Josh TrentIdentity Transformation Architect and award winning Host of the Wellness + Wisdom Podcast—a decade-strong show with over 750 episodes and 15M downloads.

COMPARISON: A THIEF of JOY | TOM BILYEU | WELLNESS FORCE RADIO

19 Jul 2017 · 0 min

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A short interview segment (Tom Bilyeu and Josh Trent) exploring how comparison undermines wellbeing and how adopting a "learner" mindset—shifting from thinking of oneself as inherently "smart" to seeing oneself as a learner—breaks free from toxic comparison. Josh credits a radical reframing as a major breakthrough; Tom begins to describe an anecdote (an argument with business partners) that catalyzed his own mindset shift. The exchange frames comparison as "the thief of joy" and contrasts fixed vs. growth/learner mindsets.

It's when you don't believe it's possible that now it's just a confirmation of your inadequacy, when it's just a confirmation of I haven't applied energy to that, then you can say, yeah, I haven't applied energy to that. So now if I want to, like, if that's important enough, then I'll apply my energies to that. I can grow and develop in that area and get that good. But I just have to ask and answer the question, is it important enough? And so then it's, you know, it just comes down to that.
I don't know if it was on InsideQuest or if it was on impact theory, but there was this radical quote that I have in bold. I'm going to put this in the show notes. And it was the big breakthrough in my life was the day I stopped thinking of myself as smart, because I wasn't. And I started thinking of myself as a learner. That is a massive transition. I think that is taking away the thing where we've heard in sources of outlets, comparison is the thief of joy. I think when we compare ourselves, it starts to bring this negative charge and oh, I've felt it. I'm thinking about colleagues or people in my profession that might be doing more than me. It's toxic, it's poison. But that jump you made from just recognizing like, hey, I'm shift my mindset to being a radical learner, where did that come from?
That came very specifically from a moment where I was arguing with my business partners.