Lesson 2: Comparison
“Comparison is the thief of joy.”
Not only will comparison steal your joy, but it will rob you of your momentum, confidence, and can ultimately make you question your own worthiness. So why do we still do it?
My first year in the business, I was truly in just fight or flight mode. LOL. Sounds dramatic, but it’s true. This industry is a total whirlwind, and just getting on my feet in my new business was a full time job plus some.
It wasn’t until my second year when I got into the groove of things and felt more settled that I started to do something us humans do constantly. I began comparing myself to others. I started looking right and looking left at my colleagues and other people in the business and comparing myself to them, and like a dark cloud, comparison started to roll over me. What I didn’t know then was that with that cloud also comes a terrestrial downpour of doubt, fear, and questioning. I would look at my coworkers doing twice or even three times the production that I was doing and be in awe of how they made it look so easy… meanwhile I was youtube’ing how to double strap a water heater for an appraisal re-inspection to get my ONE escrow closed (true story…. don’t ask). I would see those in my same industry posting beautiful new listing photos and getting massive production awards and I sat back and questioned my own worth compared to them. Them vs me. What a mistake…
I have FOR SURE not arrived completely on this subject, but I was given some really great advice from a mentor that I remind myself daily when the thoughts of comparison creep in. The advice he gave me was to always remember that we are all running our OWN race. Not our co-workers, not our idol on social media, not our siblings—NO ONES. We are in our own lane, and our only competition is the person we were yesterday. We are racing to break our own personal record, not anyone elses. What good does it do me to compare myself to a coworker who has been in the business for 10 years longer than I have? What good does it does it do me to scroll Instagram and compare myself to the blogger with 50k followers that she has been working on growing for YEARS? Newsflash, it does nothing but rob us of our own power. I was at a conference recently and one of the analogies that was given when talking about comparison was thinking back to 2nd grade math facts when our teacher told us to KEEP YOUR EYES ON YOUR OWN PAPER. Instead of focusing on what other people are doing and comparing it to our accomplishments, what if we redirected that precious energy to where we are going? How about when we see others killing it we cheer them on instead of doubt ourselves and our abilities? I learned such a valuable lesson from my mentor in year two of my business and am so thankful for the wisdom and perspective it has given me.
Let’s run our own race today, shall we friends?
