driving, if you're driving a car, you can compare the speed of a car that's moving towards you compared to your speed and decide when it's safe to turn. Yeah, that's a really good way to use comparison. If you look at, like our ancestors, our ancestors would be able to compare the size of an animal in the distance that's running at them to see if it's something to be afraid of or to see if it's something that maybe they should hunt. They could also compare the speed at which that animal is running to them to know if they could outrun it, if they turn around and run, or if they should climb a tree. And so comparison has many, many beneficial uses. But what we're talking about here is not Comparing yourself to an animal that's running to you. What you're really doing is we're talking about comparing yourself and where you are in life to somebody else's life. And at that point is when it really starts to get bad. And there's a ton. As I was writing this episode, I started doing a lot of research on this. There's a ton of psychological research on how detrimental, comparing your life and yourself and your happiness and your weight and your bank account to somebody else's, how detrimental that can be on your mental health. And you know, there's a whole lot of psychological research that shows that people tend to assess their own self worth in how they feel of themselves by comparing themselves to other people. Because it's really hard. Like, for instance, you don't really know true happiness until you know, true sadness because you get some sort of comparison. And so we as humans, if we're not careful, tend to compare where we are and how we should feel about ourselves by looking at where other people, people are. And so a lot of people, and you might be unconscious of this, we assess our own self worth by comparing ourself to other people and seeing where they are, you know, in terms of attributes like attractiveness, what we look like compared to them, what our bodies look like compared to them, comparing our wealth to them, how much money we make, where we live, where they live, what they drive, what type of clothes they wear, what they show their businesses, revenue is compared to ours. We compare our intelligence to someone else's and we can see, oh my gosh, they just graduated with their master's and I didn't even graduate college, I dropped out. So we can compare our intelligence, we compare our success and what success looks like. So oh my gosh, they're on stage speaking to a thousand people and I'm afraid to even get on a stage. And so this is actually known, the psychological term for this, the psychological phenomenon is actually what it's considered is social comparison theory. And, and it can have a really, really detrimental effect on your mental health. There's many studies that have found that people who engage in negative social comparisons were more likely to experience a whole lot more a whole range of negative emotions throughout all day for them. So such as envy, such as regret, such as guilt, such as shame, and other things. Like what that turns into is they start blaming themself, they start blaming other people, they start getting really jealous of other people. And so overall social compari comparisons tend to have a MA to massively diminish a person's sense of well being in life, but also of what they think of themselves and their self worth ends up getting lower. And this has also really, really been found. If you have children, this is super important for you to understand is there was another study that was done on social comparison in adolescence. And it found that adolescents who frequently engage in what they call upward social comparisons, which means comparing themselves to those that they perceive as better off are more likely to experience depressive mood. And so if you have children, something really important for you to be aware of, not only in yourself, but also in your children. And this is one of the reasons why social media is so terrible for children. And so it's really important for us to understand that it's natural for us to compare everything in this world, but it's also natural for us to compare other people to ourselves. And what we need to become very aware of is when we start to compare ourselves to other people and how to pull ourself out of it. One thing that's, that's important to realize that, that everyone is on a different path than you are. And so it's really unfair to compare yourself, no matter where you are, no matter what stage of life you're at, with somebody else. It's not fair because everybody has completely different life circumstances. And you can't Compare your chapter one of something to somebody else's chapter 20. You know, you'll, there's a great phrase that surround this is you'll never be a graceful master if you don't allow yourself to be a foolish beginner. And so one of the things that I find that people tend to do, I wrote about this in my book, which is the emotional, it's called the emotional cycle of change. And when you really start to look at the emotional cycle of change, when you're new at something, it's exciting. But then what ends up happening is you end up becoming pessimistic around it very quickly. And a lot of times you start to see where you are and how there's a massive gap in knowledge between you and, and somebody who has mastered this process. And what happens is, because you are now comparing yourself with someone who's been doing something for way longer than you, you're like, I don't think I can ever get there. I don't know if I'm smart enough, I don't know if I'm good enough. I don't have enough time to get there. And so you have to allow yourself, as I say, you know, I teach people how to Grow their coaching businesses. It's called Business Breakthrough. And in Business Breakthrough, I say one of the most important things in the very beginning is to understand that you have to have the mindset of fuck it up and figure it out. You've got to be okay with fucking everything up and figuring out what works for you, what doesn't work for you, and building your own thing. But you can't compare yourself to somebody else. And, you know, a good example of this is, like, if your New Year's resolution is to lose weight and you're overweight currently, you can't look at yourself. You know, maybe it's you've never been to the gym, or maybe you've been to the gym, very. Haven't been taking care of yourself for years. And, you know, things happen, life happens, whatever it might be. If you're overweight by, you know, £40, you can't look at somebody else's Instagram and who's a fitness influencer and compare yourself to them because of the fact now you can look at them and you can say, I want to have a body like that. I will have a body like that. That's my inspiration. You can definitely say something like that. But if you look at them and you're like, why don't I have a body like that? Why don't I look like that? You know, if the person that you might be looking at might have been working out for 5, 10, 15 years, and maybe you literally just started this month, you can't expect to have their body already. You know, you can't compare yourself to them. The only thing that's actually fair is to compare your body today to what your body was last month. If you're trying to improve, you know, that's the only fair comparison that you should be making. Can you be better than you were yesterday? I think there's a thing that we tend to do is we tend to, you know, if you imagine driving, right, we tend to, in life, look out of the rear view, or, I'm sorry, look out of the windshield too much and see where it is that we need to go. And every once in a while, it is really important to look in your rearview mirror and be like, damn, look at how far I've come. Because if you're listening to this podcast, you're an overachiever. You want to do something great with yourself, and your goals are probably like, the horizon. The closer you get to them, the further you push them away. So you never fully get to where you quote, unquote, want to be. Because you'll keep challenging yourself. You'll see, you'll make your goals a little bit further away. And what you have to do every once in a while is instead of looking at people who have more money than you, have more success than you, look happier than you, have a better business than you, whatever it might be, instead of comparing yourself to them, look in the rearview mirror every once in a while and be like, damn, I've overcome a lot of stuff. I've come really far. That person might be in incredible shape, but I lost five pounds last month. I'm doing my best. I'm proud of myself. Right? That makes you actually be proud of yourself. Develop your self worth by looking at yourself and looking, not comparing yourself to somebody else's. But your self worth gets developed by you and you alone, which is important. You know, you can't compare the business that you started last year with somebody who started their business 10 years ago. You know, yours hasn't had as much time to mature. Yours is still in the baby phase. They're in the, you know, the adolescence turning into teenage phase. You haven't learned the lessons and made the mistakes that you needed to to be where they are. But you can't compare your business today to where it was six months ago. That's fair for you to do. Now, let's be really real with this, and I want you to kind of think about this and think about just the overall energy of it, because there's always the thoughts and there's the feelings around these, but there's also just the energy that something holds. I think that people underestimate how much we can sense other people's energy, how much we can sense our own energy, and we don't really pay as much attention to it. And I think that we're a real cerebral world where we think, think, think, think, instead of going like, hey, what do I feel? You know, when you compare, does it make you feel good or does it make you feel bad? You know, rarely. Does you, you know, you comparing yourself to somebody else feel good? Cause you're usually not comparing yourself to people who are doing worse than you're usually comparing yourself to people who are further away than you and further along in the process, just a little bit farther down the road. And so the comparison usually brings in the feeling of lack. A lot of times, and I have found myself here years ago and I really started to work on it is it brings in the feeling of jealousy. You know, I would look at people on Instagram and Be like, why don't I have the business that they have yet? I feel like I should be there and I would guilt myself and I would shame myself, and I'd be like, how are they bringing in that much revenue? And I'm bringing in half as much as they are. And I've been doing this for a while. And, you know, you start to think about it and start to get jealous. And if you think about that, just think about the energy of jealousy. The energy of jealousy and lack are not magnetic energies. You're not attracting anything to you. If you could imagine that there's a future that you want and you desire and you close your eyes and you could attract that thing like a magnet to you, would the energy of jealousy and lack be a magnetizing energy? No, it's actually that lacking energy is more of pushing that thing away. So by getting jealous and feeling the feelings of lack, you're actually pushing away from you energetically the thing that you want more than anything else. You know, a jealousy energy pushes that thing away from you. And whatever you focus on. Because we are such incredible masters and manipulators, consciously and unconsciously of our environment, if we're focusing on lack, if we're focusing on jealousy, what we don't have, we're going to continue to attract and create jealous things, to be jealous of and lack and to not have. Right? And whatever you focus on in your life, you create. And if you're focusing on lack and jealousy, you will create more lack and jealousy in your life. You need to learn. I had to go through this journey to congratulate that person. When you see someone who just bought the Lamborghini and you're driving a Toyota or whatever it might be, and it's 20 years old and it's fallen apart, you need to look at that person who just got the Lamborghini and be like, fuck, yeah, congratulations, great job. And if you want one of those, one day, I'm gonna be there one day is what you could say. Whatever you had to do, you had to overcome. This is you consciously speaking to that other person who will never hear this. Most likely, whatever you had to do, you had to overcome a lot to get there. Congratulations, good job. And just congratulate them. That is more of a magnetic energy, isn't it? Couldn't we agree that that is a more magnetic energy than, oh, well, they probably had to, you know, sleep with people to get to where they want to be, or they probably had to fuck some people over in order to make that much Money, right? So if you're getting jealous of other people's lives and their cars and their houses and their happiness and traveling the world, if you're getting jealous, you need to switch that to hell yeah, good for you. That is a magnetic energy. That is a good energy to be holding in your body. Hell yeah, good for you. I'm gonna be there one day too. Maybe I can start seeing what they did to get there. Maybe I can start learning from them from afar. You know, maybe if you don't know them personally, but you follow them, you could be like, you know what I'm gonna try to learn from this person. You have to realize, and this is something that I realized in a really deep meditation a couple years ago, is you have your own lane. And I had this meditation that I had and I had this visualization that the universe, whatever you wanna believe in, but this is what came to me. The universe has created for me a lane. And it's like a road that I'm on. Nobody else in this universe has access to this road. It is my own lane. I'm not in competition with any other person. All I need to make sure of is am I traveling down this lane to the best of my possibility every single day, the universe may be my own lane. All I need to do is just follow it. And so for you, you also have your own lane. And nobody else in the world can get to that lane. I can't get to your lane, but the universe has created a path for you. All you have to do is follow your own lane. Follow what intuitively in your heart feels like the right thing to do. Because all too often we think, think, think, think, think. And thinking is important. Of course it is. I'm a very analytical person. But sometimes it's really important to take a step back and be like, what do I intuitively feel is the right thing for me? And you have to realize that things take time. There's a reason why the phrase Rome wasn't built in a day is a phrase. Great things take time to build. I used to see. I remember when I was a ignorant 21 year old who was building his first business. And I would look at people who had millions of dollars and you know, I lived in South Florida, so there's freaking luxury cars everywhere. And there's Bentleys and there's Ferraris and there's Lamborghinis and I would drive on the water and there's these 40 million dollar house. I used to look at people who were like that and be like, why don't I have it? And I was freaking 21 years old. And then over the past few years, I've started to, you know, grow and be more successful and things have happened and I hit a number that I wanted to to hit for years as far as my net worth and what I was bringing in. And I realized, damn, I hit this. Like, I. Great things just take time. It took over a decade to get there. And then I started to become consciously aware that what I was doing at 21 years old was comparing myself to people who were like 60, who had 40 more years of experience, you know, 39 more years, 40, 50 years. And so I'm sitting there, 20 years old, 21 years old, being like, why don't I have it yet? What an ignorant little shit, right? Why don't I have it yet? I've been working so hard for two years, and these people are working so hard for 20 years. 30 years, 40 years. And I was realizing that I was comparing myself when I was younger and wasn't really aware, I guess you could say that I was just comparing myself to people who are way further down the road in their life, in their business, and everything that they did. I was like, damn, I still have a lot of time. And the important thing about goals is when you break down goals and make them very simple. Goals only need three things. They need direction, they need action, and they need time. Are you headed in the right direction? If you're not, you need to reevaluate and figure out what the right direction is for you. And you need to start heading in that right direction. So is what I'm doing right now getting me closer to or further away from my goals? Is a really good question to ask yourself 20 times a day is I'm scrolling on Instagram. Is what I'm doing right now getting me closer to or further away from my goals of building a multi million dollar business? It's taking me further away. All right, I should stop. So am I heading in the right direction? Am I taking the right action? Am I heading in the right direction of this path that the universe has created for me? Am I taking the right action? Step after step, moving my feet one in front of the other, and the last one is time. So it takes direction, action. Time is time is going to work its way out. If you are destined to be extremely successful in this world, as long as you're taking the. You're heading in the right direction and taking the right action, you will eventually get there. But it's not for you to decide when you will get there. It's for God or the universe or whatever it is that you believe in to decide when you are going to be there. All you have to do is make sure you're heading in the right direction. You're taking the right action. So you have to learn to stop comparing yourself to other people and only compare yourself to who you were yesterday when you go to bed tonight. When your head hits the pillow tonight, can you make sure and ask yourself, am I 1% better than when I woke up this morning? And if you do that every single day, those days will compound on top of each other every single day and you'll look back in a few years and you'll be unrecognizable from who you were today. So don't compare yourself to other people. Compare yourself to you. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please do me a favor right now, share this on your Instagram and tag me obdialjr. R O B D I A L J R so that we can continue to grow this podcast. If it impacted you, I guarantee it's gonna impact someone who follows you on Instagram as well. So if you do that and pay it forward, I greatly appreciate it. And if you love this podcast, you'll be listening for a while. And you haven't read my book. I recommend reading my book. It is everything that I know of the psychology of taking action to stop procrastinating to create the life that you want. It is called level up and it is how to get focused, stop procrastinating and upgrade your life. It is available every place where books are. So if you want to get it, go ahead and get level up. Start reading that. And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing, amazing day.