#190| Why Comparison Is Quietly Draining Your Joy (And How To Take Back Control): Overwhelm, Productivity, Time Management & People Pleasing

Do you ever feel like you were doing great—until you saw someone else doing “better”?

In this episode, Michelle shares two real-life stories—one from a spin class and another from a business mastermind—that reveal how comparison can quietly steal our joy and distort our sense of success. If you’ve ever felt less-than because of someone else’s numbers, lifestyle, or achievements, this conversation will hit home.

Listeners will learn:

• How comparison tricks your brain into thinking you’re failing—even when you’re thriving.
• A simple mental shift to help you define success on your terms.
• How to stay grounded in joy and confidence no matter who’s “ahead” of you.

Press play to discover how to stop comparison from robbing your happiness—and finally start measuring success by what truly matters to you.

Wondering why you're overwhelmed? Take my "why am I overwhelmed" quiz to find out the source of your overwhelm, and what to do about it.

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Life can be overwhelming, but on this podcast, you'll discover practical strategies to overcome overwhelm, imposter syndrome, and negative self-talk, manage time effectively, set boundaries, and stay productive in high-stress jobs—all while learning how to say no and prioritize self-care on the Overwhelmed Worki...

Chapters

• 1:14 Leaderboard Syndrome
• 3:22 How Comparison Shrinks Motivation
• 6:41 Choose Your Own Measuring Stick

Transcript

Michelle Gauthier: 0:00

We have the power to think about that and analyze that and say, do I want to compare myself in that way?

Michelle Gauthier: 0:10

You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less. I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach. On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's Working Woman experiences. And in each episode, you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease, and relaxation to your life.

Michelle Gauthier: 0:37

Hello, friend. Today we are again talking about comparison. We talked about comparison on Monday, so we're just doing a little comparison week, so to speak. If you haven't listened to Monday's episode, which is episode 189, you can go back and check that out. You don't have to listen to it before you listen to this one. But if this story resonates with you, you can find out more information about why we compare, what happens when we compare, and how to shift yourself out of it. I think comparison can sometimes be useful, but I feel like that's a sliver of the time. Most of the time it isn't useful. And sometimes we do it unconsciously and make decisions based on that unconscious comparison.

Michelle Gauthier: 1:14

A couple of years ago, I started going to this spin class. It was at a gym that I had newly joined, and it was really fun. I was new to it. I didn't really know how to do it right, but I loved the music and the energy, and especially the instructor. And I used to sit by this woman who be ended up becoming a friend, and we would kind of commiserate about how hard it was, but in a good way, we loved it. We thought it was so fun. And eventually the instructor decided she was going to leave to teach at a new studio, cycle bar. You might have a cycle bar. So I followed her. And this was like a the first one was at just a regular gym. It wasn't a super high-tech setup, but cycle bar is kind of like soul cycle. The bikes are all connected to a system. And so when I followed this same instructor, there was one difference in the class, and it was this giant leaderboard. So at every class, your stats were projected on the wall, your ranking in the room, your numbers, your place, all that stuff. And it was so crazy what happened because the minute my effort was compared to somebody else's, and I saw that I was like, I would say I was usually three-fourths of the way down the board, maybe even lower than that. And the bikes all had numbers. So I could look at the person next to me and be like, how is she doing so much better than I'm doing? And I'm trying as hard as I can. So the comparison really sucked the fun out of it for me. If you think about the same instructors bringing the same energy, the same kind of music, the same kind of workouts, everything was the same except for the comparison. So what had just brought me tons of joy and enjoyment a week earlier made me feel like, oh, I'm actually not good at this. I was wrong. I thought I was having fun and enjoying this, but I was wrong because now I'm not good enough. And so I never said, oh, I'm going to stop because I'm not on the leaderboard, but I found that I just kind of slowly stopped going. And when I look back now, I realize I let comparison steal my joy. Like, why does it matter if I'm at the bottom of the leaderboard if I end covered in sweat and I really enjoyed myself and I loved the music and I loved the people in the class and the instructor. But that's kind of what comparison does. It can take something where we are succeeding and feeling good about it, if we're just comparing to ourselves and make us think that we're failing at it. It kind of tricks you into thinking, well, if I'm not winning, I just shouldn't do this anymore. It doesn't motivate you. It just shrinks you and makes you want to leave.

Michelle Gauthier: 3:39

And we do this, you know, spin class is an easy example, but we do it in parenting and in business and in relationships and in our goals. And I think the truth is I was, I was never doing it wrong. I was just thinking of it in the wrong way. After I'd been a life coach for a couple of years, I've been a coach for eight years now. So it was maybe like three, four years into my business. I joined this mastermind group where you had to be making a certain amount of money in order to join. And every month, as part of being in this mastermind, everyone would talk about and actually fill in a spreadsheet that everyone else could see of how much money you made that month and how your business was doing. So the grading system was based on like how much income you had brought in. And the goal was to help us grow our businesses. So I think it makes sense to measure that on money. But what I found is when I got into that mastermind, I was like, oh my gosh, this means I'm really doing it. Like I'm successfully owning this business. I'm making enough to support my family. I was so excited about it. And then once I got in, it was leaderboard syndrome all over again. And it really made me compare myself to others. There are people in this class making millions of dollars. And suddenly what I thought was successful and great made me feel like I shouldn't even be here. So instead of looking at it as, oh, I've got this opportunity to be with all these other women who are successful, my brain did the same thing as it did at Cycle Bar. And it was like, oh my gosh, I don't think I can ever do that. Should I just quit right now? Made me totally forget the impact that I was having on women's lives who I was helping, made me totally forget the lifestyle that I was able to create for myself because of this business, meaning I can go to my kids' soccer games, I can drop my kids off at school, I can not work on the weekends. It made me forget all of that because the measuring stick was suddenly how much money are you making? And I could actually go on and on about various different experiences in my life. And I'm sure that as I'm telling this story, maybe you're thinking of some of yours where you thought you were doing just fine and you were maybe even happy with yourself until you compared yourself. I'm even thinking of college, the place where I went to college. It's kind of like if you do well in high school and then you go to a good college and you get to college and you're like, oh my gosh, everybody here is smart and does well. And then you get through college and you get used to that, and then you go to graduate school, and it's the same thing all over again. It's like you keep getting put in these pools where you try to rank yourself. And if you compare yourself too much, you can just end up, you know, quitting cycle bar, that equivalent of life.

Michelle Gauthier: 6:17

So I'm sharing these two stories with you just to remind you that comparison does happen. I talked about this on the Monday episode 189, that it's just part of how our brain works and it helps us try to find our place by seeing who's better or worse, air quotes on both of those. And what we have the power to do is to think about that and analyze that and say, do I want to compare myself in that way? What about me? What's my measuring stick? What's the most important thing for me?

Michelle Gauthier: 6:48

So, for example, in that business group, maybe my most important measuring stick was, can I go to my kids' soccer games and have a successful business? And maybe somebody else's was, can I make the maximum amount of money that I could make? Because that's more important to me than being able to go to my kids' soccer games. Like you, everyone is running their own race, playing their own game. So focus back in on what success looks like for you and make your decision based on that. If you're feeling overwhelmed and you don't exactly know why, comparison could be one of the things. It could be people pleasing, it could be your time management. There's lots of things that it could be. And I just want to remind you that I have a free quiz, which I'll put the link to here, that can help you figure out the main cause of your overwhelm. And it doesn't just tell you the problem, it tells you what you can do about it. There are some worksheets, um, there are specific podcast episodes. So if you're feeling overwhelmed, you can take that free quiz to find out why. Okay, have a great week. See you next week. Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast. If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthier.com. See you next week.