https://youtu.be/4kEKGruyhw0
Hello and welcome to the Redefining High Performance podcast. My name is Ty Bennett and in today’s quick episode, I want to share with you something that I think affects all of us as human beings. That is the trap of comparison.
I want you to think about it because comparison is one of the easiest things to slip into and one of the hardest habits to break. Whether it’s in business, in social media, in parenting, fitness, in anything, we tend to look sideways instead of looking forwards.
I want to share something that’s interesting. Many of you may know that I give a speech called Redefining High Performance. And in that, my sons, Tanner and Drew, participate. We actually use Ninja Warrior as a metaphor, which turns the speech into an experience. Now, I want you to think about all of the cool things that are happening in this speech, because I’m going to tell you about the thing that tends to be the most impactful. And it’ll surprise you a little bit.So Tanner and Drew are doing ninja. They are literally running a course on a ninja rig that we set up on stage. They are doing some incredible moves. Tanner is doing one arm pull-ups. Drew does a back flip off of one bar catching another one. It’s called a fly away re-grab.
There’s some incredible points that are made based off of our research. There’s some cool stories. There’s some funny moments. All of those things are happening within this speech, this experience. But the part that tends to stick out the most and actually gets a standing ovation in the middle of the speech almost every time is when Tanner takes the microphone and he talks very vulnerably, very openly in a raw way about comparison.
He shares in his own words, the experience that he’s had as he’s competed in ninja over the last six and a half years. And he’s done it at a very high level. He’s one of the top ninjas in the country. But he’s also competed with his brother who is younger Drew, who often has shown up better.
That’s a hard space to be as an older brother, right? When you’re competing in the same sport and it comes with an automatic comparison. Everybody asks who’s better, you or Drew, right? And as we go through the process of their experience, Drew’s had some more success. And because of that, more opportunities, things that have happened like the very first year they competed, Drew qualified for the world finals and Tanner did not. That’s tough, right? When they had a chance to submit an application for the show American Ninja Warrior Jr. They both submitted and Drew got chosen for the show and Tanner did not. That was a really tough moment, right? Those points of comparison created this discontent in Tanner and he’s shared very openly there was points he got to a point where he kind of wanted to quit he was done with the sport because he felt like he was never good enough and he felt like it wasn’t working and then luckily there was a ninja who moved to Utah and kind of took Tanner under his wing his name’s Evan and I’ll be forever grateful for Evan because Evan just jumped in with Tanner and he really taught him how to stop comparing and he taught him how to celebrate his own success and that his success didn’t matter, like Drew’s success didn’t matter for him. Even if Drew had more success in a particular competition or in a certain situation, Tanner could focus on his own progress and it restored his love of the sport and it helped reshape Tanner’s self-confidence, who he is as a person. And so Tanner shares that very openly on stage today. People are in tears and he typically gets a standing ovation in the middle of the speech. It is the most impactful moment.
Now I want to share a couple of things around that and then we’re going to talk about comparison. One thing that I think is interesting is we’ve given this speech dozens and dozens of times and we just implemented that segment into the speech for a particular group that I knew they could relate to this comparison based off of their profession. And so I actually like didn’t think it was going to fit. I didn’t know if that idea, this concept of comparison, if people were going to connect with it. And so I kept, I personally kept it out of the speech. And then when he did it for the very first time, I mean, literally just like the coolest standing ovation I’ve ever seen. And then we’ve put it into the speech every time after with the same response. And the insight for me was that we are all human and we’ve all felt this form of comparison. We’ve all dealt with it or we deal with it. We’ve all had moments that we think that we’re not good enough. We’ve all had times that we wish that we could have the same success of somebody else or when somebody else succeeds it kind of hits our ego. We’ve all dealt with that. It’s very natural. And so I want to dive into a little bit around comparison, hopefully give you a couple of thoughts. When you think about it from a psychology standpoint, there’s a theory called the Social Comparison Theory and it was established back in the 1950s. So I mean this has been an area of study, something we’ve all struggled with for a very long time and the theory says that people determine their worth by comparing themselves to others. And so when you think about comparison, there’s upward comparison, there’s downward comparison. Upward comparison means that we compare ourselves to those who are ahead of us, which can be positive, it can inspire us, but it often leads to envy, right? We don’t feel good enough. We want what they have. We envy that. That’s not a positive emotion. When we think about downward comparison, we’re comparing to those behind us and that can leave us feeling superior and because of that we become stagnant and we’re not focused on growing either.
I think all of us deal with this on a higher level because of social media. We reach tons of research has shown that social media and well-being often don’t go together. Multiple studies show that heavy social media comparison is linked to lower self-esteem, higher anxiety, higher depression, right? And so we’re seeing it all around us, right? We’re so involved and what we end up seeing is everyone’s highlight reel. We end up seeing just the fun stuff. We end up seeing all the successes. We don’t see the full picture and live it fully to have a fair assessment of what’s happening. And so comparison is dangerous. It’s dangerous for a lot of reasons. It shifts our focus outward. So we start measuring against others instead of our own progress. That’s an unhealthy way to measure things.
It breeds discontent in each of us. We discount the things that we’ve achieved or the things that we have. We become discontented with that. It leads to imposter syndrome, right? We think I’ll never be as good as, and so we don’t show up the way that we need to. And like I was saying, and this is the truth, we see someone’s highlight reel and not behind the scenes, we’re not seeing reality. We’re not looking at it in terms of what is real and how are we comparing ourselves. Have you ever gotten stuck in that?
Let me give you a couple of tools, a couple of ideas, and in all honesty, I’m open to any that you have. Reach out to me on social media, share any thoughts that you have on comparison because I think this is an ongoing process, an ongoing battle. It’s things that I’m learning and even as a parent trying to help my sons navigate and learn through.
Couple ideas. One is that we can turn envy into inspiration. Instead of asking why not me, ask a better question. What can I learn from them? What does their success teach me? What do I gain from that so that I can implement? Another thing is just simply to run your own race, run your own course, reframe success as internal benchmarks. So you’re comparing you to the you you were yesterday. And so you’re looking at progress and growth, not did I outperform somebody, but where was I yesterday and how am I performing? Practice gratitude.
Research shows that gratitude interrupts negativity and it helps us shift our focus to what we do have. So expressing gratitude, having a gratitude list, having gratitude journal, praying at night and expressing gratitude, whatever your practice is, gratitude is an important one. Also, I think we need to limit social comparison triggers. If you find that you are triggered through social media, turn it off. Maybe mute certain people or channels or take a break, right? Have some discipline to be able to remove that and go, that’s not healthy for me. If it’s impacting you in a negative way from that standpoint. A couple other things. When you think about growth and comparison, use the 1% rule. Ask yourself every day, what’s one thing I can do to be 1% better than yesterday? Just small focus on progress, right? The mirror test. Only compare yourself to who you were yesterday, a week ago, six months ago, right? Look in the mirror. Don’t look outward. Just that’s the test. And then another one that I find is super helpful for me is to celebrate others out loud, to compliment, to truly be excited for other people. Sometimes it might feel a little forced, but celebrate them, cheer them on when they have success because their success doesn’t diminish yours. It doesn’t take away from you. And so try and develop the practice of being genuinely happy for other people. I don’t think high performance is about being the best. It’s about being your best.
And the moment we stop running someone else’s course and we start focusing on our own, comparison loses its power and progress becomes inevitable, becomes part of the process. I think we all as human beings deal with comparison and hopefully some of these ideas will help you in that process. I’ve been so inspired listening to Tanner and watching his wisdom shared on stage and seeing the reaction that people have in the moment and then afterwards as they come up and talk to him very openly, very vulnerably. We all deal with comparison and it’s a tough habit to break so let’s work on that together.
I hope this has been helpful to you. I hope that this message resonates with you. If it does, share it with somebody else as well. If you haven’t subscribed to the podcast, like, rate us, review us. I appreciate all of the support. I bring you a short, quick episode like this every single week. It should be just something that you can do in 10 minutes or so. And today we went just a couple of minutes past that, but I’ll bring you a new episode next week.