Although I believe Theodore Roosevelt originally said it, I first heard the saying,“Comparison is the thief of joy” in my time as a Pure Romance consultant. As women in working in sales, we do have the tendency to compare ourselves to others. But comparison is not isolated to one specific gender or career field; it is widespread across our culture. And the real issue is not just that we compare ourselves to others, but also to where we think we should be. Either way, comparison is self-destructive.
When I started my direct sales business five years ago, I surprised myself and others by my quick success. By my seventh month in business, I was holding 4x the corporate average of parties a month, and my sales reflected it. That year, I earned a position on the President’s Club, which accounts for the top 2% of the company. And by the end of my third year in business, I had worked my way into the top 1%. I know it sounds like I’m bragging, but I’m not.
Comparison, by definition, is the act of indicating superiority or inferiority. It’s about judging that which is better or worse. I worked my way to the top because I didn’t feel like I was good enough. The only way I could prove to myself that I was good enough was by being the best. I was seeking validation from my career because I already had low self worth.
At the same time, I was preparing to become a mom for the first time. I wasn’t worried about how the transition would impact my business because I knew lots of other successful moms in business. I had my plan written down, and I was confident in my training and the support that the company offers.
But for some reason, I just couldn’t seem to hack it after my daughter was born. Even having an assistant, pieces of my business were falling between the cracks, no matter how I struggled to keep it together. My sales slipped to less than half of what they had been before, and with that, my plan failed. My self worth plummeted, as I fell to the inferior side of comparison. I silently blamed everything and everyone I could: luck, my assistant, my husband, my daughter, the economy. And most of all, I blamed myself. And I needed to do more and be better because, as it was, I wasn’t good enough.
On a coaching call at beginning of 2018 with my mentor, Stacey, I complained about all of the things I had tried that had not worked to fix my sales. She pointed out that it really sounded like I needed to work on my mindset. I knew that she was right, although I couldn’t see how mindset would help me make more money. But she was steadfast in her beliefs. And I believed in her.
Almost two years have passed, and I’m way further away from achieving the status that I once had. But now, I can admit to myself what I couldn’t admit before: my original goals were established to prove myself to others. I was seeking validation.
I’ve learned that my sales is the wrong metric for me to measure my self worth. And I’m more at peace with myself than I ever have been. And what I really want to do is share with you the path that led me to stop comparing myself, and some of the lessons I’ve learned along the way.
- Ditch the belief that either you “have it” or you don’t. Before I was an entrepreneur, I was a teacher. And one of the things that I learned then was that everyone can learn, although everyone learns in different ways. One of the by products of comparison is the belief that “if I’m not achieving the same successes as others, that I’ll never be able to get there.” That type of thought pattern led me to want to give up several times along the way. The truth is that anyone can learn the skills to reach the goals she sets for herself, which leads us to the second thing.
- Dream big, but do it for you. Yes, I know that I said that my sales are at the lowest they’ve ever been. But don’t mistake my comfort with my current status as saying that I am not striving to become better. When I started to dream for myself, I was able to let go of the dreams that belong to others. I realized that my dreams are leading me somewhere different, so it’s impossible to compare myself. You don’t have to know how to get there yet; you just have to believe that you can and will get there. Some people call this the Law of Attraction. While I have come to believe in the Law of Attraction, I was pretty unsure when I started on my journey, and it’s okay if you are too. I once heard our CEO, Chris Cicchinelli explain it like this: if you get in your car and you want to go somewhere, but you don’t know how, you need to plug your destination into your GPS. If you don’t plug the address into the GPS, you’ll end up somewhere, but it probably won’t be where you wanted to be. So knowing the ultimate goal for yourself is essential.
- Practice gratitude. Once I decided to start working on my mindset, I remembered a training I attended where author, Darren Hardy said that keeping a gratitude journal for 30 days about his wife helped to turn his marriage around, saving him from possible divorce. I realized that when I was comparing myself to others, I was focusing on the negative aspects of my life and business. It made me feel extremely fearful, and then I would respond in panic. Focusing on feeling grateful stopped the fear cycle.
- Observe your judgment, but don’t engage. Comparison naturally leads to judgment of superiority and inferiority. But if you can notice when you brain starts to judge, and recognize it for what it is – a mental pattern – then you can begin to separate yourself from the idea. Gabrielle Bernstein calls this “witnessing your judgment without judgment” in her book, the Judgment Detox, which frankly changed my life. I realized that when I blamed and judged others for my failures, I was really trying to protect myself from the fear and shame I was feeling for not feeling good enough. As I started to dig deeper into the causes of these judgments, I discovered that the thing that was holding me back most was my own fear.
- Accept your fears. In life, there are two great motivators: love and fear. When you are unconscious of a fear, it holds greater power over you because you will do anything to avoid it. Even if you are conscious of a fear, it still can cause you to avoid your triggers. But when you begin to accept the fear, then you can acknowledge it and move forward in spite of it. For example, I always wanted to write a memoir about my life. Many years ago, my husband pointed out to me that I kept saying I wanted to do it, but that I couldn’t begin because I had a fear of failure. At the time, I thought it was preposterous for him to say such a thing. I lashed out in anger and with what I much later realized were excuses: “I had been busy with work, school, and caring for my mom up to that point. When would I have time to start writing a book?” I eventually realized that my fears resulted from childhood neglect. In the past, I had felt unsafe and unsupported trying new things, so I learned it was best to always play it safe. I was using excessive busy-ness to avoid the things that I most desired due to my own fear of failing. Even if you do not have the fear of failing specifically, if you keep finding that no matter how hard you try to work towards your goals, something keeps blocking you, it might be time to start looking at the stories you tell yourself. These stories we tell ourselves are to protect us from an underlying fear. When you can identify that fear and accept it, you will have the courage to move forward in spite of it.
- Give yourself the validation that you seek. In Gabrielle Bernstein’s The Universe Has Your Back, she explains that everything is either an act of love or a call for love. Comparison and judgment are manifestations of fear. Fear is the opposite of love, and therefore is a call for love. We seek validation from others because we are seeking love from others. But not everyone is capable of giving you the love that you desire, and so you must learn to give it to yourself. As corny as it may sound, I started looking at myself in the mirror and telling myself, “I love you,” after I read the suggestion in Vishen Lakhiani’s Code of the Extraordinary Mind. When I started to show myself love, I started trusting and listening to myself more, and the more I did that, the less I needed others to validate me.
- Set healthy boundaries. Not needing validation from others enabled me to set healthy boundaries. I realized that a lot of the extra stuff that I did was because I was trying to please others. That’s a byproduct of comparison too.
- Forgive yourself and others. I know that forgiveness might not seem related to comparison, but it is because if we are holding on to anger, whether directed at ourselves or others, it is because we are still at some level holding onto judgment. As we learned, comparison is a form of judgment, and judgment is a manifestation of fear. Therefore, forgiveness is an important part of learning to stop comparing yourself to others. Other people’s flaws are just like yours, motivated by fear and feelings of unworthiness. In other words, when one person hurts another person, it is because they are hurting too. The only way to stop hurting is forgiving. And we can not cause another person to forgive, but we have the choice to forgive within ourselves. When we choose to forgive others, we no longer need to compare us to them. We start to realize, “I’m doing my own thing.”
- Be true to yourself. In order to be true to yourself, you need to listen to yourself. Meditation has been a pivotal part for me in learning to listen to myself and be true to myself. Throughout my entire journey, meditation was a major practice, but when you can listen to yourself, and have confidence in the path you are walking, you will no longer need to compare yourself with others, or even to your past self. You will be able to be true to yourself, which leads us to the final step.
- Be patient. There’s no time line for your success. I have learned that our journey through life is designed to help us grow. It’s going to take as long as it is going to take. Comparing yourself to others, and thinking that doing what they do will fix your problems is like expecting a band-aid to fix a broken bone. What I mean is how does a broken bone actually heal? You set it, and give it time. But the bone actually heals itself. No amount of band-aids can fix it. In fact, even if you put a cast on your broken bone, the cast isn’t what heals it. It is the body healing itself. Your goals and plans are your cast; that’s why you need to have them. But there’s no magic salve or pill that you can take that will cause everything to be perfect right away. That’s why you have to stop looking outside of yourself for solutions. They are supports for sure, but only you can heal yourself, and that will simply take you time to figure out your path. And if you are busy comparing yourself to others, trying to put band-aids on to heal your broken bones, it is going to take you way longer to get to where you want to be and you might cause a whole lot more damage to the healing process trying to stand up on that shit too soon.
Lisa Futscher 