Avoiding the Comparison Trap
Posted June 14th, 2011
You’ve just received a promotion at work to a supervisor’s position, and you’re feeling pretty good, until you talk to your college buddy and find out he’s been promoted to vice president at his company.
We’ve all been in situations like this. We are always comparing ourselves to others as a way to gauge our success. But in doing this we must be careful that we don’t fall into a trap. The trap is the constant shifting of the goal posts and continually redefining what we consider to be successful – however successful and accomplished we already may be.
It’s the trap of creating new desires after we have fulfilled others. We ignore all of the things we’ve accomplished because all of sudden success is getting something more – a new job, a new title, a new achievement.
We put ourselves on a treadmill. We constantly create new goals harder to reach than the ones before, and if we manage to reach these even more difficult goals, we look beyond them to even more difficult ones. We are never satisfied, no matter how long our list of achievements may become.
Setting new goals and striving after them is in itself not a bad thing. But it can become harmful when it puts us on this treadmill where what we want to achieve is not determined by our own inner drive but by what we see others doing.
But there are things we can do to avoid this. One activity is to record the progress you have been making toward what you consider to be your ideal position, not some position you see a friend or acquaintance achieve. And then you need to figure out if you are gaining the kind of skills and knowledge you will need to reach your ideal position.
Also, make a scale you can use to record how fulfilling and satisfying your work is to you. Record on the scale frequently how much you are enjoying your work.
This will help you avoid the trap of measuring your success only by the achievements of others. It will help you to look beyond just external measures of success, to look within at the internal measures as well.
If you’re looking for your next terrific position and live in the Bay Area, give Bayside Solutions a call. We can help place you in temporary, temp-to-hire and direct placement positions with some of San Francisco’s finest companies.
