As I work on my own personal journey of success and life satisfaction, more and more I have clarity it really is all about me, and what gives me that feeling of success and satisfaction. That I can’t compare myself with others, and shouldn’t. That I should be in a place of gratitude for what I have, and not keep chasing “more”.
I’ve applied this thinking to how I measure online metrics. The number of visitors to my blog, Likes, Followers, etc. I have made a conscious decision to only concern myself with my own numbers, and not concern myself with how they compare with anyone or anywhere else.
For example, I started posting 15 year old recordings of my old radio show to SoundCloud. I turned off the visible Play counts. I am happy these recordings are living a new life at this time. It makes me happy that people can find them and discover them all over again. How many people might that be? Well, I’m not going to concern myself with it or try to boost it. The ones that find it are the ones that find it. As I see the numbers rise, if there is any sort of positive uptick, then that it good. It doesn’t have to be viral.
Same goes for this blog. I’m not going to post public metrics. I’ve turned off the ability of the “Thumbs Up” to be visible. It’s just an internal metric for me to see how some articles are resonating. I don’t use it to feel good about myself or compare myself with anyone else. I also don’t want to feel bad about myself if they don’t compare well with others, which can be inflated and meaningless.
I enjoy writing to my blog as an exercise of sharing my thoughts. I’m building a body of work. And if anyone cares to read it, I’m happy to share that with them.
I suppose this ties back to my thoughts on the dangers of social media and comparing yourself to curated photos. In this case its about internal metric numbers. If I’m happy connecting with individuals and having a meaningful effect on their lives, why should I feel bad about myself that someone else has 1,000,000 followers?
It’s so odd to me that there are people out there that put so much weight into these they will literally buy Likes or Followers, just to inflate their numbers.
Do I feel badly about my business because people make more than I do? That there are billionaires out there that make me look poor? Hell no. I’m so thrilled to have the life I have.
It seems like a really empty and hollow pursuit to compare ones self with anyone else.
What might be one way you can apply more personal satisfaction into your own metrics and remove comparing yours with anyone else’s?
