I Really Struggle With This

I’m not going to share with you anything here today that is revolutionary, but hopefully it gives you a little bit of solidarity. Maybe it gives you a little bit of a feeling of, oh, I’m not alone. I’m not the only one that does this. So I struggle a lot with comparison. I am just a very competitive person. I always have been. I think in a lot of ways that served me incredibly well in different pursuits in my life. However, comparison is also the thief of joy.
Well, I don’t think that quote is entirely true. I think comparison is the thief of joy if it’s accompanied with judgment. But comparison can be a good thing for helping you triangulate what’s working, what you could be doing better, what others are doing, and how you might incorporate that. So I think there is a lot to be said about studying the competition and paying attention to what other people are doing and using that as inspiration, as motivation, as a source of, you know, how can we improve at what we’re doing? But comparison can truly be a thief of joy if you’re coming at it and you’re starting to stack your self worth up against it, or if you’re just getting frustrated and you’re starting to judge yourself negatively against those comparisons. And I want to share a little bit of a story that I’ve been going through over the last couple of, couple of weeks, couple months, couple years. It’s an ongoing battle because I just am so inherently competitive. There was two creators in the social media landscape that I often get compared to, and I like them both. I think they’re both great people.
I have nothing negative to say about them as individuals, and I think they do a great job with their content media machine. They put out fantastic content. Just generally speaking, one of the things, though, that I’ve struggled with is I’ve looked to these two people over the years or over the last year, rather, not multiple years, but I’ve looked at them, at their content and thought, hey, this is really great. What can I take from this? What can I improve? And at times, I’ve gotten kind of frustrated with myself because their content, though very comparable, and we often get people saying like, oh, you guys are very similar. Their content would be vastly outperforming me on certain platforms. And I just, I couldn’t figure it out. And I was getting, and I get frustrated sometimes, not all the time. Like, this is like, what I’m sharing with you guys right now is like, we go through seasons and phases, right? This isn’t something that dominates my consciousness but it is a reality of something that I struggle with.
And recently, I was talking to my buddy Sawhill, who has a massive audience. And I look at saw Hill and again, compare myself to him, but in a better way, because I look at his content and inspires me to be in better, to be a better creator myself. And I think that’s a good place to operate from. But these other two, for whatever reason, I’ve always been, like, kind of competitive, wanting to beat them, like, not wanting just to be better for the sake of being better, but kind of wanting to beat them. And he shared with me insights about both of them that I hadn’t been privy to before, insights that drastically changed my perspective almost instantly of them and their content that they’re putting out there. And part of this revolved around the fact that in both instances with both of these creators, I caught them plagiarizing other people’s content. Now, I called. I called this out in a previous podcast episode.
I called this out on Twitter a couple weeks ago about two other big creators. This isn’t those creators. I’ve kept these two close to the vest, and I haven’t said anything about it, but I noticed that they had just blatantly ripped off other people’s content. And I was talking to Sawhill about this, and he’s like, this isn’t the first time this has happened. And in fact, Sawhill sent me a text one morning. I wake up in the morning, the very first thing I see is him sending me a screenshot of one of the people that I was, you know, kind of complaining about having plagiarized, word for word, an entire long form post from another massive creator. And for whatever reason, I got a lot of solace in that moment from seeing that and realizing, oh, my God, I’ve been comparing myself to somebody who’s not even playing the same game I am. I’m.
I’m comparing myself to somebody who’s. I don’t want to say cheating, it is a form of cheating, but fundamentally, they’re them and I are not the same because, I don’t know, I want to create original thought pieces and things that are unique to me because I find that enjoyable. I enjoy the process of taking something that doesn’t exist from my mind and, like, manifesting. I think that’s really cool. And for whatever reason, when I saw that text from sahil, I thought, oh, it was like this burden, like, this weight was lifted off my shoulders. Like, finally realizing, and we hear this all the time, like, don’t compare your, you know, chapter one to somebody else’s chapter 50, but really don’t. Don’t compare your book to somebody else’s book, because they’re completely different books to begin with. And I know it’s so much easier to say that than it is to, like, embody that.
And this is why I’m sharing it with you right now, is because I know intellectually it’s. It’s one thing to not to realize that there’s differences, but for some reason, that morning when I got that texture, saw Hill, it finally, just like, I was able to fully manifest it and own it and go, oh, this. I’ve been playing the wrong game entirely. I’m comparing myself to somebody that I don’t even want to be like. And that’s the important takeaway here, is that the people that you look up to or you’re comparing yourself to your competitors, like, be really careful that you. You don’t put them up on a pedestal because you don’t know the full. The full story behind what’s going on with them. And it might be that if you could see the full reality of their life, you might realize, oh, I don’t want to be like you at all.

And I share that because if you’re listening to this podcast, you might be pulled and tempted into that same frame of reference with me. And I don’t want to be that frame of reference for anybody. I don’t want to be the thing that anybody puts up on a pedestal and says, I want to be like that. Because the truth is, if you could see my life holistically, you might realize, oh, I don’t want. I don’t want that. And that’s okay. That’s totally okay. It’s just realizing that we’re all playing our own game.

We’re all on our own path. And it’s kind of a convoluted way of getting to that realization here on this episode today. But I wanted to share that with you because I think it’s important to not just share all the good things that come with being a creator, with being an entrepreneur, and talking a big game about how amazing it all is. There’s still insecurities, there’s still self doubts, these fleeting moments of narcissism and ego that I struggle with. And I hope that brings you a little bit of solace and realize, like, if you’re going through anything that’s even remotely similar, you’re not alone. So keep going. Keep doing the thing. We’re on a continual journey of self improvement.

And I’m here for you. So I’m rooting for you, too. And that’s gonna do it for me, guys. We’ll catch you in the next episode. Until tomorrow, stay hyper focused, my friends.