Speaker 1: Hi, everybody, It's Eric from the one you feed with
Speaker 1: another mini episode, and um this one. I want to
Speaker 1: talk about comparing ourselves to others or envy. Teddy Roosevelt
Speaker 1: said that comparison is the thief of joy. It's the
Speaker 1: sort of thing that is so poisonous, and it is
Speaker 1: for me anyway, and I think others feel the same.
Speaker 1: And it's what you know. Envy is one of the
Speaker 1: seven deadly sins in Dante's Inferno. The envious have their
Speaker 1: eyes sown shut. So it's clearly historically been looked at
Speaker 1: as a really challenging thing. And I think the problem
Speaker 1: is that it's one of those things that makes us
Speaker 1: feel bad about ourselves and about another person, sort of
Speaker 1: all simultaneously. It eats at my heart. It starts in
Speaker 1: the stomach and reaches up for a tight grip on
Speaker 1: the throat. It devalues all that I've done. It can
Speaker 1: minimize all that I have, and sometimes it feels like
Speaker 1: it gates all that I am. Comparison is almost always
Speaker 1: focused on the outside. How do we look, how to
Speaker 1: others see us? How much of this do we have?
Speaker 1: How much of that do we have? Comparing ourselves to
Speaker 1: others is a losing game under the best circumstances, but
Speaker 1: we tend to stack the deck against ourselves when we
Speaker 1: start comparing our insides to other people's outsides. People tend
Speaker 1: to look pretty composed, pretty happy, pretty confident on the outside.
Speaker 1: We all work to project this, and yet we compare
Speaker 1: how we feel on the inside and worth what somebody
Speaker 1: else is projecting on the outside. And it's always a
Speaker 1: bad idea. Everybody has their share of concerns and anxiety
Speaker 1: and fear, and and to think that there are these
Speaker 1: people run around out there that don't really lands us
Speaker 1: in a lot of trouble. So what do we do
Speaker 1: with this? They're surprisingly little written about the best ways
Speaker 1: to cope with comparison and envy. Nothing that's got any
Speaker 1: substance to it anyway. Interestingly, I came a raw something
Speaker 1: by Danielle Laporte, who I interviewed a little while ago,
Speaker 1: and we're trying to get the episode done and out
Speaker 1: to everyone. We're having some audio troubles, but um she
Speaker 1: has a quote that says, rather than comparing, imagine, imagine
Speaker 1: yourself feeling the way you want to feel, successful, brilliant, free, healthy, connected.
Speaker 1: That's it. You're not making yourself less than or more
Speaker 1: than anyone else. You're simply giving yourself permission to want
Speaker 1: what you want. What I found interesting about Danielle's interview
Speaker 1: we did with her, and we also talked about the
Speaker 1: same thing in the interview that will be coming out
Speaker 1: Tuesday with Christine Hassler is this idea of we tend
Speaker 1: to think that we want this thing, or we want
Speaker 1: that thing, or we want to look like this, and
Speaker 1: so we focus very much on that form instead of
Speaker 1: focusing on the feeling that's behind it. So an example
Speaker 1: would be what she's suggesting is you focus on how
Speaker 1: you want to feel first, understand what that is, and
Speaker 1: then you can make better decisions about what the things
Speaker 1: are that lead you to that. And so it's the
Speaker 1: same thing that Christine talks about form the New car
Speaker 1: versus the essence. I want to feel energized, I want
Speaker 1: to feel successful, I want to feel important, whatever those
Speaker 1: things are. And so that's a that's a powerful way
Speaker 1: to look at it, but I really like the heart
Speaker 1: of it being imagined. Don't compare. I think the other
Speaker 1: thing that comes up relatively often, and again I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote Danielle Laporte because she had good things to say
Speaker 1: about it is she basically says, wish well for people,
Speaker 1: you know, the rich, skinny and love, confident powered people
Speaker 1: quicker than you can say, I wish I had that,
Speaker 1: say to yourself, or even better to them, way to go,
Speaker 1: you look great. I admire you. With envy out of
Speaker 1: the way, you'll have more space for your own greatness
Speaker 1: to step forward. And uh, I know from past experience
Speaker 1: this does tend to work. It's not easy at first,
Speaker 1: but it does tend to work if I focus on
Speaker 1: trying to wish well for people I'm envious of. And
Speaker 1: then the last thing that came up in an article
Speaker 1: I saw was the idea of opportunity cost An opportunity
Speaker 1: costs simply means that when I do something, I can't
Speaker 1: do something else. And so when we're looking at other
Speaker 1: people who have certain things, we're not looking at the
Speaker 1: opportunity cost that was there. So an example would be
Speaker 1: if I see somebody who lives in San Francisco, I
Speaker 1: could feel jealous about that, but they're not getting that
Speaker 1: I got is the time with my son, the big
Speaker 1: backyard with the dogs. There's always trade offs in everything
Speaker 1: in life, and when we narrow ourselves into very focusedly
Speaker 1: looking at one thing, we almost always end up myopically unhappy.
Speaker 1: So I know this is one that I wrestle with,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of other people wrestle with. So
Speaker 1: hopefully this has been somewhat helpful. And UM, one other
Speaker 1: thing I am going to start on October thirt I'm
Speaker 1: going to send out for emails one each week where
Speaker 1: I'm going to cover the key point in Stephen Covey's
Speaker 1: Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It is a book
Speaker 1: that has been read so widely, and it's often dismissed
Speaker 1: because it seems like it's a business book and it's
Speaker 1: really not. He does talk about some business concepts, but
Speaker 1: so many of the things that have been critical to
Speaker 1: me in making changes in my life I learned in
Speaker 1: that book. And so many of the things that get
Speaker 1: recycled today really have a lot of their origin there.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna do just the key pieces in there.
Speaker 1: UH an email every week for four weeks and UH
Speaker 1: it's free and all you have to do is sign
Speaker 1: up to our email list. So if you go to
Speaker 1: one you feed, dot net slash email, you can sign
Speaker 1: up there or on our front page. Thanks everybody, have
Speaker 1: a good evening. Bye. Wo