The Comparison Trap

I’ve been playing around posting to the platform Yours.org lately, and I noticed something funny.

Actually, my colleague Derek Magill pointed it out, and the minute he said it, it rang true.

Yours allows you to post content for 10 cents, and then people can pay you for the content, to comment, etc.  It displays how much each author has earned on the piece of content right at the top.

If I post something there and it only earns 10 or 20 cents, my immediate subconscious reaction is to feel kinda crappy and not really want to post more.  It feels like failure.

Yet at the same time, I happily post to my WordPress blog every single day without earning a dime and it doesn’t feel like failure.

Why would earning money for a post feel worse than not earning any at all?

The comparison trap.

The feeling of success is subjective and contextual, often more about our perceived standing relative to others than to our own stated goals.  On Yours, it’s easy to see all the top posts with 5, 50, or 500 bucks.  Next to that, 20 cents feels lame.  On WordPress, nobody’s content has earnings, and traffic numbers aren’t publicly displayed, so there’s no threat of being perceived as a failure.  If WordPress emailed me out of the blue and said, “We’re sending you 20 cents for your post today”, I’d feel like a badass.

If you can overcome this external definition of success, you’ll be unstoppable.  You’ll create a life of untouchable wonder and fulfillment.

It begins by asking what your goals are, being honest, and sticking to a definition of success that only measures progress against that internally chosen standard.

I blog because it changes me.  I blog because I enjoy it.  If I pay attention only to my goals with blogging and forget the good opinion of others, earning a few cents can only ever make me happier than earning nothing.