Season 2 – Episode #29 – How to Avoid The Comparison Trap

I’m bionic!

The surgery that I visualized worked, and I’m finally back on our weekly conversations here on The Kintsugi Podcast to share my story, hoping to inspire and help others that are going through their experiences, and to shed some light on another “enemy” that I identified on my road to recovery… An enemy that stands in the way of our fully committed life, in us being present and resilient- the constant tendency to compare ourselves to others and our constant search for the “just right” even though our experiences and the arenas that we fight in are never going to be the same…

Key Points:

-Knee replacement- I’m bionic…and I get to buy new shoes 🙂 (01:08)

-Comparison and self-doubt- The Olympics (05:44)

-Social media- You’re either too much or not enough… (09:57)

-A better approach- silence the noise (12:12)

Quotes:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.”

(Theodore Roosevelt- The Man in the Arena)

“When you get trapped into these unhealthy comparisons, it becomes like body armor that keeps us from fully participating in life, from fully showing up in the arena…”

Mentionings:

Hospital For Special Surgery New York

2021 Tokyo Olympics Game

Houlèye Ba– Mauritanian middle-distance runner in the Tokyo Olympics Games 2021

Dr. Brene Brown– is a research professor at the University of Houston where she holds the Huffington Foundation Endowed Chair at The Graduate College of Social Work. Brene is also a visiting professor in management at The University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business.

Dr. Brene Brown- “Why your critics aren’t the ones who count”- full speech (includes quotes and references to “The man in the Arena”, a famous section from the speech given by Theodore Roosevelt at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, on April 23, 1910, considered to be one of his greatest rhetorical triumphs).