Is Comparison a Good Thing?

The answer may surprise you.

Unhealthy Comparisons

We are constantly told to avoid comparison. Theodore Roosevelt even has the famous quote, “Comparison is the thief of joy”.

I believe this is healthy advice when it comes to one’s surface aesthetics. Meaning, it’s not going to serve you if you compare your clothes to your neighbor’s clothes. And you’re not doing yourself any favors to compare your shoes, your purse, your makeup to those of your colleague’s. Or comparing your car to the one next to yours when you pull up into your parking space at work. Those are all surface aesthetics, the outside appearances. In my opinion, completely unnecessary. In these instances, comparison is the thief of joy, because there will always be someone with bigger or better.

Beneficial Comparisons

However-- Comparison can also serve as a tremendous benefit for achieving success. You may have always wanted to start your own business, or land the biggest sale, deal or agreement of your career, but you’ve noticed there are a lot of similar businesses already out there, or there are huge successes already in that area that you’re working on.

Instead of giving up or feeling defeated, you can use those as fuel to motivate your goals. Meaning: comparison can be used as proof that you can do it too.

Examine Your Mindset

Are you comparing your personal success to someone else’s and therefore setting restrictions on yourself? For example, “Oh, they’ve already reached that, so there’s no way I could also.”

That’s the challenge I have for you today: stop allowing those kind of thoughts to enter your mind. But rather, if you compare and think, “Wow, they just landed that huge sale” or “Look, that person just opened that new business”, turn that kind of comparison into, “That means I could do it too.”

My Final Challenge to You

If you have a dream, my challenge for you is to take a look at those who have achieved similar success.

Then start comparing yourself. What are they doing (or what did they do) that you can do too?

To summarize, it really comes down to your mindset. Do you have the mindset of abundance or scarcity? If you look around, I believe you’ll see that the possibilities are endless. Companies like Uber, for example, are redefining what is possible. They didn’t say, “We can’t do that, that’s not possible.” They said, “There has to be a better way”.

So if you see that others have done it already, or others have achieved success, use comparison as proof to fuel your success. You can do it too!    

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Identify Your Purpose

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It has been many years in the making for me to really feel like I can identify my life’s purpose. I feel like many of us find ourselves in a hamster wheel, just doing the same things every day, on and on and on. And then there’s this lack of fulfillment inside of us.

Recently, I came across some advanced education, and I heard some very profound questions that really impressed me. I sat down and wrote out the answers to these questions, and it brought such clarity to me. So I want to offer them to you today. I hope that they’ll help you find clarity as well.

What brings you energy?

What is it that energizes you?

Think about that. You do a lot of things every day and have a lot of commitments. And some of those things will drain you! And you might start to think, “Well I slept great last night, but after doing this for twenty minutes, I feel like I’ve been here for five hours!”

And part of this is realizing what you need to give up. But, we’re going to focus on identifying your purpose; what gives you energy?

For me, it’s people! Being a part of an event with people, leading people. Music—singing and dancing—also brings me energy. Fitness gives me a ton of energy. Education—when I’m learning or teaching—also brings me energy. When I’m organizing or planning new projects, I have a ton of energy.

So, take some time to think about it, and discover what that is for you. 

What is important to you?

Relationships are huge for me. My personal relationships with Jesus Christ, family, employees, colleagues, friends, my husband, my church. Health and fitness is also important to me; building muscle strength, clean eating, flexibility, dancing. I also believe that having a flexible lifestyle is important to me. It gives me the opportunity to meet new people, attend educational events, and travel.

What else is important to you?

What tasks, activities and environments are you 100% present for?

What activities or tasks that you’re doing are you 100% present for? Once you take a few minutes to brainstorm some of those, I believe that you, like me, will find some common ground. You’re going to start noticing that on each of these lists, there are a lot of similarities.

I’m also going to throw one more question in as a bonus.

What do people reach out to you for?

For me, it’s a lot of business advice, or people asking, “How would you handle this situation?”

What is that for you? Maybe you haven’t been paying attention to that, but when people start reaching out to you, consider jotting it down. And over the course of the next month or two you’re going to start to see some similarities.

Here’s one last neat thing to think about: I believe that I’m made up by these specific talents and gifts, and I ask myself: How can I take who I am and serve the world?

Is it time for you to ask yourself the same thing? Is it time you identify your purpose? 

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An Epic Fail Should Fuel Your Next Victory

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It pains me to reflect on Ronda Rousey's first ever knockout. I literally felt nauseous as I watched Holly Holm have her way with her.  I have never in my life felt that dedicated to an athlete or person of celebrity status.  When I was first introduced to this woman, I had an instant girl crush!  I actually wanted to be her!  And again, that has never happened to me before.  My biggest takeaway from Ronda's many mantras is that even on our worst day ever, we still need to be better than second best.  And for the first time in her career, she wasn't better than second best.  This was her epic fail and now the whole world is watching.  

Too Comfortable Too Soon?

Within the last year, fame has hit Ronda hard and fast.  She is in the spotlight and can send any message she desires.  She is very comfortable speaking her mind and has been controversial with this freedom.  One of her messages is #DNB. Ronda conveys she is not a "do nothing bitch".  In this message she encourages girls to go after goals that don't include "sucking di#% to become famous...needless to say she's turned many heads and people are paying attention. In her defense, she had a good point which is to take positive action with your life :)  But had she gotten too comfortable with her shock-value approach?  Did she get too proud, too loud, too soon? 

I cannot and will not be the judge if I think she deserved to lose or if the hype about her wasn't all it was cracked up to be...but what I WILL judge is what decision she'll make following her fall and how will she use her fail to fuel her next victory?  In my opinion it is right now that Ronda has an opportunity of a lifetime.  She has the opportunity to produce an honorable legacy! 

Your Fail Is Your Fuel

As I wait eagerly for Ronda's ROCKY IV revival, I think about what we can learn from this. We've all had fails in life.  These fails mold us, develop us, and humble us.  We can choose to lose hope. We could choose to hide away and pray that nobody remembers how awful our fail was.  We could allow our embarrassment and shame to take over and limit us.  We could be a #DNB!   OR...we could stop feeling sorry for ourselves and choose to get up and take action!  Friends, do not let the devil bring you down!  Take one day to reflect, express and recover.  Then get up and GET AFTER IT.  

Be Grateful!

If you never experienced failure, you'd never really understand how phenomenal victory feels. If you never had obstacles to overcome or hurdles to jump, you'd never fully appreciate when you achieved a victory.  It's our failures that really call us to the best chapters of our lives and our biggest opportunities.  What will you decide to do when your time comes? 

I choose to be grateful for the opportunity for development. I never want to feel stuck.  Staying the same is not an option. I pray that I remember this when I'm slapped with defeat. It's not easy and it's not fun, but it's worth the fight!  

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Motivation Is A Choice, Not A Feeling

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"I just don't feel like it." We've all heard this, we've all said this or have felt this way at one time or another.  But our feelings may need to be ignored if we want to accomplish our goals. 

New Mindset

We must think about motivation differently if what we say we want is actually what we truly desire.  An example is weight loss. Now that the new year has started, many of us are super motivated to change our physique. Bodybuilding.com shared a study that finds 73% of people who set fitness goals as a new year's resolution will give them up. 

When we feel unmotivated we must tell ourselves it's NOT AN OPTION. If you make the decision to increase your profit margin by 5% then the actions necessary to reach this goal are not options, they're scheduled commitments. 

Get Fired Up!

Start each day on purpose. If you worked at a coffee shop and you were opening the store tomorrow, you'd have step by step procedures to make sure everything was ready to go by the time the first customer walked in. We must also treat our personal lives the same by having a consistent process for each day.

Depending on your goal, you may begin your day listening to a sales podcast. If your goal is improving the performance of your team, you may start your day with reading a chapter in a leadership book. If you're like me, you feel very motivated when the right music is on. For some, it's going to yoga to meditate and set your daily intention. The point isn't what you do, it's doing what works for you consistently. 

Just Show Up

Overthinking will kill your joy and waste the time you could've had focusing on achieving your goal and/or accomplishing your tasks. If you're a writer, you may not feel like writing today and on all accounts you're not motivated. But you sit down, you show up and you start to type.  

If you're goal is to improve your physique but today you're swamped, you had an unexpected call to deal with and you're sore from yesterday’s workout, you may start to think that it will be okay to skip today's workout commitment. This is THE moment you become one of the 27% who start a new fitness goal and it becomes a part of your everyday life. Why? Because you ignore the manipulative self-talk and instead you just show up. I believe in hindsight you will say, "I'm so glad I came." 

Accountability

Accountability partners are powerful resources. Personally, I thrive by having to check in with my accountability partners. And I want you to know I have multiple partners for multiple areas of life. I have a fitness coach, a business coach, a financial adviser and a spiritual mentor. When I'm talking to them I'm confronted with a.) how much progress I've made and b.) what obstacles I need to overcome.

And I never want to sound like a child who's asking their parent permission to not have to clean their room. Maybe it's my pride but I believe if you make another person or group of people (social media) aware of what you're working towards, it's unlikely that you fall of the wagon. At least I believe it's much less likely to fall too far for too long.

Recap

Friends, keep the finish line in front of you at all times. Choose to ignore feelings that don't bring you closer to your mission. Get your ass fired up each and every day. Just show up and focus on action. And finally, find someone who has your back to keep you accountable for your life and its direction.

Pour in the Good to Remove the Bad

Do you have any bad habits you’d really like to kick? I know I do. I would like to give up swearing. I’m disciplined when I’m in certain environments such as babysitting my niece and nephew, or during the recordings of my podcast and of course at church. However, if you place me in an environment such as public presentations, group fitness classes, among friends or family and I’m like a bat out of h*%!!…whoops…I mean I’m a little out of control…

Here’s another question, do you have any negative relationships with people who bring you down? Are there people in your life that suck the life out of you? I can definitely relate… so what are we to do about this? How do we remove these unwanted habits and/or people from our lives? The answer is displacement.

Displacement

“What the heck is displacement?” I’m glad you asked. Displacement by definition is the moving of something from its place or position. It’s a shift.

I heard an awesome analogy about displacement when I was at Dave Ramsey’s Smart Conference last year. Visualize a dirty glass after drinking a thick smoothie. Place the glass under the faucet and turn the water on. Let the water run non-stop and imagine what would happen. The result is, all of the smoothie residue would be removed and the glass would eventually become clear and clean.

I love the psychology that Wikipedia shares about displacement. It’s an unconscious defense mechanism whereby the mind substitutes either a new aim or a new object for goals felt in their original form to be dangerous or unacceptable.

Do you have habits or people in your life that are either dangerous and/or unacceptable? You may think that this definition is a little harsh, but I believe the long term effects of those habits and/or people could actually be a lot harsher.

Application

First, you must identify what it is you want to remove. Once you’ve done that, you’ll now pour in the good. In other words, you’re going to replace the unwanted with the wanted. Here’s an example.

If you want to give up smoking cigarettes or give up snacking on candy at work. You would want to replace this with another positive habit. Instead of just giving it up and dropping it off at the curb. You would replace this action with a new action that’s either not harmful or may actually benefit you positively. So with this scenario, you could replace smoking with sucking on straws. The action would no longer be harmful. If you habitually snack on candy at work, you could replace the candy dish with a dish of almonds, or bring a little bag of carrots to work with you. This action would actually be positive nutritionally!

Let’s try another scenario. Let’s say you have a friend or relative that is super negative. They bring out the worst in you or leave you feeling worse about yourself. Instead of telling them to hit the road, (note that I would tend to use a shorter, more forceful phrase…yikes…) you’ll simply be too busy to connect with them because you’re going to “replace” them with new people. Is there someone you know, who after hanging around them, you feel better about yourself and better about life? Call them, text them or message them and start investing your time and effort into a relationship with them.

Reflection

How will you implement displacement into your life? How will you pour in the good to remove the bad? 

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Success Starts with Self-Mastery | Intellectual

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It is my opinion that success isn’t just tied to dollar signs. To achieve life success, I believe one must develop themselves. Today’s topic is devoted to the intellectual goal toward self-mastery. It starts with our desire for consistent growth and development. To be someone who loves to learn. If you’re always learning, you’re always moving towards a new level of excellence and therefore a new level of success.

Attitude

As an Entrepreneur the challenge is self-discipline. We do not have a boss. We have no one looking over our shoulders. If we want to move a deadline, we can, and do…

We must set and meet our own expectations. We are accountable to ourselves. The first step towards achieving self-mastery success intellectually is choosing the right mindset. You must choose the attitude of, “I’m in need of advanced education. I need to learn more. I do not know it all. I desire a deeper level knowledge.”  The question is then, where will you begin your personal journey of building your intellect?

Reading

First, I believe reading is paramount. I once heard Dave Ramsey say that the only difference between who you are today and who you’ll be one year from now will depend entirely on the books you read and the people you meet. When is the last time you finished an entire book? I used to struggle with this! I would start a book and think that I understood the overall point, so I wouldn’t finish it. But there is something rewarding about finishing a book. And let’s be honest with ourselves…if you do not finish the book you are undoubtedly missing out.

What was tremendously helpful to my life was literally joining a book club. When I met with other professionals who had the same requirements, I was able to keep up. If I’m going to be completely honest (would you expect any different?) I really don’t like looking foolish so there were days I’d read for ninety minutes prior to our get-together to make sure I was up to date on our reading schedule. If there isn’t a book club you can join, then maybe you are the one who will start it!

If you’re perfectly capable of reading on your own, I’d recommend a daily and/or monthly goal. Maybe you read one chapter per day? Or two chapters per week? Or possibly twelve books per year? In an ideal world, what does this look like for you?

Audio & Visual

The audio and visual outlet is my personal favorite when I’m driving!  I’ll pull up YouTube, connect the Bluetooth to my car and off I go. Have you experienced Ted Talks?! One of my favorite Ted Talk is Simon Sinek’s presentation titled, Start With Why. Let’s not forget podcasts! Who has listened to the Beyond The Technique podcast with Kati Whitledge? Other great podcasts I would recommend are, This Is Your Life With Michael Hyatt, The Sales Evangelist with Donald C Kelly and Perpetual Traffic by Digital Marketer. If you happen to subscribe to Success Magazine, I highly recommend listening to the Success cd’s they offer with each month’s edition. I could go on and on but I’ll say this, what if you scheduled an hour per week to listen to, or watch a video? What if you scheduled two per week and starting taking notes about what you’ve learned and how you could apply that into your business? What kind of impact would this make in your life?

Live Events

One of my favorite educational outlets is investing in live events. This means you pay to attend advanced education on topics that improve your life and business. You could do this virtually through webinars or you could travel to an event which in my opinion, becomes an unforgettable experience. I believe when you pay for a workshop, seminar or conference, you’re more invested in what you take away from the event. It becomes your responsibility to learn. For me it’s almost a competitive challenge of how much I can take away from what they’re offering. My personal goal is to attend two major events per year. I’ve been to four destination events within the last seven months and I can attest that my life has dramatically improved. My marriage has been positively impacted, our personal financial picture has been defined with clear, long term goals. My businesses have progressed positively. And my professional relationships have not only increased, but they have deepened. Priceless! I’m so thankful for these events and the amazing opportunities they’ve provided. How many events will you attend this year? When will you have these scheduled by?

Hire A Coach

Lastly, an outlet that has been an ongoing investment which has been invaluable for me is hiring a business coach. Not only will a business coach keep you accountable to your goals. They will offer insight, education and resources that will increase your level of intelligence. Simply put, you don’t know what you don’t know! The right business coach is someone who genuinely wants to see you win. If they’re really good, they won’t be afraid to push you past your comfort zone.  The question isn’t if you should hire a business coach, the question is, when will you hire the coach? Are you delaying your potential? Are you fearful of what you could be missing out on? I was. Prior to hiring my business coach whom I’ve been working with now for three years, I was daunted by the price. However, I was more daunted by what it would cost me if I didn’t hire them. There will be a price to pay, it’s your choice which one. I believe if you hire a coach, you will be five steps ahead of ninety percent of your competitors. The right coach is ready and available. When will you finally decide to contact them?

Let's Connect

Until we connect again my friends, I want to thank you for your time and commitment to our topic today. You’re already on your way to mastering yourself or you wouldn’t be with me right now. If you’re a salon owner who desires additional education beyond the technique, please visit KatiWhitledge.com. I would love for you to reach out and email me. Let’s get to know one another! If you have at least five employed Stylists on your team and your biggest needs are obtaining and retaining new clients. Please visit MeetYourStylist.com. Meet Your Stylist is an exclusive online survey that will match your future clients to the Stylists are your Salon that is the best fit for them. Think of Meet Your Stylist as your number one referral source!

And as always I would love to connect on LinkedIn, Kati Whitledge or check out my facebook page…facebook.com/katiwhitledge.

Thank you for sticking with me until the end. Have an awesome day and stay strong!