- Today's topic is How to Stop Comparing Yourself
to Others in Your Career.
So stay tuned.
If you have a comparison problem, this video is for you.
(upbeat music)
I work with a lot of clients,
and something that comes up quite a lot is,
and let me know if this sounds familiar,
she's doing so much better than me,
she's so much farther along than me,
she has the same education,
and the same degree, and the same qualifications,
but she's making so much more money than me.
She is so much better than me.
He has advanced so much more quickly than me.
He got the job, even when he didn't have experience,
and I have a degree,
and experience and I can't succeed like he is.
So these, in whatever form it comes in for you,
is a form of comparing yourself to another person.
And the funny thing is is that we always compare ourselves
to the people that are doing better,
and the people that are doing better
are always gonna exist in the world.
So no matter how successful you are,
no matter where you are on your journey or your path,
there's always gonna be somebody
who's doing better than you, no matter where you are.
There's also gonna be somebody who's doing worse than you,
right, but we always look at the people doing better,
and use those people as a reason
to believe that we aren't doing well enough,
or we aren't where we should be.
So, I just find that really interesting
because we can choose to look at the people
who aren't doing very well,
but we don't ever even see that,
they're not even in our awareness.
But we look at the people who are doing so much better,
and we use those people's accomplishments,
those people's successes, to make ourselves feel bad.
Okay?
So you're not alone.
I've done this too.
So, that's what I wanna talk about today,
so we're gonna dive in.
The first thing I wanna offer is that you get to decide
how you think about somebody who's doing better than you,
okay, and on default, our brain is gonna tell us
we should be farther along, we should be doing better,
we haven't done enough yet, and then we feel crappy
because we're not at that same level.
But what I wanna offer you is you can choose
to have a different thought about that, right,
because thinking in the way that you are
is making you feel crappy, and when you feel crappy,
you don't actually want to take the actions to get better,
'cause you kind of in your head resolve yourself
to thinking oh well, I'm just not them,
I'm just not as smart as they are,
I'm not as fast mover as they are,
I just don't know what to do like they do.
And those are the thoughts that start to creep in
and take over your mind,
and when that happens, you don't ever take the steps
to advance your own career and your own life,
right, because you get discouraged by those thoughts.
While those thoughts are normal and a lot of us have them,
and I used to have them too,
what I want you to recognize is they do you no good
in actually advancing yourself, right,
'cause you're looking outside at someone else's success,
when really, you need to be looking at your own path forward
and what you can do to advance your own path.
So, when you do that, and you keep your eyes
in your own lane and you're focusing on yourself,
then you're able to actually take steps
to make yourself more successful.
But while that's not in your awareness
'cause you're comparing yourself to others
and you have this internal narrative that's saying,
oh, this person's so much farther ahead,
these people are so much farther ahead,
you're not aware of what you need to be doing
on a day-to-day basis to actually advance yourself
to where you want to go, right,
and to actually start meeting your goals.
Right?
And even when you do get to those goals,
there's still gonna be somebody
who's farther ahead than you, right,
and there's nothing wrong with that.
Everybody is on their own journey,
and you're never gonna be the person
who's at the very front,
who's succeeding the most out of the entire world,
because you're always gonna have someone who's ahead of you
and you're always gonna have somebody who's behind you.
And that's okay.
So, here's what I offer you.
You can choose to let somebody who's succeeding
make you feel inadequate, not good enough,
like you haven't accomplished enough yet,
make you feel behind,
or this person can inspire you,
they can motivate you, they can teach you something,
they can make you want to learn from them.
The second way is going to get you personally
a lot more success,
and ultimately, that's what you want, right,
you wanna be more successful.
When you're able to refocus your energy
on how you can learn from this person,
what you can observe that this person is doing,
how this person has moved ahead so quickly,
what it is that this person did,
and how they can inspire, motivate you,
and what you can learn from them,
then you open up a whole new world
of possibilities for yourself,
because we can't argue with reality, they do exist,
they are maybe quote unquote, doing better than us,
but to compare ourselves in way
that makes us feel inadequate and like not enough
is never gonna serve us, right, it's never gonna serve you
in actually moving forward on your own journey.
So, that's what I have to offer for this
is that you need to choose very consciously
how you think about somebody who's doing better than you,
because you can't get away from the fact that in the world,
there's always gonna be people doing better than you.
And secondly, I want you to consider all the people
that wish they were where you are right now,
all the people that might look at you and say,
wow, I wish I could do what this person has done,
I wish I could be where you are,
I wish that I wasn't so behind in my life,
I wish I made better decisions like you did, right.
And when you think about those people,
they're feeling the same way that you are
about this person ahead of you, right,
and it's just how the world works, it's just the way of it,
where everybody is not on the same path.
We're not all marching in line
in the same direction on the same path.
We're all taking our own different journeys,
and your journey might take a bit longer, or it might not,
and you have to set your expectations for that,
and be very self-aware of what you actually want,
and how you're gonna get there,
and I can guarantee you that comparing yourself
to somebody else in a way that makes you feel inadequate,
and like you're not enough, and like you're behind
will never serve you in getting
to where you wanna go faster, right, it'll never help you.
There is no upside, get this, there is zero upside
in actually comparing yourself to someone else
and saying they're doing better, they're making more money,
I'm not enough, I'm behind.
Those specific thoughts,
those specific sentences in your brain
are never gonna help you to focus on you,
focus on what you need to be doing
to get where you wanna go.
So, more useful thoughts.
That person has managed to move through very quickly.
I wonder what they did?
I wonder how they accomplished that?
I wonder why they did that so quickly?
I wonder what they did differently?
What can I learn from this person?
Maybe I can have a conversation
with this person and ask them.
This person is amazing.
That will help you if you can get to that point, right,
because then you can actually learn from this person,
you can get curious about this person,
and people who are succeeding,
they often wanna help other people
who were where they were before, right,
so if you approach them,
and were to say hey, would you have a coffee with me
or would you have a chat with me,
I really admire what you've been able
to accomplish in your career,
and I'd love to figure out how you did it,
because I'd like to take a similar path,
person's probably gonna remember
how they were in that same position a while back,
because they didn't start like that,
they didn't just wake up one morning and become successful,
they took steps, they made decisions.
They're probably going to be happy
to help somebody like you,
who is not as far along in the journey, right.
So, when you can use
this person's success to your advantage,
instead of using this person's success
as a way to make yourself feel bad,
you'll be able to actually advance
and actually get to where you want to go faster,
right, and it'll be more fun too,
because you don't have to have those feelings of inadequacy,
because really they don't serve you at all.
The only thing those thoughts do,
where you feel inadequate and you feel like you're behind,
you feel like you're comparing yourself
because you're not good enough,
the only thing those thoughts do
are serve you to fail ahead of time.
So, they stop you in your tracks from taking action,
because why bother?
You've got so much farther to go.
You're not really doing that well.
This person's so much farther ahead.
Why would I even try?
So these things, thinking these things on purpose,
or thinking these things like on default
like your brain might be telling you,
is just gonna make you fail ahead of time,
and when you fail ahead of time,
you don't actually move forward, right,
and then your thought that they're doing so much better,
and that they're so much more successful
and that you're not good enough, becomes true,
because you're not taking steps to get where you wanna go.
So those thoughts only serve you in failing ahead of time,
and when we fail ahead of time, we don't make any progress.
So what they do is they lead you to mentally check out,
right, you just kinda check out on yourself.
You might not even realize it,
because you're thinking oh well,
it's not really possible anyway,
and then without even realizing it,
you avoid all the things you actually need to do
to get to where you want to go.
Okay, I wanna help you with an example.
Olympic medalists.
You will never see an Olympic medalist
looking around at what other Olympic competitors are doing.
They just do not have time for that.
So let's use the simplest example.
You're running a race.
You're representing your country.
You want to win the gold medal.
You've been training for years.
Imagine if when you're running that race,
you need to take time to look around
to see what others are doing.
You're like oh, wonder what they're doing,
wonder how they're running.
Oh, they're so much farther ahead than me.
Oh, that sucks.
Imagine if that's what you were thinking.
You'd never even have a shot, right,
and that's why Olympic medalists, if you watch them,
you will never find them looking around
to try to see what other people are doing.
They simply do not have time for that,
and I had the privilege of watching a video
with one of my mentors and instructors
where she won an Olympic gold medal for rowing.
Rowing was, obviously it's a team sport,
and they were in their boat,
and they were rowing for the gold medal,
and you could see how they won,
and they were not one single person
in that boat was looking around.
You can notice that the people who did not win,
you could see a few of them looking outside their boats,
right, to see what other people were doing.
But it actually does no good
to focus on what other people are doing
because you can't control it,
you have no hold on it,
there's nothing you can do about it.
So what is the upside?
So once you start focusing on yourself,
what you can do to improve each day,
what you need to do to get where you want to go,
what thoughts you can have in your head every day
to control how you reach your goals, what you do,
how you feel, and what actions you take,
once you start focusing on yourself,
you can actually succeed so much faster,
because you're only focusing on the thing
that you have control over, which is you.
So I wanna help you with some thoughts
that will really help you to overcome comparing,
and if you're in the habit of comparing,
you might not stop doing this overnight,
but it is a practice that you have to train yourself
to do if you're going to succeed,
and you have to stop comparing yourself, and feeling bad.
So I wanna offer you some thoughts to do that.
Number one, nobody is running the same race,
and we're not meant to.
You're on your path.
Everyone else is on their path.
It's all good.
Number two.
The stories that you see of people who are very successful,
who have moved very quickly,
they are the ultimate examples of what is possible.
If they were able to achieve it,
it means that you can also achieve it.
Number three.
Everybody has to start somewhere.
So those super successful people that you see now,
thriving and succeeding,
they started somewhere just like you.
They made some decisions,
they had some thoughts, they took some actions,
but they had to start somewhere like you.
They did not just wake up one day
and automatically be handed the success.
Number four.
Every single person that you see
that is succeeding at a further rate than you
has something to teach you.
There is something to learn from that person.
There is something that they did that will benefit you.
There's a thought that they had that will benefit you.
They have something to offer that will help you, 100%.
And then number five,
there will always be people who are ahead of you,
and there will always be people who are behind you.
That is the way of the world.
Once you accept that, you can start focusing on yourself,
you can move forward, and you can create
what you really wanna create for your life.
And the most important thing, number six,
success for them does not mean
that there is now less success available for you.
So, a lot of us think that.
For some reason they think oh, well they've already done it,
there's not gonna be any way that I can do it now
because they've taken the only success that exists.
Maybe if you work in the same company,
this is what you're thinking, right.
Not true.
Success for them does not equal less success for you.
In fact, you being in their orbit
and seeing what they've done equals more success for you,
right, more possibility of success,
because success breeds success.
And the last thing I want you to do is if you find yourself
slipping in to comparing yourself to others a lot,
and you feel like this is causing you a problem
and holding you back in your life, ask for help.
Ask for help with this.
There's something you can do about it.
Somebody else's success
just means that it's possible for you,
and if you wanna find out how that's possible for you,
ask for help.
If you're just not quite there yet
and you can't get out of the comparisonitis,
I can help you with that.
I've helped hundreds of clients overcome this,
and if you are not able to do it on your own,
it is very important that you reach out for help,
because if you don't,
consider what could happen years later
if you don't change your thought patterns.
You could be, yet again, comparing yourself
to yet somebody else, right,
and you would never be the person that's succeeding,
and the reason why that happens
is not because you can't succeed,
but because you are wasting all your mental energy
on comparing yourself to other people,
and even if it's just the subtle undertone
of your thoughts day-to-day,
that will still depress you, make you feel bad,
and it will block you in your tracks
from creating that success for yourself.
Trust me, I've been there, I know what that is like,
and I know that it doesn't have to be the way of your life.
So if you'd like more help from me,
please check out the links below,
and I would be happy to assist you
to never have to worry about comparing yourself
to somebody else again,
and using it to your advantage, not to your detriment.
The greatest advice ever here is to work on yourself,
focus on yourself.
Like I said, the Olympic medalists,
you will never find them looking around
at what other people are up to.
They just don't have time for it.
All right, so if you'd like more help from me
to become a rockstar or a superstar,
get that raise,
get what you'd like to accomplish in your career,
check out the links below.
You can visit me at my website, www.nataliefisher.ca.
I have a free workshop, free guides.
I also offer a consultation call with me
where you can get on the call with me,
and we can discuss specifically what's going on for you
and how I can help you,
if you're interested in one-on-one coaching,
and we can work together.
If you'd like to leave me a comment, I would love that.
Don't forget to give me a thumbs up if you like the video,
or a thumbs down if you didn't like the video.
Subscribe to the channel if you haven't already,
and leave me a comment, and I will see you next week.
Thank you so much.
Bye.