Comparison Is the Thief of...

You probably finished that sentence before I did.

Joy.

I'm not sure that's right anymore though.

For most of my adult life, comparison was the job. As an intelligence analyst, military leader, and now a coach, I learned to notice what changed, what didn't, and what felt out of place. Sometimes the smallest difference mattered. A shift in behavior, a broken pattern, two things that only made sense side by side. Do that well enough, and people can make better decisions. I've watched it shape policy, save organizations, and even save lives.

So, I have a hard time believing comparison is the problem. It teaches us. It helps us anticipate. It keeps us from dating the same kind of person twice or buying that delicious food poisoning inducing gas-station sushi (never again).

For always-on wayward-like minds, comparison is automatic. We walk into a room and notice what's off. We hear the sentence underneath the sentence. To answer a simple questions sometimes would require an entire wall of white boards to show someone the thought process. That's useful when the problem is out there.

The trouble starts when life turns the system inward.

Mine did.

If you've followed what I've been building with Wayward Purpose, you know parts of my life imploded and exploded around the same time these past few years. And the brain I'd spent years training on complicated and complex things found a new subject: me.

I started comparing my marriage to easier ones. My career to ones that kept moving. And then the more dangerous comparisons; people who'd done less and received more. Less struggle, better timing, twice the outcome for half the effort. Not being able to make sense of things when things turn inward really sucks.

The analyst in me started keeping score. Underneath it was a sentence I'm not proud of that kept popping up:

“This Isn't Fair!”

I worked hard. I served. I sacrificed. I became someone people could depend on. So how did I end up here? How did I end up kneeling on a hotel room floor, balling my eyes out, running comparisons through my head like one of them might finally explain what I'd done wrong? How did it come to this moment?

Now, there's an old story about workers who labor all day and watch people who arrived near the end receive the same pay. They're furious. “We carried more, we did more, we deserve more.” I understand them better now. Nothing about what they received had changed. They just saw what someone else got, and comparison turned the difference into a different story. “If they got more for less, I must have gotten less than I deserved.”

I started noticing how often I did the same thing. Someone else's business takes off. Someone else's marriage looks effortless. Someone else's “thing” sells first. Someone else gets the promotion.

You get the point.

Yet, something whispered: what about me? After everything I've done? I deserved that. Or, I didn't deserve this.

This is where I think comparison stops being the thief. And maybe it's actually envy, wearing comparison as a disguise. Envy rarely announces itself.

It sounds like fairness: "I worked harder."
Like exhaustion: "I deserve a break."
Like disappointment: "Why does this always happen to me."
Sometimes it even sounds like confidence: "I'm better than they are."

And sometimes there really is injustice worth naming. But I started asking myself a harder question: “Would this still bother me if I didn't know what the other person received?

Because comparison just gives us information. What we do with it is where things get complicated. An always-on mind takes a simple observation, their relationship seems strong, and seems to arrive at something must be wrong with me.

We see someone succeed and decide we're falling behind.
We see someone rest and decide we built our life wrong.

The analyst becomes the investigator, then the suspect, then the prosecutor, then the judge. I know that courtroom. I've built convincing cases against myself in it.

What I'd forgotten was the one thing I'd never ignore in real analysis: my own assumptions. Looking outward, good analysis means asking what am I missing, what else could explain this, what would change my mind. Looking inward, the first story became fact. I'm behind. Fact. They have something I should have. Fact. Except none of it was fact. It was my own interpretation.

Somewhere between what we notice and what we decide it means, there's still a little freedom. Not controlling every thought. Not pretending hard things aren't hard. Just enough room to ask: what's actually happening here? At least this is what I’ve come to learn and believe.

Maybe their marriage isn't proof mine is broken.
Maybe it's showing me something I missed.
Maybe their success isn't evidence of my failure.
Maybe it's showing me something I want.
Maybe their rest doesn't mean I chose wrong.
Maybe I'm just tired.
And maybe someone else's good doesn't require my deprivation.

That last one took me a while to learn and accept.

I still compare. I probably always will. My wayward brain is built for it, and it's responsible for some of the best work I've ever done. It is the reason for my curiosity, and the reason I’ve been able to help save lives in some instances. And I don't want to shut that off.

I’m learning to notice when comparison starts to turn inward and starts looking for something to prosecute. Am I gathering information, or building a story about who I am? Is this really about fairness, or is envy wearing a more respectable disguise?

And increasingly, that’s part of the work I do with others in coaching: helping people name what’s happening, see the story they’ve attached to it, and decide how to grow from it.

In the end, maybe restoring togetherness starts there. Not with some enormous transformation. Just one small practice of noticing what's happening inside us, and naming it before we believe it.

So here’s the first practice I’ve been working on, and one I now bring into coaching: When comparison shows up, I ask two questions:

What did I actually notice? And what story did I add to it?

That’s it. Not “stop comparing.” Not “think positive.” Just separate the observation from the interpretation. Because a feeling can be completely real without the story I attach to it being completely true.

The tightness in my chest is real. The disappointment is real. The envy might be real. But I’m behind. I’m failing. They got what I deserved. Something is wrong with me. Those are conclusions. And conclusions can be questioned.

Sometimes one good question is enough to create a little space between what happened and the verdict we were about to hand ourselves.

This all probably is not enough to change a life overnight. But I've grown suspicious of overnight transformations anyway. Most things worth rebuilding after collapse happen one piece at a time. One choice. One practice. One conversation. One return. One naming of something.

And I think that’s enough for today, and a good place to start this newsletter, again.

One small step toward restoring togetherness.

—Will

***Update: We adopted another cat. Say hello to Kitkat and her new friend Snickers.