Today I woke up and I felt like everybody has got their stuff ready, everybody is more productive, everybody is more efficient, everyone is a better planner…everyone’s got their shit together but me. 

Can you relate?

So I made a plan. I feel good about it. 

But I’ll tell you what, I had some shame about it this morning thinking that, once again another week has gone by and I still have a long old list of stuff that needs to be done already!! 

So I was doing that thing. I was comparing myself to other people’s version of success and other people’s version of happiness. 

Comparison cripples us. It sucks the wind out of our sails. It makes us feel inadequate. 

We compare ourselves to celebrities, and to people in movies, on TV and even porn. 

We use women, and a gauge of ‘does she love me or does she love me not’ - the one gauge on your dashboard that’s got her face in the middle of it and a needle that point to ‘she loves me’ or ‘she loves me not’ and you know you’re having a crappy day if she loves you not and a good day if she loves you. 

So how do you get rid of that gauge? 

What is the answer to comparing yourself to other people? 

What is the answer to that lingering feeling of uneasiness? 

That indecision and uncertainty that we have about who we are. 

Why do we keep looking beyond ourselves for evidence? 

Why can’t we look inside? 

Inside us is an internal gauge. It’s a gauge that WE own. We get to define the units of measure on what success and happiness is for us.

It’s a hard gauge to create and it’s a hard gauge to calibrate. 

This is what we do for men in our group or 1-on-1 coaching programs.

We help them calibrate their own gauge by answering questions like:

Who am I? 

What do I stand for? 

What do I believe in? 

What’s a boundary of mine? 

What am I willing to defend? 

Where am I going in life? 

My coach asks me this question a lot - "what is the vision of your future that is so powerful that it almost makes you want to cry?"

And it makes me cringe every time he asks me that and go “do I really have to have an answer to that question?” 

And the answer is YES – you’re supposed to think about this. 

I don’t have to have a great answer every morning when I wake up, but I do have a clear vision of what I want to do when I ‘grow up’. 

Part of it is sitting here talking to you about this being a process. 

There are no clear answers that are going to change your life tomorrow, but I want you to know that this is a process of calibrating your gauge. 

What we do is to help you to answer those questions about who you are and what you believe in, what you stand for, what you want out of life, what do you expect of yourself when nobody is watching? What do you want for yourself? 

Part of the corrective action that we do when we find ourselves calibrating against other people – is to stop doing that! 

Become aware of what you’re doing. 

When you see yourself doing that, call yourself out on it when you say things like “I wish I had what he has”, “I wish my life was like that”. 

I even caught myself doing it today. 

I was saying, “I wish in the winter I lived by the beach” so I’ve had beach envy lately. But the truth is that that’s got its downfalls too. 

We have to stop doing that. 

Someone reminded me by saying “man you don’t have it so bad up here on the mountain – really! Chill out!” 

The other thing we have to do is to start hanging around better people.

The one thing I know about me and my life is that I had a period in my life where I wasn’t hanging around people who inspired me, people who energized me, people who encouraged me and supported me - and when I changed that, my life changed…and that’s what I want for you.

One thing I do for me and then I do it for you, is to run coaching programs and have retreats. I do these things because I get to stop comparing myself to everyone else in the world and I get to meet vulnerable, compassionate, smart, talented men who support me and let me support them. 

I get to hang around people who want to be open hearted and honest about what they believe in. 

They want to be challenged to improve and they want to challenge me back. 

The process of working with other men helps me to get rid of this whole comparison thing and challenges us both to answer those questions – Who am I? What do I want? Where am I going? 

And so, I want you to join us too. 

This is a place for us to get together, to start opening your heart and answering those questions. I want to see you there. I want to meet you.

I want to talk to you and get to know you. 

So I encourage you to take the first step…put yourself out there….do whatever it takes to get out of the rut you’re in. Here are some options I can help you with today...