Consider The Source | Ep 109

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to Never Stop Building, where we discuss all things business, growth and leveling up to become the most elite version of yourself. We're here to challenge fear and shatter doubt. Let's dive in. What's up everybody? Sam Kauffman, here, as always, super excited, grateful and happy to be here talking to you. Welcome back to another episode of Never Stop Building.

Speaker 1: 0:30

We're going to be talking about comparison today, and you've probably heard the seemingly age old phrase comparison is the thief of joy and, truth be told, it's an honest statement. And, truth be told, we all do it. We all do it, and what's really interesting to me about comparison is the reality that, on one hand, we are often almost encouraged to use it as a fuel. Find somebody that you admire, you want what they have, you want to be like they are, and latch on to that. Use that for fuel, use that for inspiration, and so what I find interesting there is how frequently what we focus on in that scenario is again what they have, what people have instead of who people are, what people have instead of who people are, what people say about people instead of the work it takes to get there. These are the things that we sort of latch on to. We latch on to the notoriety or the perceived fame, or the perceived power, or the perceived money or the perceived stuff or the perceived happiness that we have no real proof of, instead of latching on to how they live, behave and operate to be that person. And so where I think this misses where I do think finding somebody that you respect and admire, to look up to and to want to emulate and to learn from their successes and also learn from their mistakes, their failures, their losses I think that's great. I think where it misses is we're not often enough focusing on what the daily activity is that got them to where they were, what created the character that they carry every day to be in the position that they're in. That's what we really need to be emulating and admiring. If we're just admiring the end result and we're not paying any attention to the work required to get there, you have a wildly unrealistic expectation of yourself getting to that place.

Speaker 1: 2:52

Often, the people we look up to and admire they didn't just end up there by thinking about it and talking about it and posting enough content. It doesn't matter. We always see these easy outlets on the things that they're doing. We pay attention to the activity that we can emulate. We don't pay enough attention to the activity that we might not really want to emulate the obsessive, compulsive behavior around what it may have taken to get there. If you look at anybody who's great in any one thing and I mean great, great. If you look at the Cobies and the Jordans and the Musks and the Bezosas and all the people that are often referenced as greats they sacrificed everything else to be the greatest in that category.

Speaker 1: 3:46

A lot of years ago, what I learned about myself was I didn't want that. I didn't want to sacrifice family to be mega wealthy. I didn't want to sacrifice a relationship with my wife to be insanely good here. I love my fitness journey, for instance, but I'm not in a season where I'm willing to sacrifice what would be necessary to sacrifice to say, get on a bodybuilding stage for the first time. It's something that's definitely on my books of things I want to accomplish, but I'm also realistically looking at what would need to be sacrificed to give that my all. Because if you want to do anything great or really well, you have to give it your all. And that's not to say you can't do great things and be holistic. You can.

Speaker 1: 4:38

That's my mission for myself is holistically bringing these things together, which means when I am admiring or comparing, I have to be doing an apples to apples or as close to apples to apples comparison as I can. So if we're going to compare my business to Musk's business, but I'm not going to compare my home life to his home life or my fitness level to his fitness level, or my relationship with God to his relationship to whatever, if I'm not going to compare holistically and I'm just going to compare my business isn't as booming as his and I don't have all, I'm not worth all this and I don't have an investable company, or I don't, I didn't invent electric car. It's not an apples to apples comparison, it's just not. It's no different than like if I'm like you know, in the box, if I'm looking at national level bodybuilders and I'm like man, my body looks nothing, like there's like this is bullshit but well, like yeah, but like. I'm not comparing holistically and people talk all the time about how, like there's a lot of really, really highly successful people in the fitness world, the sports world, that are absolutely miserable everywhere else. You see it all the time on the news. You see NFL players and NBA. You see this happen all the time and like when, dedicating that time and energy. Now, that's not to say you can't again. I will repeat you absolutely can't accomplish great things in all of these boxes in different seasons.

Speaker 1: 6:04

What I've learned that I want, which is the really important thing here, is I want it to be holistic and harmonized and I don't care how long it takes. I don't need to be at point B or C or D yesterday and I used to. I used to feel that way, like I had to get there right now. I had to do it yesterday, I had to, I should already, I should have, I should be. I'm this. I remember at 26 and 28 and 30. I'm like, ah, I should have been, and like none of it's true. These are all made up stories in our head.

Speaker 1: 6:34

We we develop while comparing ourselves to somebody else's journey, and I realized this years ago that I was like comparing myself to people my age who owned businesses. Like at in my 20s, I had two children in my care and my wife and a family. And like like my daughter is now a teenager, right, and I'm 33. So, like you can, you can do some math here. Like you know, at 25, right. She wasn't like I had kids that needed and wanted attention. I wanted to do that. I wanted to be a good father. And so I would compare, like my you know my work hours to people's work hours who were single and just making. Like not making more money, but like keeping more money because it's cheaper to not support a family than it is to support a family. I don't know if you've ever tried both, but like supporting a family is more expensive than not supporting a family.

Speaker 1: 7:29

And then I like realized I was comparing these ridiculous comparisons that didn't make any sense and so I sought people who were in the season of life that I was in. How did I do that? I sought that through. I filtered content to make sure I was following people who talked to holistically or what I realized how to do was filter the information to apply to my life. Okay, like, where's this person at? Who's saying it? Right, consider the source. Who's saying it? What's their life situation? Like like I look at like Hormozzi, like blowing up all over the place right now, like the idol. It looks like the idol of entrepreneurship and business. I love a lot of what he says. Principally, he also has no kids, no family. No, like I could, I could holistically remove the things that apply to my life, that don't apply to his life, and it changes the source of information. It puts it filter through a different lens and that's incredibly important and like cause, like I'm not going to do that, I'm not going to.

Speaker 1: 8:36

I personally value the family, the faith, the fitness, the friendships, the love buckets really, really, really highly and I have to say like it hasn't held me back from living a very nice life, a very nice lifestyle, a very loving, warm. I haven't, I haven't been restricted, you know, on anything Like I'm not, like rich, I'm not crazy. Like I'm not like wealthy, I'm not flying on private jets, but like I don't need that either. I also believe that if I continue on the path I'm on, in due time all the things that I want to experience will come to fruition, just based on the evidence of what I've experienced so far and how my income has fluctuated up and down but netted up over time so far. And so I look at the evidence of yeah, it's not happening overnight, but it's happening. I know that if I just keep going, I'll be where I want to be. If I wanted to be there twice as fast. I would have to sacrifice things and other buckets to do that, and I'm not going to sacrifice them at that level, not at this season. I don't have to, and neither do you if you don't want to.

Speaker 1: 9:53

And I think a lot of entrepreneurs who have families and have commitments and like spending time in their church or like coaching their kid soccer team, or like coaching the football team, or like playing in the worship band or enjoy a recreational sport I think a lot of us, like you, carry a lot of guilt and shame because you actually enjoy these things and it's not working time in or on your business and you feel like you're doing something wrong and you're just not. The mission and purpose of having that business for you personally is to have some freedom in your life that you can experience the life that you want to experience with increased freedom. That's the point to begin with. If you're not doing that, why even continue to pour into a business that's eventually going to own you, cause that's what ends up happening to a lot of people. So, as you are comparing, as you are looking around, as you are consuming content, consider the source and like, if you're listening to me and you're like, oh okay, like you have no kids and you just want to go hardcore into your business and make a ton of money, like, great, consider the source. This information's not for you. It's not for you if you're not in the bucket that I'm in or you don't relate to this. Like, consider the source. That doesn't mean that the source doesn't have great information for you in one particular bucket.

Speaker 1: 11:10

But you guys have to stop consuming every piece of content, thinking it's for you. Not every piece of content is for you. Not every piece of content relates to where you're at. Not every piece of content is actually pinpointing something you're doing wrong. You have to get better about objectively looking at what you're actually doing through the lens of what you actually want, who you actually want to be and the people that are. We have, oh, information overload.

Speaker 1: 11:40

You can consume a thousand pieces of new information in a day on social media where, like you, this is a time that's never existed before. That's why comparison is so dangerous, so dangerous. You can compare yourself to 100 people in 10 minutes on Instagram. That's disgusting. You can you can go from dude with six pack to super successful business owner, to the best parent ever and this is all self-proclaimed content, shit. This isn't even true information. This is not proven true or evidentially true information. It's just what they said in the highlight reel. That is social media. Everybody's social media is a highlight reel. It's supposed to be. It's supposed to, at least the way I use it to encourage people to share a message. I do share the struggles and the failures and the losses as well, but I do it with a solution and a message. I don't share the mess. I'm out of the mess, sharing the solution.

Speaker 1: 12:43

By the time you're getting it Like you're not there when it's the most painful thing ever or the scariest thing ever. It's like you're not there when you're consuming that piece of content that that person's putting out. It's on the other side of some shit that they walked through and you weren't there for that part. You're going to have to walk through stuff like that too, and what goes wrong is in those scenarios. When you walk through those, you just forget that in those scenarios you are walking through that stuff just like they were, but you weren't there for them, and so you think there's something wrong with you. You think there's something inherently wrong with you because now you're in a dangerous or dark place, but so were they.

Speaker 1: 13:29

So the message here is consider the source. There's nothing wrong with admiring and looking up to and comparison is a natural human, and I'm going to call it. I'm going to call it a trait, not even a flaw. I use some comparison as inspiration and encouragement, just like everybody else does. But like any trait or any asset, anything taken, any asset taken too far, becomes a liability, and so the comparison becomes a liability when we stop considering the source and we start to believe everything we see about everyone else is true and everything about us sucks. It's a lie. And so my encouragement to you is consider the source, appreciate you guys. I hope this brought you value. I'll talk to you guys next week.