Life lessons from a half-marathon — part 2

Aloha y’all,

I hope you are all doing fantastically.

A couple of weeks ago, my fam and I ran a half-marathon, and I wrote a blog post to share some of the life lessons I learned along the way. Check out that post here if you haven’t had a chance yet.

Last week, I was in a session with a dear client of mine (Raleigh — shared with permission), and he was sharing the key takeaways he had from reading this post.

We started talking about the third and final point I made in that post — the one where I talk about comparing ourselves to other people — where I learned that comparing ourselves to others only slows us down. Conversely, when we celebrate ourselves and our achievements, we have a greater ability to do the same for other people.

That’s when Raleigh and I had a big “AHA” realization.

Check out this video for more:

Okay, I get it — you don’t want to listen to me ramble for 20 minutes (I don’t blame you).

So here’s the cliff-notes version:

We can’t selectively compare and celebrate — meaning, we can’t compare ourselves to other people and celebrate others at the same time.

If we are comparing ourselves to others, then our ability to celebrate their achievements is diminished.

If we are comparing ourselves to others, we are engaging in self-judgment, and this judgment will naturally extend to the way we relate, connect, and interact with other people.

We can’t turn this off. It’s all-or-nothing.

So, if we don’t want to judge other people or criticize them, then we must stop judging and criticizing our own self.

If we want to celebrate other people and their successes, then we must celebrate our own.

Again, comparison/criticism/judgment and celebration are all-or-nothing values.

I explain it much better in the video, so go back and watch it when you have time. Or, you can listen to it here in podcast form.

I hope this is as powerful for you as it was for me (and Raleigh).

Sending you all my love,
Kevin