W.I.N. Wednesday: Beware of the rigged game.
“My friend Paul Bioncardi of ESPN loves to say, ‘You will always lose the Comparison Game.’ Why is that? Because it’s rigged. It has no function besides enlarging self-doubt. I’m typing this chapter on board a flight to South Dakota. Among the 250 passengers on this plane, I can quickly find someone better looking, funnier, more successful, taller, more muscular, smarter. It won’t take long to find someone who scores higher than me on almost any metric.”
“If I use these people as my measuring stick—to determine my self-worth and value—I will always lose.”
Alan Stein, Raise Your Game.
It is easy to get caught up in the Comparison Game on social media and believe that everyone else has a better life and has more fun, better vacations and better relationships.
It is easy to get caught up in the Comparison Game at the gym and see all the people who are fitter, faster and stronger. This can lead you to look for the people who are weaker, slower and fatter than you to make yourself feel better. It is the reason many people stop going to the gym or say, “As soon as I lose 30 pounds and get in shape I am going to start going to the gym.”
It is easy to get caught up in the Comparison Game as a professional speaker and trainer and look at all the people who are better story tellers, better at using humour, better at audience engagement, and draw bigger crowds.
It is easy to get caught up in the Comparison Game when you read about and listen to all the rags to riches stories of the people who hit rock bottom and are now rock stars in their field and have millions of followers and raving fans.
It is easy to get caught up in the Comparison Game as an entrepreneur when you read about the people who started a small company in their basement and sold it a year later to Google or Amazon for hundreds of million dollars or grew that small company in just a few years to where they are now generating $100 million in gross sales annually.
It is easy to get caught up in the Comparison Game looking at the adds in all the magazines of the people with the perfect bodies and the perfect teeth and then stand naked in front of the mirror in your home and face reality.
As Stein points out The Comparison Game is rigged and if you use other people to determine your self worth and value, you will always lose.
It is good to learn from other people’s experiences. It is good to be inspired by what others have accomplished and achieved. It is dangerous to compare yourself to others.
If you need to compare yourself to someone then compare yourself to yesterday’s version of you. Are you a little better today than you were yesterday? If the answer is no, then what do you need to do today to ensure the answer tomorrow is yes. If the answer is yes, then what do you need to do today to ensure the answer tomorrow is yes.
What’s Important Now? Focus on what you control, which is effort, process and attitude. Strive to be the best version of you instead of trying to be as good as, or better than someone else.
Take care.
Brian Willis
www.lifesmostpowerfulquestion.com
Maximizing human potential through Life's Most Powerful Question - What's Important Now?
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