How People Mess Up Their Lives and How to Not Make the Same Mistakes (Episode 64)

This week Brent and Janis are starting a new series entitled: How People Mess Up Their Lives and How to Not Make the Same Mistakes. This episode (part one) is on comparison: the natural tendency to compare ourselves that can cause us to not be content with our own lives.

This podcast should not be considered or used for counseling but for educational purposes only.

Transcript:

Welcome to Life and Love Nuggets, where licensed therapists Brent and Janice Sharp share how you can thrive in your life, your love, and your relationships.

Hello friends, welcome back to Life and Love Nuggets. We're glad that you're with us today. So today we're gonna start a new series. We're calling it, "How People Mess Up Their Lives and How to Not Make the Same Mistakes." We were inspired to do this when ours, we were talking with our son Spencer and we were talking about how his brother Preston had been on the podcast with us and various things, and Spencer said, "I could come on your podcast." And we were like, "Oh?" And he said, "Yeah, I could come on and tell people 'Don't be stupid.'" And we all laughed.

So we could title this one, "Don't Be Stupid." Yes! So that's the other name for it is Don't Be Stupid, you know, all of us are gonna make mistakes sometimes and and we'll look at things that we've done or said in the past or decisions we've made, and reflecting back on it, we'll say "Well, that was pretty stupid, wasn't it? I can't believe I did this." You know, I think about things that we have done in our past that we now go, "Can't believe our parents were okay with this" or "They didn't stop us." So the, the experience of being counselors for almost four decades now, we feel like we've lived a thousand lives. Yes. I know a lot about a lot of it occupations. Yes, we've seen people do all kinds of things that really messed up their lives, unfortunately. But the good thing about God and about the way that he's designed his humans is that if we bring our real, open, honest genuine selves to him, he always has a way to redeem our stupid, and give us a potential for new life and new beginnings. And so that's what we're all trying to do is we're just simply trying to recognize ways that we've slipped off or gone the right, the wrong path or misfired somehow, and get back on a healthier, more productive path. Yeah. So, we may ramble in this series as opposed to our other. Yeah, we never really tightly formatted episodes and we're not sure how long it's gonna be. And I have requested that occasionally we take a break from the series and do something else. Oh gosh. This whole thing's gonna be a struggle for Brent, I gotta say. He wants to know titles. He wants to know outlines. How many of these are we gonna have in a series? And so we're gonna stretch him a little bit and just go wherever this takes us. I know Brent you are capable of being stretched. I think being married to me has stretched you quite a bit, but also I think about our 10th anniversary and when we went to France, and I still can't believe we did it this way, but we went to France without reservations. We just well, I think we're the first night reserved in Paris. Yeah. But we just got there and took the train and we went wherever we wanted to go. But the most impressive thing we did was when we rented a car and we drove through the Loire Valley, or the Castle Region, and had no idea where we're gonna spend the night each night. So you can be spontaneous and you can be stretched. And there was no GPS. No, there was not. And they didn't, their phones,

there were no phone, no portable phones. And We didn't know how to use their phone system. And so we were trying to make calls and it was like, what is happening here?

Yes, so we'll see how this goes. Now there's no specific order of which we mess up our lives. The first one today that we're gonna look at is simply how comparison messes up our lives. There used to be this saying, "People keeping up with the Joneses," which meant you're just trying to keep up with your neighbor. You know, so the Jones might live next door and we compared ourselves to them, or maybe our neighborhood, or people at our church or work, or maybe the kids school families. Or our own family. [Our] own family, yeah. And so, "Oh the next-door neighbors got a new car! You know, I wish we could get a new car. You know, we're driving this old one and theirs is beautiful." I had a client just recently that's struggling with just kind of a sense of self. He's a businessman, very successful, but his neighbor got this really new cool sports car, and all of a sudden it's like, "Oh man, I wish I had that..." You know, "I would be 'successful' if I had that." And so, you know, this phenomenon has been hard for generations. You know, we would see somebody in our lives that had something that we didn't and we wanted it. They had a better job or were fitter or more attractive, had smarter kids, nicer in love, or whatever. So there are seven billion people in the world that we - Let's change, it's not just the neighbor now. Right. It's not the neighbor. We won't see all seven billion, but with Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, all of the various things, even movies and TV, we see people and they have their act together. They have perfect lives. Their houses are perfect. Their car's perfect. Their helicopter's perfect. Okay, that's because I follow someone on Instagram and she was showing her husband in his helicopter. I'm like, "Are[n't] you kind of embarrassed to put that on there anyway?" They look fabulous and so do all their kids and so do all their grandkids because everything is perfect. And I don't ever wish that anybody had an ugly grandchild or even, well maybe, that before they start doing a video or in the midst of a video a grandchild would smear chocolate ice cream on their perfect, white shirt. I really don't wish any of those things. But seeing perfect looking people in Texas, Teddy Roosevelt said "Comparison is the thief of joy." Now they're saying that Teddy Roosevelt didn't actually say that, he borrowed that from someone else, but whatever. It is the thief of joy.

So, how does it steal our joy? Yeah, so we even have phones now, right, that even if they had a smudge on their shirt can take that little circle, that little smudge. That's right. Take it out. So people can just Photoshop everything now and honestly the influencers that I watch they video it all and I'm pretty sure they would never show anything that was less than perfect, they would just reshoot it. Absolutely, yes. So there's several ways that comparison's a killer. The first one is we become dissatisfied in what we have. Pretty simple concept, but the life that we thought was good - our family's good, things are good, and all sudden we get overshadowed by what others have, and so we begin to think less about what we have. So we've talked about the idea that whatever you focus on determines your attitude and so, now this idea of comparison is not a new phenomenon with Instagram, right, or Facebook. [It] has been around seemingly in our nature from the very beginning. You look at some of the scriptural stories, right after the resurrection. The disciples thought Jesus was still dead, so they're out fishing, this, this group, and they saw somebody cooking fish up on the shore. And they thought, "Who is that?" They got closer and they thought, "It's Jesus!" And so they're overwhelmed with joy, they're excited, they're "Oh my gosh. What has happened here." And then they begin to interact with him and Jesus is talking to Peter. And he's talking to him a little bit about, you know, it's a little vague what's going on, but we think that it's that, you know when you were young, you know, you put your own clothes on and everything, and, and that's, but as you get older somebody's gonna actually make those decisions for you. Somebody's gonna take control away from you. Kind of speaking to how he was gonna die. He was gonna die prematurely, and crucified, and so forth. Saying that to Peter and so Peter's looking over at John who is said to be, you know, this one who Jesus loved. Yes. So he['s], kind of the special child, particularly in his own book. Yes. Kind of his own special, you know, kind of disciple. And said, well, what about him? If I have to have a bad, you know, bad devil, what about, what about him? And, and Jesus response was, "If it's my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?" And so, this is kind of, you know, happened for generations and generations, and we see it throughout the scriptural story, this idea of comparison. Another section in Matthew 20, the parable the workers in the vineyard. Some men worked all day long in the heat, some only worked a half a day, and some worked one hour, and they all got paid the same. This isn't fair! And so life can seem unfair at times. And particularly if you spend a lot of time in comparison. Yeah, it's interesting because it's not just in humans. It's also in animals. Fronze, Fronze, Fronze - I'm saying it wrong, I'm sure. Do all at Emory University did a study with monkeys. And in essence what he did was he trained the monkeys to use rocks as kind of a currency. So they would go to the researchers, and they trained them that if the monkey would give the researcher a rock, then the researcher would give them a slice of cucumber in return. And it worked well. The monkeys caught on to it. They learned the whole, I-give-you-this-you-give-me-this, until they decided to give some of the monkeys grapes instead of cucumbers. So apparently, monkeys are a lot like us because I'd much rather have a grape than a cucumber. I'm just saying. But what happened was when part of the monkeys got the the grapes, the other ones got really upset, and it got to the point where they either refused to try to buy anything, or when they bought it, and they gave the stone to the researcher, they would throw the cucumber back in their face. So even monkeys compare.

So the idea is that we lose the value for what we have when we focus on what others have. So easy for us to do this today, you know, you just, anything you look in the social world, it's just instantly what they have. Or are. And so remember, again, remember whatever you focus on determines your attitude. If you focus on what you don't have, it'll start spoiling or poisoning your attitude. If you focus on what they do have that you don't, it'll start poisoning. You know, we've, a few years ago, we went kind of top to bottom in our house and remodeled our house, and we're just really thrilled with it. We enjoy it. It's wonderful. People are asking us when we're downsizing. We're like, well our kids don't want to come home for holidays, so we want them to have their own bedroom. And it's finally the way we want it. We can live in it. But I kind of like look at houses, but I have to be careful if I'm scrolling through something and I see these fabulous houses and start looking at them too much, all of a sudden, it spoils even, even as wonderful of what we have. It starts spoiling a little bit. And so we just have to be very very careful about this. And so, it's even watching and, watching kind of this, kind of the place that you are in your, in your life right now. We, earlier in our life, we were committed to helping our kids get through school, get their undergraduate degrees. We didn't want them to have any debt and so we put a lot of money. They went to a private school, and it was a lot. And we didn't want any loans, and so we put a lot towards that. And there was just a time that that required that we drive older cars. I mean it was just, it was just not an option. And we just found it was just best if we don't go look at them. Let's not, it shouldn't be a fun Sunday afternoon event to walk through the car dealership look at the new cars. That was, we just can do it. So we just didn't. And say honey, guess what? In 14 years, all of the kids will be out of college. And so we just had to get in this discipline of we just don't look, we don't check out advertisements. It's, we just know that's not an option and that would have caused harm in some ways.

So which leads to the second killer that comparison causes, which, we just often push harder, or we spend more to keep up than we really can afford physically, mentally, and/or emotionally. So what we see going on, it's not just financial overspending that happens in our culture. It's the emotional, physical, and financial overspending. To keep up with the Joneses, we find ourselves chasing this illusion of what happy would be, what fulfilled would be if I could just get more, if we could just get this next thing, and we would have a better life. And so people just way overdo with their time, their energies, their resources. The amount of short-term credit that is being used in our country just so that we can be happier now is off, off the charts. The most recent study talked about just credit card debt in our culture. That's, it's over a trillion dollars, a trillion! A trillion dollars. And so I just started looking at other countries and what their gross national product was: how much income they brought in their whole country for a whole year. And it wasn't that much more than our credit card debt. Wow. You know, so you look at Spain and France and England and these, now it's, you know, one of them was one and a half times what our credit card debt [was]. One was two times what our credit is. That's not even including car loans and student loans and mortgages. Oh absolutely. I mean, just credit card. Wow. That's sobering. Then these countries that are doing amazing, you know, what their whole income is. And so now I've had you know some people over the years say that well, I only use my credit card for emergencies. Well, then you look at their bill and they have lots of emergencies. So that new pair of jeans or that TV or whatever, you know, is an emergency. Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with getting something now instead of waiting until I can afford it. The problem lies in the stress that it causes for us to work more, to push more, get that higher paying job that now I'm traveling a lot more and so I'm disconnected from the family and the kids. And usually this is a slow little process. People do not, at least I've never found any, that decide, let's just go see how much debt we can get into this weekend, right? It's this little process of well, we just need, I can't get this yet. So let's go ahead and get it whether it's the furniture with no payments for a year and you know, whatever those things are. And so it's slow little process, and then people wake up going "Oh my gosh. We're just strangled here. We're strapped." And so we have to keep at this high level of exertion of job levels and, and it leads to some dissatisfaction and then it's five years or ten years or fifteen years before we could back off of that a little bit. And so everybody's busy, the very first thing that you say, you ask anybody, how are you doing. It's, it's always busy, you know, and every week is busy, and kids schedules and activities, and we wanted these opportunities for our kids. So, you know, we've see these families that are traveling now with their sports, their kids and sports, and so they're all they're gone all weekend. And are we then conditioning our children to live the same kind of life as you just have to keep adding more and doing more and being more.

Yeah, the third thing is comparison doesn't take into account the differences between, in ourselves and our circumstances, with somebody else. So oftentimes we're comparing apples to oranges. So I got frustrated with myself a few weeks ago because I was working out with my workout video, and the instructor goes, "Okay. Now, let's pick up the 15-pound weights!" And I'm like, I'm doing eight pounds, and that's like all I can do. "Oh gosh, I can't believe I can only do eight pounds!" And then it was like, "Wait, she is a professional trainer and she's at least 30 years younger than I am. Okay, you know what. It's okay for me to be where I'm at." Comparisons are usually in some select area. Might be appearances, finances, houses, or whatever. But they can come if we have the false belief that there are some people who have everything or at least almost everything perfect in their lives. That's when we become dissatisfied because there's this unattainable goal there of: they're perfect. So if I work hard enough, I can be perfect, too. So not only when we compare ourselves do we become dissatisfied with our lives, we also can distance ourselves from friends or family or potential friends because they have more than we do, and so we feel like they're better in some area, they're more perfect than we are in some area. And we can become resentful and envious. We feel like we've been gypped or it feels like life isn't fair. Why did they get such easy kids? Theirs just sit there and don't move and crawl under the table and all that like mine do. We struggle with all of our kids, but those people don't. We begin to believe that if we got what this person had or we looked like this or we had this job, then it would make us happier. We would be more content if I can just get this. And it's a lie. I mean, it steals the joy of the things that we already have. Yeah. Well, so everybody is familiar with Dave Ramsey, who's a financial guru helping people get out of debt and get on a budget and a lot of, you know, good principles there. But before he came along there, was a man called Larry Burkett. And he had some really outstanding principles that we remember. And we're gonna talk about financial mistakes that people make in another podcast eventually because that's a whole another thing. Yeah. But there was a couple principles that really stood out to us. One is that God has people at all income levels because of their purpose in life and who he wants them to influence. That there's reasons for different people to have, you know, whether it's somebody that has great wealth owning businesses and stuff, that for them to be able to influence that world, or whether it's more moderate. And so just getting settled into that this is okay. That we can, if that's kind of God's plan, then it has to be for good. There has to, he has to have designed it for us to be able to flourish in the midst of them. And another one is that, that you can enjoy it without owning it. Yeah, and so we can rent that great cabin in the woods for a few weekends a year instead of having to buy it. Whether it's going to a state park or public beach or walking in the country, instead of having to own the second house in the country. And so, you also don't have to worry about whether the pipes broke when it froze or limbs falling on the roof. There's a lot of benefits there. Yes, and so with those extra things come extra responsibilities, extra stressors, and people don't realize that when they're first getting into it because they think of this dream of, "Oh if we had that," and "We could go every weekend and do this." And then all of a sudden, they've just built all this extra stress and anxiety, you know, and we're not saying that that's bad or wrong or evil, and [for] some people it's right for them. Some families, they might thrive in the midst of them. In reality, the comparisons come from unrealistic expectations. Where, again, for some families, that's realistic for them to do that or have people to take care of those things or whatever. But when we're trying to step beyond our circumstances, these, these unrealistic expectations begin to strangle us. The reality is no one has a perfect life. Right. Again, that's another benefit of being counselors for four decades. Oh my gosh, yes. We've seen people at all levels of life with, with those that we thought, how could you ever have a problem in the world, just deal with all kinds of things. And we also find ourselves really thankful when we both come home from marriage counseling all day. We just look at each other and say, "Thank you for being you." Yes. "You're amazing!"

So, so what we do about this? First of all take some time to look at your expectations. Not just in what I own or how I look, but just in our lives overall. Are we finding a place of contentment, a place of peace, or we always striving for something else? There are so many ideas and ways to live, but we only have one life. There's this really cool motto that the hikers on the Appalachian Trail have in regards to running our own races that [say] "Hike your own hike. Resist the urge to compare how many miles you cover in a day or how far other hikers are traveling. Do it at your own pace." Yeah. Which is basic for life overall, pacing ourselves. So we have to ask ourselves, "What is the root?" Or, "What areas do I compare myself in? What feeds it?" You know, maybe what we're looking at, maybe who you're with. There are people that are competitive in every area. You will just sense it. Most people can, can feel that feeling when they have someone they know that's competitive with them and they see them and they kind of size them up. They're looking over everything about them. We joke when you go to pastors conferences, you know, you'll usually meet other pastors. I go, "Hey Brent! How you doing? How many people you running these days?" Which is always the first words out of everybody's mouth. Yeah. It's, it's a "I'm measuring myself to see how I am compared to you." I've seen people looking, look each other over for fitness weight gain, what kind of car they drive, how we well-behaved your children are, did your kids get as many medals and awards as mine did? I mean, you think about people with babies and it's like, "So is yours talking yet? Is yours walking yet? Is yours crawling?" But every life is different and we have to accept that. No perfect life, and every life is different.

And then we need to focus on our self-talk. You know, there's telling phrases if you listen to what you're saying to yourself. There's things like, "Gosh, must be nice!" That's a sign that you're moving into envy. "Gosh, they have such a great husband." "Oh must be nice to have that much money or job or boat, whatever." We're moving into comparison. And so we have to watch what we're telling ourselves on a day-in and day-out basis. We have to work on gratitude. As you said, being content with what we have. Paul says, the Apostle Paul says, we're not a first-name basis. The Apostle said, "I've learned to be content in all circumstances." So looking at what is right in your life right now. I am not as fit as my video instructor and I'm never going to be. I'm accepting that. But I'm almost 68. You know what?

My body is serving me well. I am doing fine. So it's accepting where you are, not, if you if you're called to be a school teacher, not comparing yourself to your cousin that's the neurosurgeon. There's going to be differences in a lot of ways in our lives. And so it's just realizing that we're all different. And also, and I harp on this over and over again, but there's, there's seasons of life. There's some seasons where you're gonna have a lot of quiet or you're going to have a lot more money or whatever, but it's all seasons. And we have to recognize it as that. And then, again we say this many times, but gratitude journals can be really helpful. Taking the time to think about and write out and talk about things that you are thankful for. What's the good right here, right now in your life? Another thing we found helpful In dealing with comparison is just getting out into, into nature. It kind of, it's the great equalizer because we're all just humans experiencing this amazing, God-designed planet. And it connects us in a different way, grounds us to the real. Because so often the things that we're comparing ourselves with and about are superficial. Those things are all going to be gone someday. Right. There's a book called, "It All Goes Back in the Box." If life is a game, it's some, someday it all goes back in the box. And so, all of this stuff is very limited. And it's not what really brings you joy. No. Yeah. Another thing is make it a point to help others. When our focus is on caring for others and reaching out and, and looking at what they need, that all sudden our stuff just isn't as important. We see those that, that desperately need just some basics. Or those that are going through a crisis or difficulty that it just keeps reorienting us to what really is important. Another thing is who are you hanging out with? Are you hanging out with people that are just always talking about the next thing to get? Or are you hanging out with people that live in gratitude? They live in this sense of contentment and, and finding a place of peace. Who you are around, you basically become who you're around. And so, who are you hanging out with? And what are the conversations about? And what's their focus in life? There's a great study and psychology on Olympic medalists that I think we can take some wisdom from. [It] suggest that the silver medalists tend to be the most miserable because they're comparing themselves to the gold medalist. It's always, "Even though I came in second and I almost [won]," it's "I didn't." I could have done it faster, if I had just done this, then I would have been at the top. It found that the bronze medalists were actually the most peaceful and the happiest because they, they actually compared themselves [to], now there's still there's some comparison in this still, but who came in fourth and beyond. And so they seem to be the most peaceful and they seem to be happier than the silver medalist. Yeah. Even though the silver medalists technically beat them. Yeah, and so I thought that was fascinating. Yeah, it really is. I mean, the fact you're in the Olympics at all is pretty darn amazing. Absolutely, yeah. Now again, now some people are gonna go, "Well, but wait a second, you know, shouldn't we be striving for the best?" And in my company there's a lot of comparison and there's a lot of competition and if we don't stay up, then we're not gonna get ahead. And, and so aren't we all, you know, just 'I'm gonna get lazy and not work hard'?" And so forth. And so some really fascinating studies in business and education over the last several decades, and many companies, and there are some huge ones that did this. I think it started with GE but it slipped out into Microsoft and there were some universities as well that utilize this. They use what's called a stacked ranking practice where they would consistently review all of their students. So it's students in education it was the grades and they would post them. Who's the top? Who's the bottom? In business, it would, they had this review system and they would put who's the top and who's the bottom, and everybody knew where you were. Who was the top dog? And who is the bottom? Thinking that that's gonna cause everybody to strive better and to work harder because we wanted to get higher and higher in that ranking system. And, but what they found out is that instead of thinking about the the purpose of the business or the educational goal, it's, they begin to think about each other. And all their focus now is just getting ahead of the next, you know, the person next to me. And so they wouldn't share things with each other. They wouldn't share resources. They wouldn't help out each other. They would point out where somebody was making a mistake and be more critical of each other. It was really very damaging. And, and in so many different ways. It probably destroyed teamwork. [It] absolutely destroyed teamwork. That was not a high value. It was just, how are you moving in that ranking? And so, now fortunately, a couple decades ago most all these companies woke up and did away with that, and now they do have how we work together as high values and so forth. And, and but they just found that that just didn't work. And so if that's where you find yourself going, "Well, wait a second, you know, we just need to realize that this really is a poison that can be a real killer in our culture." Yeah. Again, it doesn't mean we don't work hard. It's about reaching our full potential. It's about believing that God has designed us uniquely who we are and [that] we're to influence the world and, and as a reflection of him. But I'm supposed to be me. I'm not supposed to be the next person or whoever has this over here. I'm supposed to be me. And putting our energy into being as most fully me as I can. Yes. To be as good in my purpose as what I possibly can be. Which we have to deal then with the fact that it's not all about me. It's about even what I offer. Yes. Even "successes" that I have are because of what he's given me. It's all a gift. Yes. [I've] been given it as a gift, and then I am to give that away to the world. So it's really being more thankful for what we've been given and finding a place a peace [in] that. Yeah.

So we could probably talk about this particular one forever and ever, but hopefully there's some ideas here and some thoughts that can help you. Really take a look at, "Okay.

What am I? How am I doing in this area? And how do I find a pathway forward of contentment and peace and be able to enjoy this journey?" So for today, go in peace. Blessings as you go.

The Life and Love Nuggets podcast should not be considered or used for counseling but for educational purposes only.