My toxic trait (and how I am working on it)!

"Comparison is the thief of joy."

A few days ago, I was feeling pretty, pretty good about myself.

This newsletter is at more than 13,000 subscribers. My new sports newsletter has performed better than I expected. My YouTube channel is over 20,000 subscribers.

I am making it in this content creator world, I thought. I’m not there yet….but I am moving in the right direction!

Then, high on my success, I thought to myself: “Why don’t I just check in on some other people I know and see how they are doing in this world of individual creators.”

And, I quickly realized this:

Why? Because I found other people I know — and even some I have worked with — had bigger followings on Substack and elsewhere. In some cases, MUCH bigger followings.

My joy — or at least my excitement — about my own successes was immediately extinguished.

Like, gone. Totally. And in it’s place was a sense of malaise mixed with jealousy mixed with bitterness. A pretty toxic brew.

The speed at which my feelings changed entirely surprised even me. And all because of one single word: “Comparison.”

To be clear: This is not new for me. Throughout my professional career, I have found myself always saying “This is great…if only I had more.” Seeing someone in some job above mine and thinking: “If I had that job, I would be truly happy.”

I know I am not alone. There is even a term for this! It’s called “Social Comparison Theory.” It was developed in the 1950s by a guy named Leon Festinger. The idea goes like this, according to Psychology Today:

People constantly evaluate themselves, and others, in domains like attractiveness, wealth, intelligence, and success. According to some studies, as much as 10 percent of our thoughts involve comparisons of some kind. Social comparison theory is the idea that individuals determine their own social and personal worth based on how they stack up against others.

Also, breaking news. This is (mostly) bad for you! Again, Psychology Today:

Later research has shown that people who regularly compare themselves to others may find motivation to improve, but may also experience feelings of deep dissatisfaction, guilt, or remorse, and engage in destructive behaviors like lying or disordered eating.

I would love to meet the people who, when they compare themselves to others, feel only a “motivation to improve” and none of the bad stuff. You are truly blessed!

I am not one of those people. Comparing myself to others almost always works as a massive buzzkill for me.

Which is dumb. For two reasons.

1. I ONLY compare myself to people who I deem more successful than me. (More on that calculation below.) So, I am setting myself up to feel bad. If your measure of wealth is Jeff Bezos, you are going to always come out on the short end of the stick. Same goes if your standard of success in, say, sports is LeBron James. You are setting yourself up for failure. Or at least feeling bad about yourself.

2. I have no real idea what is going on in anyone else’s life. The person who has 131,000 Substack followers might seem like they are living high on the hog. Like everything is perfect for them. But, in my experience, one of two things is probably true: a) they are wishing they were the person with 1.3 million Substack followers and/or b) they have their own shit — that you never see — that they have to deal with in their lives.

That’s the thing about comparing yourself to others. It’s ALWAYS an apples vs oranges thing. Because you know everything (or, at least, most things) about your own internal life and context. And you know nothing (or, at most, a tiny amount) about anyone else’s internal life and context.

So you are comparing your, uh, real reality with the perceived reality of someone else. And that perceived reality NEVER matches up to actual, lived reality.

In essence, we are comparing our worst version of ourselves with the best version of someone else. No wonder we always think we come up short.

In thinking about this in my own life, what I’ve realized (or re-realized) is that the real issue isn’t actually even comparing myself to others. It’s how I define success.

If success is how much money you make or how many Substack subscribers you have or any quantitive measure really, there is ALWAYS going to be someone who outstrips you. Probably lots of someones. Someone is always richer. Smarter. Better looking.

The key to happiness — or, maybe better put, contentment — is to re-define success away from the material things you have and onto the way you move through the world.

Are you a good partner to your significant other? A parent that your kids can look up to? A friend who is there when people need you? Someone that people can rely and depend on?

Because, of course, when you die, your stats — money made, YouTube views etc. — will not be on your gravestone. (f you do put those things on your gravestone, well, weird.) Those things will eventually — and sooner than you think — be gone.

What will persist is the mark you left on the people you came into contact with over your lifetime. And that has far less to do with how much money you made or what accolades you racked up than it does with how you lived your life.

To that end, I have been thinking of this quote from Albert Einstein a whole lot lately: “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”

Yup. That’s it, exactly.