It started innocently enough. I’m a founder, and I’m competitive, and I told myself I was doing research: looking at what other practices were building, how they were growing, what they were launching. Somewhere along the way, it stopped being research. I wasn’t learning anymore. I was keeping score. And by the end of it, I didn’t feel inspired. I felt small.
If you’ve ever scrolled through someone’s promotion announcement, their beautiful new office, their book deal, their engagement, their “so grateful for this season” post, and closed the app feeling like you’re somehow losing a race you didn’t sign up for, this one is for you.
Comparison isn’t the problem. The spiral is.
Comparing ourselves to others is wired into us. Back in the 1950s, the psychologist Leon Festinger described what he called social comparison theory: we figure out how we’re doing, in part, by looking at the people around us. It’s how we’ve always oriented ourselves in a group.
So I’m not going to tell you to stop comparing. You won’t, and neither will I. What matters is what happens after the comparison. Research on envy shows it comes in two flavors. One kind motivates us: we see someone ahead and think, “I want that, and I can work toward it.” The other kind deflates us: we see someone ahead and think, “I’ll never get there, and something must be wrong with me.” Same trigger, completely different story.
Yesterday I was living in the second story.
There’s grief in it, too
When I slowed down enough to feel what was underneath, it wasn’t just jealousy. It was grief. Grief that I’m not there yet. Grief for the timeline I imagined for myself, the version of this business I thought I’d have by now.
I think we skip this part. We go straight from “they have it” to “what’s wrong with me,” and we never pause to let ourselves be sad about the gap. But grief deserves a little room. You’re allowed to want something and ache that it hasn’t happened yet. That ache doesn’t mean you’re failing. It means you care.
The feeling was younger than I am
Here’s what I noticed when I really sat with it: the “I’m not good enough” spiral didn’t feel like a 40-something founder talking. It felt young. Like a much younger version of me, scanning the room, trying to figure out if she measured up, if she was worthy of being chosen.
That’s often the tell. When a feeling is way bigger than the situation in front of you, it’s usually not about the situation in front of you. Someone else’s success didn’t create that wound. It just pressed on a bruise that was already there.
So I asked myself a simple question: how old do I feel right now? And the answer helped me separate what was happening today from what was being stirred up from a long time ago.
Coming back to my adult self
Getting out of the spiral didn’t come from talking myself into feeling amazing. It came from coming back to the adult version of me. The one who has built something real. The one who knows how hard this work is. The one who can hold that younger part with compassion instead of letting her drive the car.
Sometimes that looks like putting my feet on the floor and taking a breath. Sometimes it’s saying out loud, “I’m an adult, I’m safe, and this is just a feeling.” Sometimes it’s texting a friend who knows me. Nothing fancy. Just a return.
Change the questions you’re asking
When I’m in the spiral, my questions sound like this: Why am I not there yet? What am I doing wrong?
Those questions feel productive, but they’re really just self-criticism wearing a trench coat. They don’t lead anywhere useful.
So I swap them out. Instead I ask: What can I learn from what I’m witnessing? And I remind myself that I have no idea what that person is carrying. I don’t know what they sacrificed, what help they had, what debt they took on, what it cost them, or what they’re struggling with that never makes it to Instagram. I’m comparing my full, messy inside to their curated outside.
And then the most useful question of all: what’s one thing from their playbook I could apply at the scale I’m at right now? Not their scale. Mine.
If you’ve done any therapy, you might recognize this. It’s a core piece of CBT called cognitive restructuring: noticing the automatic thought, questioning whether it’s actually true, and replacing it with something more accurate and more helpful. I realized I’d been doing it without even naming it.
A few shifts that actually help
Treat envy as information. Envy is pointing at something you want. Instead of shaming yourself for feeling it, get curious. What exactly did you want in what you saw? Sometimes the answer surprises you, and sometimes you realize you don’t actually want their life at all, just one piece of it.
Compare yourself to who you were a year ago. That’s the only comparison that tells you anything true about your growth. Pull up an old calendar or an old journal entry and look at how far you’ve come.
Research with intention, not on autopilot. There’s a difference between “I’m going to spend 20 minutes studying how three practices structure their services” and an hour of wandering scrolling. Set the purpose and the timer before you open the tab. When the learning stops, close it.
Find the next step, not the whole staircase. Their success is the result of hundreds of small decisions you’ll never see. You don’t need to catch up to all of them. You need to take your next one.
Let the grief be there. If you’re sad you’re not further along, say so. To yourself, to a friend, to your therapist. Feelings that get named tend to loosen their grip.
Where I landed
By the end of the day, the person whose work sent me spiraling hadn’t changed at all. What changed was the question I was asking. I went from “why not me” to “what can I learn,” and from a scared younger version of me back to the grown woman who’s actually running this thing.
You’re not behind. You’re on your own timeline, carrying your own story, building at your own scale. And the fact that someone else’s success stirs something in you just means you still want big things for your life. That’s not a flaw. That’s a pulse.
