I shared on my Facebook page about a beautiful plant I saw but as I approached it, it turned out to be fake. Somehow I felt so disappointed about it not being a real plant. As I further meditated on it, this plant resembles a Mum, which comes into full bloom in the fall. It wasn’t even the right season for this type of plant (but that’s a whole other lesson).
I drew the analogy that sometimes we see things and we begin comparing ourselves to them, not realizing that what we’re seeing might not be the real thing.
‘Comparison is the thief of joy’
I’m going to give you the backstory because I learned it a day after my original post.
As I sat in my ‘newly launched financial advisor mastermind’ one of the advisors reeled off the success she’d been having. She had launched 3 months ago and her success sounded astounding. I was thrilled for her, but it left me with a sense of ‘how come that isn’t happening for me? It’s been almost 3 years and she seems to be doing in 3 months what it’s taken me close the 3 years to get to.
If you read through that, I had quite a bit of the same happening (which I hadn’t shared), just the timing seemed way off in comparison.
The following day I reached out about a completely different topic and we kept talking. I congratulated her on her success, and eventually shared how it made me feel, wondering how things were happening so quickly for her. I was genuinely happy for her.
She sent back a very long comment – she’d actually been independent since the beginning of 2019, so her success now is coming on the heels of 3 years of work – not just the 3 months since she officially launched.
Similarly, the work I started 3 years ago is starting to show fruit, and I’m 2 months in since I launched.
I had to laugh at the irony of this.
Sometimes we hear of ‘overnight successes’ but what we don’t see were the years of toiling away before ‘success’ became apparent to others.
This isn’t the first time I’m writing on this topic, and it likely won’t be the last. I hope I’m constantly reminded that comparison is not a fun game to play. There are never winners in that game.
Dear Heavenly Father, I am always so grateful for the lessons and that you don’t leave us where we are. Thank you for highlighting things so that we can learn and grow in you.
