This is an open letter to anyone who judges their success – at work or at home – by comparing themselves to others. By the same token, it’s also an important reminder to myself of what’s important and what’s not.
We humans tend to judge things in relative terms. I can’t tell you what the exact temperature is outside just by stepping out, but I can tell you easily if it’s warmer or cooler than yesterday. I can’t easily tell you if $200 is a good price for a pair of headphones, but I can definitely tell you that $150 is a better price than $200 for the same pair. If you show me one shade of blue, I can’t tell you how vivid it is; if you give me another shade beside it though, I can tell you which one appears more vivid than the other.
There’s nothing wrong with this tendency to compare; it’s what got us to where we are today. Comparison is a process of weighing our options that acts as a survival mechanism. If that sabretooth tiger in the bushes all of a sudden decided I would make a tasty lunch, my Neanderthal brain would make an instantaneous, subconscious comparison between my odds of surviving by fighting it, and my odds of surviving by trying to run away. If I decided to fight, I might compare my odds of winning empty-handed with my odds of winning with a wooden club in hand.
Makes sense, right? The problem is that we’ve carried this survival mechanism with us into the 21st century, and we have a tendency to use it in places where it doesn’t belong.
Like work, for example.
If you judge your professional success solely by how it compares to others around you, you’re in good company. But you’re also shooting your own happiness in the foot. See, here’s the problem: when you compete with me, you make two invalid assumptions: first and most importantly, you’re assuming we’re playing the same game. We’re not. You can’t assume that the person you’re competing with defines success in exactly the same way you do. Off the top of my head, here are seven ways you can define success at the office alone:
- Salary (kind of a sad measure)
- Title (see above)
- Personal achievements
- Leaders you’ve developed
- Team harmony – you love the people you work with
- Personal fulfillment
- Maintaining your desired work/life balance
You see the problem with comparing yourself? How can you beat someone at Chess when they’re focused on playing Checkers? It’s a fool’s game.
The second invalid assumption you make is that you assume that I care to compete with you. Even if you sat down in front of me and dropped a chess board down and started moving your pieces, you can’t beat me if I refuse to play.
What to Do Instead
At my karate dojo, we’re reminded all the time that your path is yours, and yours alone. Everyone comes to the dojo for different reasons, and everyone learns and grows at their own pace. Someone else receiving their belt before you has absolutely no impact on your ability or worth as a martial artist.
The same applies at the office. Rather than compare yourself to others all the time, why not focus on comparing your current situation to your ideal one? Why not focus on the progress you’re making toward your own goal? How about comparing where you are now to where you were five years ago?
Any of those options are much more productive and conducive to your own happiness than comparing yourself to others. There will always be someone who is smarter, more talented, more charismatic, a better speaker, or whatever else. Let it go. Focus on setting a goal for yourself to improve, then compete against that future version of you. For example, if you’re 25 and you set a goal to make $100,000 a year by the time you’re 30, compete against that goal. If you currently work 60 hours a week and want to cut that down to 40 so you can spend more time with your family, compete against that goal.
You get the picture.
Here’s the thing: when you compete this way, the benefits are threefold: one, you protect your relationships with the people you work with. If I find out you’re competing with me and judging your success by my own, I’m likely to feel uncomfortable by that, even if I’m not competing back.
Two, you’ll improve your own happiness. When you “win” that competition, it feels good, and it feels even better knowing it didn’t come at someone else’s expense. Plus, even if you missed your goal, you probably made some progress toward it and put yourself in a better position than you used to be in, and that still feels good.
Lastly, you’ll be more likely to focus on doing the right things at the office. I’ve seen people who are overly competitive with others; they’re more focused on playing the game than they are doing good work. Sometimes, they’ll even try to bring others down so that they don’t “win.” When that happens, whatever game you think you’ve been playing, you just lost. The focus should always be on doing your best work and bringing your best self to the office, not on beating others.
Wrapping it Up
I see this scenario way too often; I’ve been guilty of it in the past too. I speak from experience when I say that competing with others brings only misery and isolation in the long run. Since I made the conscious decision to compete only with my future self, I find I’m much happier – not just at work, but in general. It’s liberating to know that I’m the only one walking the particular path I’ve chosen – there’s no one to race against, and I’m only limited by my own choices.
If you’re someone who finds yourself competing with others, give this a try sometime. I have a feeling you’ll find it way more satisfying.
