How I scale faster by comparing myself with others

One habit responsible for nuking many creative careers:

Comparison.

I’ve compared myself to others in many domains. Age. Height. Net worth. Shoe choice. The number of content likes …and even hairline position.

But while most experts call it toxic, it is behind some of my biggest wins.

Might sound strange, but let me explain:

Francis vs V

It was April 2022.

I bolted out of bed, completed my 30-minute morning routine, and picked up my phone with my right hand.

A few seconds later, my other wrist morphed into a fist and a combination of shock and rage flashed across my face. My friend turned rival, V, had 1000 followers on his Twitter profile. 6 weeks earlier, he had 44 followers while I sat at 400 followers.

My mind raced with questions.

How did he run past me?

Do people prefer his content to mine?

What?! No way. I was the superior writer. Or was I?

I was pissed, but I composed myself. Well, that lasted only two weeks before I broke character. V posted a tweet celebrating 4000 followers — then 3000 more than I had.

I did the right thing: replied to his tweet with a “congrats bro”.

And then the not-so-right thing: released a gut-wrenching scream into my pillow.

This was my “friend” after all. Why was I acting this way?

The emotion behind Comparison

I suspected something was wrong with me, so I checked in with my favourite consultant to find out what the issue was. After scrolling YouTube for half an hour, I had my answer.

I was envious.

Envy is a deep feeling of resentment that pops up when someone has something that you don’t. The darker aspect of this emotion is the thought that this person’s win robs you of yours.

This discovery made me train myself to view the world through an abundant lens. I adopted a new belief known as positive-sum thinking; other people’s wins supplement mine and vice versa.

However, the resentment never left. Instead, it became my firepower to crush V. Now; I have ~83,500 followers. He has 8500. While my heart beamed with joy when I passed him, I feel nothing at the moment.

So what was the point?

Seneca had his head screwed on right when he said the famous words:

“Comparison is the thief of joy”.

But then, who assumed the goal of life was joy?

Comparison is fuel

Were WWII soldiers motivated to show up to battle?

Were our mothers giggling while delivering us into the world?

Was Nelson Mandela radiating joy during his 27-year stint in prison?

No. No. No. But they did it anyway.

They did so because they had a mission and sometimes achievement comes at the cost of being happy for the short term.

People avoid comparing themselves to others because it makes them feel incompetent and insecure.

Regardless of what most people think….

To be human is to compare.

To be human is to compete.

Since the dawn of time, competition has been the driving force for the biggest changes in society.

Here’s an example from our Paleolithic times:

The Paradox of Happiness

Hunter A and I are competitive people who share a similar life philosophy:

We don’t want to be happy.

We want to be proud of ourselves.

And ironically, that makes us happy.

I didn’t compare my number of followers to V for the sake of pleasure. I was interested in taking his soul, which I did — and that made me happy.

Immediately after, I ran after a new goal. A new soul to hunt. Never satisfied. Because the journey to success is, as David Goggins says, never finished.

I believe someone put me on this earth to work. Whenever I’m not making progress, it feels like there is a raging war in my mind. If you’re like me, it begs to ask:

Is comparing yourself to another person really a bad thing?

Sure, it feels awful when Andrew Tate asks you what colour your Bugatti is and you reply with a blank stare because you don’t own one.

Instead of fuming or getting depressed, why not control that anger and channel it to working harder so you can buy your Bugatti?

Negative emotions are more powerful than positive ones. Consider using them to achieve your goals.

How to avoid getting burned

We’ve both agreed that comparison is a negative emotion, but you must approach it cautiously. Like all things, if you dwell in its presence for too long, it’ll wreck you.

There’s a reason successful people party hard after working for so long.

There’s a reason gym bros have rest days.

There’s a reason humans sleep.

We need to zone out to regenerate our energy.

This means you reduce your contact with mediums or people that trigger comparison sometimes. At the start of this post, I told you comparison wrecks people. It’s because of two reasons:

(1) They don’t channel the energy, which burns them into depression.

(2) They channel the energy, but they take in too much and that burns them to a crisp.

To me, this might mean less time on social media and more time to channel my competitive energy towards getting closer to my goals.

Whatever it means to you, I hope you join me in using this negative force to do good.

See you next week.

PS: Yesterday, I made a vulnerability post on Twitter (including a video) that went somewhat viral.

If you didn’t see it, check it out here and let me know what you think: