We’ve often heard it said that comparison is the thief of joy. I’m not sure that’s entirely true because there’s nothing wrong with comparison in and of itself. When it becomes jealousy or envy, then there’s definitely something wrong with it, but comparison can be a very helpful tool. The problem is that most people don’t understand how to compare. And when you don’t understand how to compare, then comparison is absolutely the thief of joy.
Let’s talk about another saying. You know, people say “apples to oranges,” meaning that you can’t compare one thing to another thing because they’re different. But everything is different. Literally everything is different. Everybody is different. There are no two things that are identical. I’m going to refrain from getting super metaphysical here, but your life is not anybody else’s life. My creative journey is not your creative journey. Your creative journey is different from the creative journey of everybody around you.
To compare yourself with another person or to compare your achievements against their achievements, to compare your books against their books, your reviews against their reviews, it just doesn’t work. It is apples to oranges. It’s two separate things. And so when we use comparison as a strict measuring tool, it’s never going to be helpful.
At the same time, I definitely understand the temptation. Even now, having published 27 books and being incredibly stable in my author career, I still find myself comparing what I’ve done or what I want to do, or more often what I haven’t done with what other people have done. And I’ll tell you, that does steal joy. There are very few ways to have a worse day than to just compare yourself to other people, because there’s always a bigger fish in the pond. There’s always somebody who’s doing something better than you.
Even when you’re the biggest fish in the pond, sometimes you don’t feel like it, because somebody else is doing something that makes you just go like, “Oh man, I just, I wish that that was me. I wish that I had that thing.” As if what they have is going to make you happy. It’s not. Because with every light side comes a dark side. With every positive thing comes negatives.
As long as we’re talking about sayings, have you heard “the grass is always greener on the other side”? That’s not actually true. The grass might look greener, but it’s not. And chances are, it’s just where you’re standing, you can’t see the big brown patches. You can’t see the weeds. You can’t see all of the problems. This is incredibly true for everybody in the world. Nobody’s life is as good as you think it is.
If you see somebody and they are out there living their best life, first of all, fantastic. I mean, we should be cheering them on, right? But second of all, it’s not that good. They still have problems. They still have difficulties. They still have worries. Believe me, with success comes a whole new set of problems that you’re like, “How is this even a problem?” Nobody lives a charmed life. It just doesn’t exist.
And so to compare ourselves to somebody else is an activity that is fraught with danger. And yet, as I said, every negative has a positive. Every positive has a negative. Comparing your achievements to other people’s achievements can be very negative, but it can also be incredibly positive if you’re doing it properly.
And this is where comparison can become magic. Often when we compare, it’s with the goal of feeling good about ourselves. And when we don’t match up, we feel bad about ourselves. If we can distance ourselves, if we can detach from those feelings of good or bad and not make it a moral judgment, and instead just say, “What is that person doing? How are they doing it? What am I doing? How am I doing it? What are the results that are coming from each of these sets of actions? Which one seems better to me? Which one would I rather have?” Okay. I adjust my behavior accordingly.
This is the point in most conversations where people ask me if I’m a robot. And the answer is no. I do have feelings and emotions too. But sometimes those feelings and emotions aren’t helpful. Sometimes it’s not helpful to sit there and wallow in self-pity because somebody else has more reviews than you, or they have better reviews than you. Sometimes it’s not healthy to click refresh on our browser, hoping that we can get a few more sales so that we can compare ourselves to somebody else. All things that, by the way, I have done.
Unfortunately, I know a good number of authors for whom this is the case. They spent so much of their time comparing themselves to others that when they finally looked up, everybody had passed them. Everybody was way further down the road. And now they’re trying to play catch up. Don’t let that happen to you.
Comparison can absolutely be the thief of joy, but it doesn’t have to be. It can also be a great way to help you walk the path that’s going to get you the results you want. So the next time you start to compare yourself to somebody else, I want you to take a deep breath. I want you to say to yourself, “Apples and oranges, different people, different lives, different circumstances.”
And then I want you to say, “What is it that they have that I’m interested in? And how did they get it? What can I do in my own life to modify my own behavior, my own actions, my own mindset in order to pursue that thing?” There’s no guarantee you’ll get it because nothing in life is guaranteed. But if you can use comparison like that, it’ll be a boon to you.
YouTube Video Link: https://youtu.be/HoIh_ANTyRU
Thanks for reading and watching.
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