Ep. 08: Avoiding the Comparison Trap!

[00:00:00] My name is Stephen Helvig, and I'm a local producer here in the Twin Cities. I'm excited for today's episode. Thank you for joining me. We're going to talk about avoiding the comparison trap. This is something we all know about. It's something that we probably all do. It's a lot like knowing that you should eat well and exercise and sleep eight hours a night. We know these things, but they are very, very hard to do. We've all been there. We've been scrolling on our phones. It's late at night or whatever you're bored. And you find that the more you scroll, the worse you're feeling because maybe there's one specific account or one specific person that you see and it just starts making you feel worse about yourself. It might be because of envy or jealousy of some sort, you know, maybe it's another musician and whoa, look at how many followers they have, how many subscribers they have. Look how many streams their new song got. Why did they get this opportunity? Why am I not getting this opportunity? I think you get the point, you know, the feeling and it, [00:01:00] it sucks. And sometimes it's not It's not somebody specifically, it can just be a general sense where you're, going through and you're seeing all these creators and going, everybody's doing so much more than I am. I'm not getting anything accomplished. it's not hard to see why this is a bad thing, right? It's terrible for your mental health. It can really tank your sense of self worth. And what that can lead to is that it just makes the motivation to keep grinding, to keep improving yourself. Lower and harder and know, , just more prone to quit or, a lot of people I see just quitting social media for a while, but if you're a local musician trying to grow your fan base and you're not on social media, it's pretty much a death sentence. I think now I don't see how you could do it without, so just, you know, saying, oh, I'm not going to follow anything. I'm not going to be on my phone. Well, There might be times where you need to do that. It's not a strategy that's going to last very long. And this goes for more than just musicians. Of course, if you have a local business, you're somebody who's trying to generate awareness for your art, a [00:02:00] product, your business, your venue, whatever, you're going to need to be on there and you're going to need to know how to use social media in a way that's healthy for you. And. The truth is there will always be somebody that's better than you always. And so if you're sitting there comparing yourself and thinking well, if I can just get to this many streams or this many followers or whatever metric then I'll feel better. It's unlikely. I mean, even artists that are very successful still go through these feelings where they ditch social media for a while. Fortunately, they can take a break because they already have a large following, but the problem's real and it happens to everybody. And even as you get more successful, Sure, you might get temporary validation from that, but then your bar, you're just going to recalibrate and then be looking at people that are even bigger. You're going to set your goals higher and then back to the same thing. you can't assume that chasing certain metrics are going to [00:03:00] solve this problem for you. There's always going to be somebody better than you at it. It's unlikely that you're the best person in the world at say playing guitar or singing or writing songs or whatever. if you can't stop this, what's going to happen is you just end up getting a feeling of, why am I so disappointing? How come they're doing something better? They're cooler, they're more attractive, they're funnier, whatever it is. And It's just going to grind you down. So we have to be able to recognize what's happening and stop it quicker and try to reframe it. So we know this is bad. We know this is dangerous for our mental health yet. It's hard to just stop. It's hard to just turn that part of our brains off. And the crazy thing about it is it's. Usually completely an unfair comparison, right? We're looking at somebody's best moments and then comparing them to our average sense of self. It's not a level playing field and often we don't even have the whole story. We have no idea what other people are going through or what advantages or disadvantages they've had along the way. [00:04:00] We just have the, the one little post, or whatever, or some numbers, and we're making up these stories in our heads to fill in the blanks, and it's just misleading, it's inaccurate No, not all comparison is, by default, a bad thing, it's not. Sometimes, seeing these sort of things can be motivating, they can inspire you, they can push you to go harder, to set better goals, to, generally improve your situation. But, If you're in a habit of comparison a lot, it's going to have more negative effects than positive effects for most of us. So in today's episode, I want to talk about some things that we can do to help control this comparison tendency. I don't think you can just completely stop it. It's a human tendency to find out where you rank in this dominance hierarchy. But you can control it as long as you recognize and sort of have a couple strategies in place to reframe things if you can start to feel yourself getting bad. The basic principle is that you [00:05:00] should only compare yourself to To your previous self. Are you better today than you were yesterday? That's essentially it. If you can do this, you're going to feel more confident, self assured and happy wherever you are in your own personal journey. And this confidence and happiness will help you make better decisions. You'll have better conversations with people and you can build a community of like minded people that feel the same way that are optimistic and positive about their future. And you can stay in a healthier mindset that will just fuel your creative process and. keep you on the right path. So let's dive in. What do we do? Step number one is to recognize when it's happening and then to evaluate, Hey, is this really making me feel like shit? Or is this kind of making me motivated? Am I? All right. I'm ready to go out and get it. I can do this. You know, they did this. I can do this. You have to kind of distinguish between those things and make sure that it's the healthy type. Now I got to say even right now, as I'm [00:06:00] making this podcast, I'm kind of doing the same thing. Comparison doesn't happen just when you're scrolling on social media. It happens all the time, right? I'm trying to launch a new podcast. I'm making these episodes. And what am I doing? Stopping every few sentences to figure out how to do it better because I'm comparing myself against other podcasts that I listen to and really respect. I want this to turn out good. That balance. is tough, right? Because on one hand, it's pushing me to try to keep my quality up to keep my standards high. But if it gets past that, then it, all I'm doing is hitting, stop hitting, delete, spending all day trying to record a 10 minute podcast or something. And it's completely destructive or, you know, it can become debilitating where maybe I just give up entirely and don't do it. I've even had to stop and say, all right. I got to stop being as picky about something and, and just move forward. Keep making progress. You'll get better as you go. And that's due to the comparison trap it's happening right now, as [00:07:00] I make this episode, we all have this, but we can do better. And I think just acknowledging it makes a huge. impact in convincing yourself to just say, all right, I can put that away. Like I said earlier, it's one thing to know that, yeah, you shouldn't compare yourself to others. It's another thing to actually will yourself to do it. So it's not so much that this is about telling you, Oh, this is happening. I think we all know it. It's about reminding you how important it is that you get it under control. Just like diet, just like exercise, just like getting enough sleep. We know these things as truth, but we need constant reminders and support to actually stay on track. Okay, so if you're on social media and something's you do recognize and you evaluate, this is not great for me. Don't be afraid to hit the mute button. If you feel like something's draining you, then, you know, take a break from that. And if you need to, you can take a break entirely from social media. But I just think. You probably have to come back if you're going to try to keep building awareness for yourself, your music, your business, whatever. A lot of artists have done this and it's [00:08:00] okay to step away if you need to just be prepared to figure out a new strategy when you come back. Now, not all comparison is self afflicted like us going, Oh, why do I suck at this? You know, as you get more popular you would think, Oh, okay, now I'll compare myself and think I'm better than somebody or whatever, which is also not great comparing yourself. downwards versus upwards. But as you get more popular, of course, you're going to have more people that are commenting and interacting, and you're probably going to have some trolls and some people that do not like your content, negative comments, feedback, Now, most of the time, I think you should just simply delete this, block it, ignore it. But again, there's a fine line. Not all criticism is meant to be destructive. Some of it is meant to be constructive Again, you just have to evaluate hmm, should I be listening to this? I think a lot of times in the internet, the answer is probably no, but particularly if he comes from somebody you trust, We all need to keep getting better. We all have things to learn. So, don't just inherently think that any criticism or negative [00:09:00] feedback is bad feedback. Take a second, process it. But if you're straight up getting trolled, just block and delete all that stuff. Another thing I think you can do on social media is follow people that you admire, and people that you see are making progress, and then celebrate them. Congratulate them. It's so much easier to say, That's amazing. I can't believe you did that. Great job and lifting up people than it is to just stay silent and beat yourself up, you know, silently in the corner over your own inadequacies. Even if you don't a hundred percent genuinely feel happy for somebody else, if you can see that they worked hard for it, congratulate them. I think personally that like fake it till you make it right. Even if you don't a hundred percent feel that way, or you're jealous, you're envious or whatever by saying, yo, that's amazing what you did so cool. Congratulations. That might mean a lot to them. And that sort of, it's like karma. You know, you put that out in the universe, you're likely to get that back and. There's rarely any [00:10:00] downside to just spreading positivity and optimism. And I do think that if you do that, it can eventually come back to you and make you feel better. Okay. Once you've started to recognize when it's happening and you can evaluate, yeah, this is not the greatest thing in the world. I think the number one thing that you can do is start practicing, start coaching yourself to shift your mindset inward and only compare yourself to yourself of yesterday of last month. of last year. Are you better right now than you were this morning? Just look at your own progress. It's a simple concept, but it is not easy. But if you can do this, it shifts your mindset away from figuring out how you stack up against everyone else and more towards the things that are in your control. You can think about what can you improve right now. And what goes hand in hand with this is writing down your goals. You write them down. So that way, if you start feeling this way, you can pull up your goals and you can go, okay. What is the thing that I can [00:11:00] do either right now or scheduled for tomorrow or next week or whatever, so that I can make progress towards my goals and start feeling better about where I'm at? Or you can look at your goals and say well, you know, last year I had a goal of recording and releasing some music and I wanted to put out a record and play these shows. And I, I did, I guess maybe right now it doesn't feel like much, but Looking back, that was a huge accomplishment. It's so easy to forget about our own progress when we're looking at other people's stuff. So having our goals wrote down can really help us reframe how far we've come, and what is the next step that's under our control. They also help you set your own criteria for success and failure, rather than using someone else's. When you're scrolling on social media and you just see, Oh, this person got this cool opportunity, why didn't I get it? Well, Sometimes you have to ask yourself, did I even... Want that opportunity? Was I even working for that opportunity? Would I even say yes to that opportunity? Sometimes things just look cool, but they're not something that [00:12:00] we would actually need in our lives. By having our own goals, we play by our own scoreboard rather than somebody else's. Define success and failure for yourself. Remember, we don't know the whole picture of. Everyone else, and they don't know the whole picture for you. Maybe if you're feeling like, I'm not getting where I want to go maybe you just started a family. Maybe you started a new job. Maybe you moved. Maybe there was other things in your life that were important to take care of, and you did handle them. That's still a win. Even if you're impeded on other goals, that's just how life is sometimes. Remind yourself that the whole picture does matter. And all you're seeing on social media are one little piece of things. In the end, there's only one thing that you can be better at than anyone else, and that's being yourself. Authenticity is the only game you can win. And I think that this is a good thing, because doubling down on your own uniqueness, your own personality, and your own values, will give you a more distinct [00:13:00] and genuine brand to your fans and followers online. It's also so much easier to maintain and stay consistent with because you probably actually believe in it. If you're trying to play by someone else's set of rules or standards, you're going to likely fall off at some point or come off boring or redundant or inauthentic. Authenticity is key. Finally, don't forget why you're doing this in the first place. Why did you want to put your music out online and share it with the world? Why did you want to start a business? Get back to your own. values and don't worry about the metrics because it's far better to have a thousand people following you that are really into what you're doing than having 10, 000 that could kind of care less. Connect back to the real reason you're doing this and keep your eye on the prize. Don't start playing by other people's rules and lose touch with who you authentically are. It's likely to backfire and have poor results regardless. [00:14:00] All right, let's kind of recap what we've gone through so far. Here are a few secrets to avoiding the dangers of comparison. First, recognize when it's happening. Don't get sucked in. Be conscious when you start comparing, either up or down. And remind yourself that everyone has individual circumstances that simply should not and could not be compared on any sort of equal playing field. Coach yourself to shift your comparisons inward. Ask yourself if you're taking the steps, big or small, to improving yourself. Recalibrate and only compare yourself to yesterday's self. Write down your goals and review your progress. Make sure to celebrate your wins, big or small, and focus on what you can actually control. Remember that authenticity is attractive to others and sustainable for you. And finally, don't lose track of why you're doing this in the first place. So that's it for today's episode. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen. I hope that you got something helpful from this episode, [00:15:00] whether it's just a nice reminder of some tools and techniques that'll help you dampen down the comparison tendency, or maybe a new idea that you can start implementing so that you can just deal with that feeling easier. Before I let you go, I just wanted to say that if you made it this far, I would love to hear from you because this podcast is brand new and I probably have very few people following it right now. So if you listened, I'd love to know what you thought. Send me an email, please let me know. What you liked, what you didn't like, what you'd like to hear more of or less of all of it. Be super helpful in these early stages. So I'd really appreciate it. My email is Stephen spelled S T E P H E N at secrets from the scene. com. Let me know your thoughts. I'd love to hear from you can just message me on socials. I'm on Instagram mostly at secrets from the scene, but you can find me elsewhere. And yeah, let me know what you think. I'd really appreciate it. [00:16:00] If you did enjoy the episode, please like and subscribe, share it with other people, help me spread the word. I'd really appreciate it until next time.