I’d be jealous of them, but I simply don’t know enough about them.
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There’s no point telling you not to compare yourself with others.
As much as I tell myself not to compare my progress, my followers, my reach or my car with other people, I am still going to do it.
It’s as much a part of human nature as eating, drinking and stealing other people’s ideas. And it’s tied in with our survival instinct.
So while all these well-meaning quotes online will encourage us to “run our own race” and “only look forward” and “don’t watch the competition”, it’s like telling us to not look at someone we find attractive.
It’s just too tempting.
Where these positivity-first folks go wrong is that they talk in extremes. And life mostly happens in the grey areas between the extremes.
While they say, “ignore the competition”, what they’re really suggesting is that you don’t become obsessed with the competition.
When they say, “run your own race”, what they’re actually encouraging you to do is to compete within your capability.
But logical middle ground won’t get clicks online, so the coaches and the gurus tend towards big statements that get attention and make them look edgy and different.
When it comes to comparison, there’s a way to make it healthy, rather than obsessively toxic. And it’s pretty logical.
It all comes down to context.
Different journeys. Different destinations. Different progress.
As a teenager I participated in competitive sport, competitive academic and competitive social games.
I had to be faster, smarter and more popular than others to feel significant.
I had to play to the extremes because I honestly believed that if I wasn’t the best then I was nothing. And that made for a crazy adolescence where sometimes my body simply couldn’t do the things that other kids’ bodies could.
Add the then-undiagnosed ADHD to the equation and I was a psychological mess.
All this came from a steady diet of sport on TV, those 80s high school popularity movies, Beverly Hills 90201 and The Karate Kid — which taught me that unless you destroy your competition by kicking them in the face, you won’t get the pretty girl.
And people wonder why we’re all so messed up.
All that, safe to say, was an unhealthy and very toxic comparison. No surprise that I then had a nervous breakdown in Year 11 that only served to make me worse since everyone was focused on my physical health without anyone actually talking with me about what was going on in my head.
To be fair, I was having seizures and constantly vomiting and was rapidly losing weight, so there was some urgency. Yet if just one kind and non-condescending adult had taken time to just try and edge through my walls… I don’t know…
What I didn’t realise at the age of 16 was that context is everything.
The best kid at my school academically didn’t have to train at a sport for 2 hours every day and then practice piano for another hour before he could study.
The best kid at my school sports-wise didn’t play a musical instrument and had no interest in being academically competitive.
Likewise, the best piano player didn’t play sport and wasn’t great with non-creative subjects.
And here I was competing with each of them at their one thing that they excelled at — while I was excelling everything that all of them did.
I was an outstanding all-rounder comparing myself with outstanding specialists
I didn’t have the mental capacity at that age to realise that I was playing an impossible game that could only lead to teenage burnout.
A healthier approach eventually got through my thick skull.
Like so many men of my generation, I didn’t really work my shit out until I was in my forties.
By then I had made so many mistakes, left myself in a financial hole and had a simmering resentment against the world and anyone who had managed to succeed in it.
I had peaked in high school and that was that.
But eventually, a series of interesting turns in 2014 showed me some different perspectives.
It started with an interstate move that introduced me to a group of successful men who weren’t arseholes.
Then it was a sudden and unplanned end to a relationship.
Then some time spent in a Mens Circle where I got a taste of what positive masculinity could be like.
At some point along that path I stopped being so obsessed with how much better or worse everyone was compared to me.
Instead, it all became a game of inspiration and reminders. Rather than someone being “better” than me, I saw them as inspirational. They were simply further along the same journey as me — or were on completely different paths.
Likewise I stopped seeing myself as “better” than anyone else and instead saw where others were as being at earlier stages of the journey to wherever they were heading.
How this applies to the online world of personal brand and reputation.
I’ve not quite reached a point where I’m a Tibetan monk meditating in the snow, but I have learned a few things about people and the online world over the last 26 years of working and playing in it.
People’s online selves are usually just amplified versions of whatever they are in real life.
Social media hasn’t ruined society; people have. Social media has just exposed humanity for what it is. Messy, emotional and always looking for a fight.
That said, what amazing things social media and the internet are!
I was at a shopping centre with my Mum last week walking behind behind a couple who were talking to one of their Mums in Ireland via video call whilst on an escalator heading back to their car.
We live in an era where magic is happening around us daily.
Yet just yesterday I was reading a post from a very popular young guy in Sydney on LinkedIn who clearly has a bee in his bonnet about other influencers on LinkedIn — specifically those that are more popular than he is.
It takes a lot of self-awareness to handle being popular online — and even more self-awareness to be able to handle the fact that no matter how popular you get, you’ll always be less popular than someone else.
I hate to sound like one of those middle-aged guys who says that young people often don’t have the self-assurance that comes with age to handle the popularity that they may find themselves in the middle of. But you do need some maturity and perspective to handle fame.
Remember what a dick Lleyton Hewitt was? Nick Kyrgios? Bernard Tomic? Actually — what the hell is it with young Australian male tennis players?e
You will never stop comparing yourself with others. So you need to find a way to do it in a much healthier way.
Comparison is a good thing. So is competition. But you’ve gotta put a bit more thought into it than simply “they are doing better than me.”
You don’t know what their resources are, where they started from or what is going on behind the scenes. You don’t know if their business success comes with a hot mess of a personal life. You don’t have enough data.
So look at it this way.
If they’re ahead of you, be inspired by that.
If they’re behind you, remember what it was like to be there.
You can look at where they are at, you can even feel something about it. But dwelling on that is a one-way road to bitterness and it will only consume you.
