Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #190| Why Comparison Is Quietly Draining Your Joy (And How To Take Back Control)
Transcript
- 0:00Michelle Gauthier: We have the power to think about that and analyze that and say, do I want to compare myself in that way?
- 0:10Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:18Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach.
- 0:23Michelle Gauthier: On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's Working Woman experiences.
- 0:28Michelle Gauthier: And in each episode, you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease, and relaxation to your life.
- 0:37Michelle Gauthier: Hello, friend.
- 0:38Michelle Gauthier: Today we are again talking about comparison.
- 0:41Michelle Gauthier: We talked about comparison on Monday, so we're just doing a little comparison week, so to speak.
- 0:46Michelle Gauthier: If you haven't listened to Monday's episode, which is episode 189, you can go back and check that out.
- 0:50Michelle Gauthier: You don't have to listen to it before you listen to this one.
- 0:53Michelle Gauthier: But if this story resonates with you, you can find out more information about why we compare, what happens when we compare, and how to shift yourself out of it.
- 1:02Michelle Gauthier: I think comparison can sometimes be useful, but I feel like that's a sliver of the time.
- 1:06Michelle Gauthier: Most of the time it isn't useful.
- 1:08Michelle Gauthier: And sometimes we do it unconsciously and make decisions based on that unconscious comparison.
- 1:14Michelle Gauthier: A couple of years ago, I started going to this spin class.
- 1:17Michelle Gauthier: It was at a gym that I had newly joined, and it was really fun.
- 1:22Michelle Gauthier: I was new to it.
- 1:23Michelle Gauthier: I didn't really know how to do it right, but I loved the music and the energy, and especially the instructor.
- 1:28Michelle Gauthier: And I used to sit by this woman who be ended up becoming a friend, and we would kind of commiserate about how hard it was, but in a good way, we loved it.
- 1:36Michelle Gauthier: We thought it was so fun.
- 1:37Michelle Gauthier: And eventually the instructor decided she was going to leave to teach at a new studio, cycle bar.
- 1:42Michelle Gauthier: You might have a cycle bar.
- 1:43Michelle Gauthier: So I followed her.
- 1:44Michelle Gauthier: And this was like a the first one was at just a regular gym.
- 1:48Michelle Gauthier: It wasn't a super high-tech setup, but cycle bar is kind of like soul cycle.
- 1:52Michelle Gauthier: The bikes are all connected to a system.
- 1:54Michelle Gauthier: And so when I followed this same instructor, there was one difference in the class, and it was this giant leaderboard.
- 2:01Michelle Gauthier: So at every class, your stats were projected on the wall, your ranking in the room, your numbers, your place, all that stuff.
- 2:08Michelle Gauthier: And it was so crazy what happened because the minute my effort was compared to somebody else's, and I saw that I was like, I would say I was usually three-fourths of the way down the board, maybe even lower than that.
- 2:23Michelle Gauthier: And the bikes all had numbers.
- 2:25Michelle Gauthier: So I could look at the person next to me and be like, how is she doing so much better than I'm doing?
- 2:30Michelle Gauthier: And I'm trying as hard as I can.
- 2:32Michelle Gauthier: So the comparison really sucked the fun out of it for me.
- 2:36Michelle Gauthier: If you think about the same instructors bringing the same energy, the same kind of music, the same kind of workouts, everything was the same except for the comparison.
- 2:46Michelle Gauthier: So what had just brought me tons of joy and enjoyment a week earlier made me feel like, oh, I'm actually not good at this.
- 2:53Michelle Gauthier: I was wrong.
- 2:54Michelle Gauthier: I thought I was having fun and enjoying this, but I was wrong because now I'm not good enough.
- 2:58Michelle Gauthier: And so I never said, oh, I'm going to stop because I'm not on the leaderboard, but I found that I just kind of slowly stopped going.
- 3:04Michelle Gauthier: And when I look back now, I realize I let comparison steal my joy.
- 3:10Michelle Gauthier: Like, why does it matter if I'm at the bottom of the leaderboard if I end covered in sweat and I really enjoyed myself and I loved the music and I loved the people in the class and the instructor.
- 3:21Michelle Gauthier: But that's kind of what comparison does.
- 3:23Michelle Gauthier: It can take something where we are succeeding and feeling good about it, if we're just comparing to ourselves and make us think that we're failing at it.
- 3:31Michelle Gauthier: It kind of tricks you into thinking, well, if I'm not winning, I just shouldn't do this anymore.
- 3:35Michelle Gauthier: It doesn't motivate you.
- 3:36Michelle Gauthier: It just shrinks you and makes you want to leave.
- 3:39Michelle Gauthier: And we do this, you know, spin class is an easy example, but we do it in parenting and in business and in relationships and in our goals.
- 3:47Michelle Gauthier: And I think the truth is I was, I was never doing it wrong.
- 3:52Michelle Gauthier: I was just thinking of it in the wrong way.
- 3:55Michelle Gauthier: After I'd been a life coach for a couple of years, I've been a coach for eight years now.
- 3:58Michelle Gauthier: So it was maybe like three, four years into my business.
- 4:02Michelle Gauthier: I joined this mastermind group where you had to be making a certain amount of money in order to join.
- 4:10Michelle Gauthier: And every month, as part of being in this mastermind, everyone would talk about and actually fill in a spreadsheet that everyone else could see of how much money you made that month and how your business was doing.
- 4:21Michelle Gauthier: So the grading system was based on like how much income you had brought in.
- 4:26Michelle Gauthier: And the goal was to help us grow our businesses.
- 4:29Michelle Gauthier: So I think it makes sense to measure that on money.
- 4:33Michelle Gauthier: But what I found is when I got into that mastermind, I was like, oh my gosh, this means I'm really doing it.
- 4:40Michelle Gauthier: Like I'm successfully owning this business.
- 4:42Michelle Gauthier: I'm making enough to support my family.
- 4:45Michelle Gauthier: I was so excited about it.
- 4:46Michelle Gauthier: And then once I got in, it was leaderboard syndrome all over again.
- 4:51Michelle Gauthier: And it really made me compare myself to others.
- 4:53Michelle Gauthier: There are people in this class making millions of dollars.
- 4:56Michelle Gauthier: And suddenly what I thought was successful and great made me feel like I shouldn't even be here.
- 5:01Michelle Gauthier: So instead of looking at it as, oh, I've got this opportunity to be with all these other women who are successful, my brain did the same thing as it did at Cycle Bar.
- 5:11Michelle Gauthier: And it was like, oh my gosh, I don't think I can ever do that.
- 5:14Michelle Gauthier: Should I just quit right now?
- 5:15Michelle Gauthier: Made me totally forget the impact that I was having on women's lives who I was helping, made me totally forget the lifestyle that I was able to create for myself because of this business, meaning I can go to my kids' soccer games, I can drop my kids off at school, I can not work on the weekends.
- 5:34Michelle Gauthier: It made me forget all of that because the measuring stick was suddenly how much money are you making?
- 5:39Michelle Gauthier: And I could actually go on and on about various different experiences in my life.
- 5:43Michelle Gauthier: And I'm sure that as I'm telling this story, maybe you're thinking of some of yours where you thought you were doing just fine and you were maybe even happy with yourself until you compared yourself.
- 5:51Michelle Gauthier: I'm even thinking of college, the place where I went to college.
- 5:55Michelle Gauthier: It's kind of like if you do well in high school and then you go to a good college and you get to college and you're like, oh my gosh, everybody here is smart and does well.
- 6:01Michelle Gauthier: And then you get through college and you get used to that, and then you go to graduate school, and it's the same thing all over again.
- 6:06Michelle Gauthier: It's like you keep getting put in these pools where you try to rank yourself.
- 6:10Michelle Gauthier: And if you compare yourself too much, you can just end up, you know, quitting cycle bar, that equivalent of life.
- 6:17Michelle Gauthier: So I'm sharing these two stories with you just to remind you that comparison does happen.
- 6:23Michelle Gauthier: I talked about this on the Monday episode 189, that it's just part of how our brain works and it helps us try to find our place by seeing who's better or worse, air quotes on both of those.
- 6:34Michelle Gauthier: And what we have the power to do is to think about that and analyze that and say, do I want to compare myself in that way?
- 6:43Michelle Gauthier: What about me?
- 6:44Michelle Gauthier: What's my measuring stick?
- 6:46Michelle Gauthier: What's the most important thing for me?
- 6:48Michelle Gauthier: So, for example, in that business group, maybe my most important measuring stick was, can I go to my kids' soccer games and have a successful business?
- 6:56Michelle Gauthier: And maybe somebody else's was, can I make the maximum amount of money that I could make?
- 7:01Michelle Gauthier: Because that's more important to me than being able to go to my kids' soccer games.
- 7:05Michelle Gauthier: Like you, everyone is running their own race, playing their own game.
- 7:09Michelle Gauthier: So focus back in on what success looks like for you and make your decision based on that.
- 7:16Michelle Gauthier: If you're feeling overwhelmed and you don't exactly know why, comparison could be one of the things.
- 7:22Michelle Gauthier: It could be people pleasing, it could be your time management.
- 7:25Michelle Gauthier: There's lots of things that it could be.
- 7:26Michelle Gauthier: And I just want to remind you that I have a free quiz, which I'll put the link to here, that can help you figure out the main cause of your overwhelm.
- 7:34Michelle Gauthier: And it doesn't just tell you the problem, it tells you what you can do about it.
- 7:37Michelle Gauthier: There are some worksheets, um, there are specific podcast episodes.
- 7:41Michelle Gauthier: So if you're feeling overwhelmed, you can take that free quiz to find out why.
- 7:46Michelle Gauthier: Okay, have a great week.
- 7:47Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.
- 7:48Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 7:55Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthier.com.
- 8:01Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.