When Comparisonitis Strikes

The last thing I expected when I pressed play on a highly anticipated interview was the series of mini-panic-attacks that followed.

Jumping back to earlier this year:

Besides some personal health stuff, I’ve been feeling on top of my game.

Things I’d scribbled in my planning notebook are taking shape:

• Start a newsletter…it’s happening!
• Connect with wonderful clients, and dream up new directions for my business. Check!
• Collaborations that incorporate more of my work with horses into my branding business.
• Learn more about how my own interests, my personal health, and the health of my business all intersect–life happened and helped me figure this one out in real-time.

With that in mind, just imagine my delight – when after a series of clicks down the internet-rabbit-hole – I followed the breadcrumbs to a podcast interview with a practitioner joining her somatic skillset with branding and leadership work. Yes! This!

So I pressed play. I was NOT expecting the wave of emotion her interview prompted.

A few minutes in, feeling increasingly uncomfortable in my own skin, I wondered:
Is this person reading directly from my notebook?
Wait a minute.
There’s someone else out there having these ideas, too?

It didn’t feel good at all to think that the work that’s taken me decades of my life to arrive at was something someone else could offer.

My personal work is foundational to my branding process. My approach feels unique to me. But there it was before me: the voice of another person saying my words, only on a much larger platform and more succinctly.

Isn’t it wild how comparisonitis sneaks into even the most confident spaces in our lives?

To be transparent with you: my initial reaction was panic. It stung. Am I not as unique in this industry as I think I am?

In branding we are always uncovering what makes a person one of a kind.

Unique.

Special.

The no-brainer YES! for their dream clients.

And sometimes you land on something about yourself that you think makes up your brand, something that so deeply signifies who YOU are that surely no one else could compare.

But as my experience with this podcast shows, it can still happen. Whether you’re a coach, a consultant, a business owner with a unique product or an executive who wants to shape the future of an organization, it’s always possible that someone else’s journey can bring them to the same place.

But that’s the key thing to remember:

You and the person/offer/business that’s inspired an experience of comparisonitis may say the same things, take the same approach, or have connected two seemingly disparate ideas.

You may have arrived at similar beliefs, processes, or approaches.

But you’re guaranteed to have walked different roads to get there.

And, you have a unique viewpoint and approach to your work even if there are hundreds of practitioners in your space.

It’s possible that people will come to a similar conclusion.
Or that someone will employ a similar approach in their business as you do in yours.

But there’s a deeper level of uniqueness about your work and why people want to work with YOU.

And that’s the type of branding work I offer.

Even when there’s another person speaking about your industry in a similar way, there are still differences about who you are and how you work that come out during a deep dive branding process.

That’s exactly what my life experiences have made me excellent at unearthing in other creative professionals: the pieces of a journey that make it undeniably, indisputably clear.

Clients make investment decisions based not on outcomes alone but on the intangibles of your presence: your comfort, familiarity, inspiration, connection.

If you are caught in a moment of comparisonitis, I understand the panic.

And, I understand how to process it and restore your confidence.

Instead of succumbing to the stress of sameness, we can instead take the comparison-episode in as information.

We metabolize it into a critical piece of your branding process: considering the tiny details of the road that you walked you to where you are now, and how that journey shaped your values and approach.

We uncover how you uniquely connect with the clients who dream of working with someone who understands them.

Needing some help muddling through a bout of comparisonitis? Let me know!