Latest / Good Morning From The Chicken Coop! / Season 3 - Episode 304 - The comparison trap
Transcript
- 0:02Welcome to the Good Morning from the Chicken Coop podcast with
- 0:04Kim Johnson, your creative strategist and mastermindset
- 0:08coach. Filled with inspiration,
- 0:10distinctions, perspectives, and possibilities, we help you to
- 0:13cultivate a mindset that leads you to create the best version
- 0:16of yourself you could ever imagine.
- 0:18Join Kim every morning from one of her favorite happy places,
- 0:21her chicken coop, along with all her chickens.
- 0:29Hey everybody, good morning from the chicken coop.
- 0:31Today we're talking about comparing ourselves to others.
- 0:33Now, we have talked about this subject before and the reason we
- 0:37are talking about it again is because it's the end of the year
- 0:40and we still have a lot, a little bit of time.
- 0:43So people are starting to whip out their action plan and say,
- 0:46OK, what have I got to do to get done?
- 0:48And the first thing they do in this action plan is to start to
- 0:51compare themselves to other people, whether it's numbers in
- 0:54companies, whether it's teams, whether they're, you know,
- 0:58looking at the To Do List and saying, OK, well, compared to
- 1:00last year, I had way more things done than I did this year or my
- 1:03numbers are off this year. And they start to do the oh,
- 1:08well, where is this person? Where is that person?
- 1:11Where is what is what are they doing?
- 1:14And before you know it, you are in a position where you are
- 1:17looking down at your numbers and you're like feeling meh, kind of
- 1:23like, well, it's not great, but it's not bad.
- 1:25Or you're feeling that feeling of I suck sometimes we're
- 1:30feeling good when we do this and we're like celebrating.
- 1:33But it's hard to get people to celebrate themselves.
- 1:36And I know because I do this every day, all day, it is
- 1:40incredibly hard to get people to celebrate themselves.
- 1:43And it's one of the biggest things that I have to push my
- 1:46clients to do because they don't want to do it.
- 1:49They'll just chalk it up, they'll look at it and they'll
- 1:51be like, OK, dad, that was that was OK.
- 1:53And then they move on and they don't celebrate.
- 1:55And if you don't celebrate things, you won't get more of
- 1:59those things to celebrate. It's just the energy that goes
- 2:01into it. So this comparison factor is
- 2:04incredibly important because it has to be used as a tool to
- 2:10carve out that awareness of what you could do to shift, but not
- 2:16to have the comparison and have it become a beat up session
- 2:20where you just go in and rail on yourself so that you feel, you
- 2:25know, I'm going to beat myself up and then I'll do some more.
- 2:28Nope, doesn't work like that. You know, the beatings will
- 2:31continue until morale improves. Isn't really not a good strategy
- 2:35anytime in life. Yet we seem to go to it a lot as
- 2:39human beings and it is not healthy.
- 2:42It is not good. It does not give us the the long
- 2:45term understanding of ourselves that we really want.
- 2:49Quite frankly, it sucks away our joy and it makes us suffer.
- 2:53So to put it bluntly, we have to get past that in ourselves.
- 2:57We have to choose to make something different.
- 2:59We have to choose to make better choices and we have to choose
- 3:02that we are going to allow ourselves to celebrate these
- 3:07little things along the way. But it all starts at the very
- 3:10beginning with am I choosing to do this comparison for just a
- 3:13period of time? So a strategy that I want to
- 3:16put, if you want to compare yourself, great.
- 3:18I mean, I do it. I check on things all the time,
- 3:20but I set timers on this stuff. I'm like, OK, I'm, I'm looking
- 3:24at this, I'm pulling, I'm doing this today and then I'm done.
- 3:26Because if I don't do that, I will suffer the on the long haul
- 3:30of it and I will just keep doing it over and over and over again.
- 3:33So today we are not lamenting this subject.
- 3:35We're just putting it out there and we are going to say, this is
- 3:38what you have to do. So stop it my friends.
- 3:40Don't torture yourself. Go ahead and put your, your
- 3:43thinking cap on. Give yourself a small period of
- 3:45time and end it right there because if you keep going you'll
- 3:48make yourself miserable. Make sure.
- 3:51You're very clear on what it is you are comparing and.
- 3:53Keep it very tight to it. Do not keep digging in and
- 3:56finding more and more and more because that's only going to
- 3:58drive you more and more crazy and there's no need for that.
- 4:01So we want to be very tight on the subject.
- 4:04We want to be very tight on how the time frame and we want to
- 4:07make sure that we know there are limits to it.
- 4:10We are not allowing ourselves to go all over the place.
- 4:13That's when we get into trouble because one thing leads to
- 4:16another leads to another. And what do you do if something
- 4:18does? You discover something and it
- 4:20comes up. Well, you can choose to add that
- 4:23to the list. If you just make sure you extend
- 4:27that time frame or you say, OK, that's for another day.
- 4:30Now I am very, very clear with myself on, I will give myself
- 4:34the time to do the what I'm working on, but then I have to
- 4:37move over and say that's for another day, that's for another
- 4:40time. And then I can look at it and
- 4:42feel good about it. But I will not allow myself to
- 4:46just keep parlaying and going on top of it over and over and over
- 4:49because that's when the stress starts to come and everything
- 4:51starts to get wonky. It's, it's a very simple, put
- 4:55the boundaries up, put the rules up.
- 4:57Do not let yourself run all over the place.
- 5:01You know, that's the worst. It does not do you any good, OK?
- 5:05My friends work on this because it's one of the hardest things
- 5:09to control. We have it all around us.
- 5:12We're constantly being sold to in so many different ways.
- 5:15And this is one of the things they try to sell us on that
- 5:18we're never enough. So do yourself the favor and
- 5:21please, please, please be careful.
- 5:23Don't allow yourself to do it. Have a blessed day my friends,
- 5:26and I'll talk to you soon. Bye.