#241 | The Thief Of All Joy: Stop Letting Comparison Steal Your Wins

We challenge the reflex to measure progress against someone else’s highlight reel and replace it with a mastery mindset that rewards daily improvement. Research and real examples show how to flip comparison into insight, reduce pressure, and build lasting confidence.

• How social comparison theory affects mood and drive
• Why highlight reels harm life satisfaction
• Mastery as a better scoreboard than status
• Practical reframes to turn envy into action

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Transcript

Welcome & Purpose Of The Show

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to Win Today. This show is crafted for those who want to win in every aspect of their lives. Every week you will learn from a renowned thought leader that will share a piece of a winning playbook that you can incorporate into your life. If this show has a positive impact on you and you see value in it, please share it with somebody and leave a rating and review so we can help more people win.

The Amazon Trap: Unfair Benchmarks

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Meaning, would you expect your business or measure the success of your business as to how it compared to the biggest behemoth in the world in terms of business success? Probably not. Now, it could serve as a valid guidepost or something to strive for. Believe that there's a lot to be said about picking somebody that you admire or a business that you admire and making your best effort to become that or even surpass that. But the reason why I'm bringing this up as to why you most likely would not compare the success of your business or dictate the success of your new business to Amazon is because that is rather unthinkable in a short period of time. You're not going to develop an Amazon within one year. And just because you didn't does not mean that you are not successful. Here's where I'm going

Runners, Chapters, And Context

SPEAKER_00 1:45

with this. You've probably heard the quote comparison is the thief of joy. And I've been reflecting on this a lot lately because I hear this a lot in conversations. One person will be talking to another, and perhaps they're both invested in the same journey. Meaning, let's just take two runners, and one runner has run a marathon or ultra marathons. Another runner has just ran their first 5K. Both great things. Both are invested in wellness and improving their bodies and minds. Great. The 5K runner, I'll typically hear this in the conversation, will tell the marathon runner, yeah. I mean, my my run is nowhere near yours, but this is my first maritime, this is my first 5K. The marathon runner will tell the ultra marathon runner, yeah, you know, I ran a marathon, but it doesn't even come close to what you've done. You know, maybe this is just small potatoes for you. So what's happening is I hear people comparing themselves to the next person and downplaying their success and their efforts because we're looking at one person's chapter five to another person's chapter 20 or 30, going back to the very beginning. If we compared our business to Amazon, we'd be comparing our early chapter, your early chapter, to Amazon's chapter 40, 30, whatever, how many, however many years it's been business. Now, if you sit back and look at it for a minute, you'd think, man, that's that's not fair, right? Why would why would someone do

Social Comparison Theory Explained

SPEAKER_00 3:40

that? Here's something interesting that was discovered in 1954 by psychologist Leon Festinger. He introduced social comparison theory. And what was his insight? We naturally evaluate ourselves by measuring against others. And the problem with that is what happens next. When we compare upward to someone ahead of us, so if it's the you're comparing yourself as a 5K runner to a marathoner, and so on and so forth, or as a new business owner to a thriving business conglomerate, what happens is it can decrease our self-esteem because we see somebody or we see a business that has done more, that has gone further so far, and sometimes tell ourselves a story that this person or this business is better as if they didn't experience the same struggles and thoughts that you have right now to be where they are today. Now, when we compare downward, now let's just say it's the 5k runner to somebody that just got off the couch for the first time. It might give us a temporary boost, but it rarely builds lasting confidence. So if we fast forward to today, and what what does that what what does that look like?

Highlights, Feeds, And Mood Declines

SPEAKER_00 5:10

Think about your phones, what you see on social media, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, whatever else the kids use today. We see a lot of highlight reels, we see a lot of people that are posting about their lives and and in 30 seconds or even less than that, we are making a judgment call that this person or this business is better. And if I could just be like this person that I'm seeing in the highlight reel, not really knowing their underlying story, or even if what they're putting out there is freaking real. Studies from the University of Michigan found that increased Facebook use predicted declines in mood and life satisfaction. Not because people were posting, but because they were scrolling, watching highlight reels, measuring their behind the scenes against somebody else's highly curated wins.

Growth Mindset And Mastery

SPEAKER_00 6:08

So what this really gets at here, guys, is that in the busy world that we live in and in the highly connected world, the technological world that we live in, uh comparison distorts reality in that the 5K runner admires the marathoner and downplays that that 5K might have been a big deal for them and took them a lot to get there. The small business owner compares themselves to the franchise that's been doing this for a hundred years and has learned a lot of tricks and has made a lot more mistakes to get to where they are. We can sometimes forget that we're watching somebody else's or another business's chapter 20 while we're still living in chapter three, which is okay. And it also shifts your motivation instead of asking, you know, am I growing? You start, am I ahead? And those are two very different games. There's research from uh Carol Dweck that show and she wrote the book Mindset. It looks at people who have fixed versus growth mindsets, and you can imagine that having a growth mindset is more advantageous and leads to a better life. But there's some research in there that shows that people who focus on mastery, not status, not the highlight reel, not making it look like we have everything figured out, but focusing on mastery, just getting good at something for themselves, purely for their own benefit, not what society thinks they should do, not what their grandma Sue believes they should do, but focusing on mastery for the intent of getting better for yourself, which in turn will then play into your business or whatever the case is, those people perform better long term because they are focused on mastery, not what is Instagram gonna say, what is TikTok gonna say, what are the neighbors gonna say, what are the Joneses gonna say? They stay resilient, they improve, and they enjoy the process the most.

Flipping Comparison Into Fuel

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So as we go through the year, and you may find yourself in a period of comparison or see another reel where it looks like this person is way ahead of you. I want you to remember that comparison creates pressure and sometimes even it induces, I don't want to say depression, but it could induce negative emotions. And mastery, focusing on your own journey, creates progress. And that's something that we can also learn a lot about from a couple of the recent guests that we've had on with Brad Stolberg with his most recent book, The Way of Excellence. And his writing is all about mastery, inner mastery. Mastery comes from within, focusing on you, not focusing on the external outputs and controls. So instead of perhaps asking yourself on a daily basis, especially when you see these clips or meet somebody that has ran further than you or made some more sales than you, don't look at, you know, how do I measure up to this person? And then you put a bunch of pressure on yourself. Think about am I better than I was yesterday, last week, last month, last year? Am I moving forward? Am I taking steps to move forward? And that's how we can help get ourselves out of this comparison trap that a lot of people find themselves in. I understand that this can be easier said than done, especially in the world we're living in, but this is on my heart right now to share because I too at times have fallen in this trap where I'll see somebody or have said, oh yeah, you know, this this marathon time isn't even close to yours, and discrediting all of the hard work and journey that that I've been on. Now I'm more mindful, very mindful and present to that now. I would say it's it is more far and few between, but it's because of putting in a lot of work to program the mind and the response that when I do meet people that perhaps they are actually far ahead or further ahead, or I see other folks that have thriving coaching businesses and podcasts, I don't look at it as, oh, they're so much better than me. I look at it as, hey, here, what an opportunity to learn something so that I can become better. Or perhaps what an opportunity to gain some insights from this people, from this person, from this business, from this other podcast, so that we can make improvements to win today, so that you can grow, so that we can create the business that we're dreaming of, rather than falling into a comparison trap. Because when I look at it from an opportunity perspective and an opportunity to gain some insights, that produces a completely different emotion set than oh man, this person's so much further ahead. Oh man, if only I could be like that, if only win today could be like Lewis Howe's School of Greatness. That produces an emotion set of negativity, which could impede me taking action for the future. And it could impede you from taking action in the future because now you're looking at all the things you haven't done versus here's what you could become, here's where you could go, here's how you could learn. So as we move forward into 2026, my friends, I want you to flip comparison on its head and look at where you can glean insights, how can you improve, how can you draw inspiration from somebody that you admire, or somebody that has moved further, faster, harder than you, so that you too can do that while becoming more masterful, while focusing on the inner work, while doing the deep work, while becoming one percent better, while making the small incremental gains. And it's not just gonna make 2026 an amazing year, but it is going to make your future amazing because you are going to create a state

Close: Choose Mastery To Win Today

SPEAKER_00 13:20

of abundant positivity, a state of possibilities for yourself because you'll see things completely differently. Remember that comparison is the thief of joy. And when you focus on mastery, that is when you can explore more possibilities and see more and win today. Thank you so much.