Comparisonitis. Sound familiar?
If you're a business owner, especially if you're just starting out,
you may be feeling like you just aren't good enough compared to other shop owners in the same niche,
comparing ourselves to other people. Kind of just naturally happens.
And some healthy comparison doesn't hurt.
But when comparisons are no longer healthy,
and we find ourselves paralyzed by it.
That's when we know we fallen victim to comparisonitis.
So, how can we put a stop to it? Hi,
my name is Mei Pak. And I help makers, artists,
and designers make a living selling their handmade products online.
In today's video. I want to talk about something that a lot of us go through as business owners,
that can be a bit tricky to navigate sometimes and that is comparisonitis.
It's a made-up word that defines
when you compare yourself to other people selling similar products leaving you feeling inadequate
and not good enough.
If your business isn't at the same level as theirs yet,
if you're going thorugh it right now, please know you are not alone and that there's nothing wrong with you.
Okay, comparisonitís is fairly common,
and I hope that watching this video will help you through it.
So why do we compare?
I've been thinking about that for a while and I think it boils down to this:
we've been told that in order to be relevant to stay on top of things
and to stay competitive as business owners.
We need to figure out what's trending in research.
Our competitors and stay up-to-date with what they're doing and what new products.
So they're making for me personally, when I check out my competitors.
I want to see what they're doing to, maybe follow in their footsteps
and kind of gain ideas and inspiration from their strategies.
The intention of course, is not to copy
what they're doing at all or to use their content word for word.
But rather to see how I can Implement strategies that are working
for them for my own business as well.
For example, if they're doing really well on Facebook,
that maybe my business will do all on Facebook,
too. But the downside to this is that it can become a really slippery.
For any of us to get on because this can very quickly backfire on you.
So when does that even happen? Well,
when you start internalizing it and then feeling bad about yourself,
you feel like everything you're doing isn't good enough.
You start feeling like all of the hard work
and effort you put into your business day in and day out
just isn't paying off, you know, you're doing a bunch of marketing,
but you wonder why nothing seems to work or why it's taking so long.
You probably often ask yourself. Why am I not there yet,
or what's the point? But that's
just because Because you're comparing yourself to other people who are maybe ten steps
ahead of you who are more established than you are at the moment.
What really hurts even more is seeing someone who started at the same time as you,
but they seem to be doing so much better than you right.
Now, you may be viewing them
as just simply more successful than
you or better than you which makes you wonder what am I doing wrong?
What's wrong with me, when there really isn't anything wrong with you at all.
But those are the thoughts that make us feel really insecure about our business and our abilities,
and that's what's truly damaging.
So, I wanted to share with you a little bit about one of my own
experiences with this of which I've had many,
trust me believes me, but when I started creative Hive back around 2014,
the space was already very competitive.
There were so many other coaches and consultants,
and teachers, and gurus out there,
and other people were making more money than I was.
Other people had larger Facebook groups and bigger
email lists and more customers.
And everyone was always talking about how they just had a six-figure launch or a five figure,
you know, 24 hour one day sale
and that really discouraged me because no one knew who I was at the time.
I couldn't even get people to retweet my posts on Twitter.
And I remember a time when I was just lying in bed,
feeling really bad about myself thinking about how I didn't want to wake up and go back to work.
Because what's the point? I wasn't going anywhere.
I should just quit right. Now. This was a problem for me for months.
I was, I would say mildly depressed because my business was so And I was so impatient.
I wanted it to be a full time income already.
Other people could do it, so, why couldn't I?
But I decided to keep going to take it one step at a time every night.
I would go to bed reassuring, myself that I did everything.
I could that day to get myself closer to my goal.
And I will wake up the next day with a fresh set of eyes,
a fresh mind and renewed motivation,
and persistence. I kept putting myself out there.
I kept acting like I was already successful.
You've heard the saying right? Fake
it till you make it. This is actually a very good strategy that you can use for yourself.
Even Olympic swimmers use it. They wake up every morning
and tell themselves that they've already won.
This is more powerful than you know.
So this is what I did. I completely stopped checking out other people's businesses
and just focused on mine.
You don't like the blinders that horses whereby their eyes to
kind of keep them focused on moving forward
and not get freaked out by disruptions.
I essentially blocked out distractions that triggered my comparisonitis
and I encourage you to do the same.
So just focus on your own work and not on other people.
Because what good can that do for you? Anyway,
sure, maybe you might learn a little bit from comparing your business to other people’s
but not a whole lot.
A lot of you're growing, your business has to do with your own ideas
and trial and error and not feeling bad about where you stand at.
the moment. Compared to someone else is crucial feeling bad will only slow you down.
So I suggest you do what I did stop following your competitors on social media.
Okay, every time I caught myself typing in their website in my browser
because maybe I was curious that day.
I would take a beat and start deleting
what I was typing because I didn't even want to go to their website.
I didn't want to fall back into the Trap and Mind Tricks caused by comparisonitís.
I want you to do the same. It is
so important that if you are prone to comparisonitis
and if you're prone to falling down this spiraling death
trap of depression that you protect yourself,
protect your heart, protect your mind and your energy from any of that negativity,
because trust me, the moment you start to feel depressed about yourself.
Your business, you're dangerously, close to giving up.
And that's why so many businesses fail because they didn't try for long enough.
They didn't push past that mental barrier and that would do both you and others at a disservice,
whether you know it yet or not. What you have to offer,
is exactly what someone out there wants needs and in searching for.
So the takeaway here is to just never give up
and to not put yourself in that position to begin with where you feel like giving up.
Now. I just focus on me and how I can help you in my own unique way
without trying to be like my competitors.
I just keep working on my own marketing and have stopped doing all of this research.
I realized that you don't ever really know how much or on the flipside,
how little other shop owners put into their businesses.
They may have worked around the clock for years to get where they are now.
And you're over here at Step 1, comparing yourself to their step 100.
So that's not fair to you or to them.
Right? It's like you're comparing a baby's ability to walk to a grown-ups everyone starts out
slow and wobbly, but with time and effot we learn and we grow and we become more stable.
Now, there are certainly business owners out there that got,
you know, super lucky and did the right thing at the right time. Those 1%,
who have maybe gotten lucky have fallen in a space
or a niche or there was just an opportunity waiting for them or maybe you know,
they knew a friend of a friend who got them on a magazine cover or on Good Morning America
that got them tens of thousands of sales practically instantly,
but luck unfortunately cannot be generated on command.
So stop relying on luck. As for the rest of us,
the 99% of us., Hi, that's me!
We just have to keep doing the hard and smart work.
Stop, comparing ourselves to others and most importantly,
never give up. I hope this was helpful for you.
Let me know in the comments how you deal with comparisonitis.