Let's talk about comparison traps

But Twitter does a horrible job of showing you its advanced features. Here are 10 of them you probably know nothing about. That's a pretty Strong lead. You're probably curious what those 10 advanced features are. And it really struck a chord with Twitter's audience. That thread has 11,000 retweets, 43,000 likes, and it doubled Dickie's Twitter following from 10,000 to more than 20,000 overnight. I literally had to rewrite the intro for that episode to accommodate for that growth. And that is incredible growth.

These moments should be celebrated again. I strive to be someone who celebrates the wins and success of my friends, but that week, while I was spending all of my time working between a handful of projects, I felt defeated. That type of result from one Twitter thread, it's all too easy to see someone else's success and imagine it for ourselves. Oh, they're working with that client. Wow, they're so lucky. They bought a house. That must be so nice. They won that award that I applied for.

I can't hardly believe it. I'm not sure it's possible to completely prevent these thoughts from entering our minds. It feels like a natural human response. But the jealousy, the sadness, the anger or the despair that comes with it, that's what we need to find a way to diffuse and to diffuse it quickly. I remember laying face down on the carpet of the basement studio that night and telling Mallory, I feel defeated. It felt like I was busting my ass. And still every bit of growth in subscribers felt like I was pulling teeth. This is a specific and extreme example, and thankfully that feeling passed over the next 24 hours with a lot of reminders and positive self talk.

But this is an example of the type of feeling we get when we fall into comparison traps. And they aren't always this obvious to ourselves. A lot of times the experience is more subconscious, subtle underlying feelings of inferiority or despair as we scroll through our feeds for hours every week. But here's what we forget when we make outcomes or outputs are the result of inputs. We're all living different lives and we all have unique inputs that have put us to where we're sitting right now. From our upbringing and our education to chance encounters and one off conversations. A lot of it is random and a lot of it is unfair. But those inputs have made us uniquely us.

So when we compare ourselves to others, we and the outcomes they're experiencing, we can't simply compare the outcome. We have to consider the entire system of inputs that got someone there. We can't simply compare this one aspect of their lives to ours. But we have to compare all the sacrifices, the decisions and the trade offs that we've made along the way too. In short, our comparisons are flawed because we're aspiring to a different outcome without asking ourselves if we'd be willing to change the whole path we've taken. And all of the inputs that got to this point too. Not only that, but the consequences that others have endured to get to that outcome are completely unknown to us. We have no idea what they've sacrificed, the trade offs they've made, their insecurities, and what plots of our own grass they may be looking at as greener than theirs.

I wrote another article a few years ago called Experience Ladders to explain another common flaw I saw when we made comparisons. When I first started the Unreal Collective accelerator a few years ago and offered coaching services as an add on, I hadn't offered formal consulting before. One of the first clients to sign up was someone who had a multi million dollar exit just a few years earlier and this really threw me for a loop. What could he possibly learn from me? I started to really get into my own head before our first call. I had to hype myself up. I had to make him feel like he made a good choice. I my coach, Chris McAllister, would say that I was trying to prove that I belonged. Over time I began to understand something that I now call Experience ladders.

I want you to imagine a wall with a whole row of ladders lined up one next to another. Obviously, we all have our own particular set of skills. We have a perception of our own skill level and of the skill level of those around us. The same goes for people who we work with think of each of those skills as its own ladder. We ballpark our position on a ladder relative to others pretty much constantly in all aspects of our life. And when we think someone is higher on the ladder than us, we look up to them and we try to learn from them. Often we hire them. Here's where things get sticky, though.

Sometimes imposter syndrome rears its little head and we consolidate the ladders into one ultimate ladder. We begin thinking of an absolute skill score and we estimate our own score relative to those around us. This is what I was doing with my coaching client. He was miles ahead of me in terms of hiring, running a P and L, fundraising, and a bunch of other things too. On an absolute scale. I was thinking how could I ever help this person? But that's not what was happening in his head. He was looking at the ladders where I'm a couple rungs higher than him and saying I could use your help in getting up there to be successful in working with and solving problems for others. You need to be confident and secure in your position on those ladders.

And not just the ladders that you're perched high on, but also those where you are behind where you want to be. Understand that you aren't being hired to help every aspect of someone's life or business. They're hiring you for a very specific ladder where you excel. Instead of posturing and proving that you can swing on every ladder, be secure in the fact that you have a few ladders that you might be hired for and you don't have to help on all of them. In fact, you can recognize someone for the ladders where they can help you. The bottom line here is if you find yourself falling into comparison traps, give yourself some grace. It's hard to avoid those traps, but then remind yourself that you are on a unique path and you have your own unique strengths. Your path will be longer than some and shorter than others.

Your skills will be envied by others, and you'll envy others for their skills too. But your path and your strengths are what make you who you are, and isn't that worth more than anything else I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode. You can find me on Twitter or Instagram. Klaus, Let me know if you like these episodes. If you want more solo episodes like this, and if you don't want more solo episodes like this, let me know. I'd like to hear feedback. And by the way, I had actually written about these ideas before I shared them here on the podcast. So if you like this, I recommend subscribing to my email newsletter@jclouse.com emails and the link to that is also in the show notes.

Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you next week. The pod glommer a sonic universe.