I’m scrolling through Twitter at 7:43 AM, just having poured myself a Pepsi to help me wake up, when I see it. Another creator had just landed a six-figure book deal. The announcement post is perfectly crafted—humble but celebratory, with that casual mention of “after years of hard work” that somehow makes it sting more.
My stomach dropped. While my last book (If Looks Could Kill: The Aubrey Gold Story) made the Amazon best seller list, I didn’t make anywhere near six figures for it.
Just fifteen minutes earlier, I’d felt proud of the draft blog post sitting open in another tab. I’d been excited about the work I’d put into my latest book, which I’d hoped to have published by the end of the year. Now, my carefully planned writing session feels pointless. What’s the point? What are thousands of books sold compared to their hundreds of thousands?
I closed my laptop. The day shot before it even began.
This scene played out more times than I care to admit, until one day a realization hit me with startling clarity: I wasn’t comparing my work to their work. I was comparing my messy, daily process to their polished, public peak. That insight changed everything.
The Highlight Reel vs. The Behind-the-Scenes Reality
Social media is the world’s most effective highlight reel, and we’re all watching the wrong movie. We see the content creators’ announcement celebrating their one millionth follower, but not the grueling grind it took to get there.
We see content creators’ funding celebration, but not the years of doing collabs, creating video after video, hashtag research, and so on. We see their viral post with 100K likes, but not the 200 posts that got 12 likes each.
What we’re witnessing isn’t their journey—it’s their destination photo.
When I was scrolling and spiraling, I was holding my foundation against their finished mansion. My rough draft against their published book. My day one against their day 1,000. It’s not just an unfair comparison; it’s an impossible one.
The people you admire aren’t sharing their 4 AM anxiety spirals or their imposter syndrome moments. They’re not posting screenshots of their empty bank account from three years ago. You’re seeing their peak performance while living in your practice rounds.
Eyes On Your Own Paper
Remember that phrase from school tests? “Eyes on your own paper.” It wasn’t just about preventing cheating—it was about focus. Looking at someone else’s answers wouldn’t help you solve the problems in front of you. It would only waste time, create doubt, and distract you from what you actually could control.
The same principle applies to any meaningful pursuit.
When your energy flows toward comparison, you become reactive. You measure your worth against an illusion, leading to paralysis and self-doubt. When your energy flows toward consistency, you become proactive. You focus on the one variable you can actually influence: your effort, today.
Consistency always beats comparison because:
It compounds exponentially. One blog post feels insignificant. One workout barely registers. One sales call seems like a drop in the ocean. But string together 100 of each, and you’ve built a body of work, transformed your health, and created a robust pipeline. Small actions don’t add up—they multiply.
It builds genuine skill. You don’t improve by watching others perform. You improve by performing yourself. Every time you show up, you’re running an experiment, learning from feedback, and refining your approach. The person who writes 100 mediocre articles will outperform the person who spends that same time studying 100 great ones.
It creates your own luck. The people who seem “lucky” are usually the ones who’ve been consistently showing up so long that they were in position when opportunity knocked. More shots attempted means more shots made.
Breaking the Comparison Habit: A Practical System
Escaping the comparison trap requires more than mindset shifts—it needs systematic changes to how you operate daily.
Audit and curate ruthlessly. Go through your social feeds right now. Unfollow or mute any account that consistently triggers inadequacy rather than inspiration. This isn’t about avoiding all ambition—it’s about distinguishing between accounts that motivate you to work versus accounts that make you question your worth. Follow people who share their process, not just their victories.
Track your own trajectory. Create a simple tracking system for your key activities—whether that’s words written, workouts completed, or calls made. When comparison creeps in, open this log and look back three months, six months, a year. You’ll see progress that was invisible day-to-day. I keep a simple spreadsheet: Date, Action Taken, Small Win. On rough days, I scroll through months of entries and remember that I am my only meaningful benchmark.
Reframe the goal. Instead of “I want 10,000 followers,” try “I will create valuable content every day for 100 days.” Instead of “I want to get ripped,” try “I will work out five times this week.” You can’t control algorithms, luck, or timing. You can control showing up. Celebrate the inputs, not just the outputs.
Develop comparison circuit breakers. When you catch yourself spiraling, use this three-step reset: First, close the app immediately—don’t try to reason your way out while still scrolling. Second, ask yourself: “What’s one thing I can do right now to move my own work forward?” Third, do that thing, even if it’s just for ten minutes. Action is the best antidote to comparison.
Build a process ritual. Create a daily routine that connects you to your own work before you engage with anyone else’s. For me, it’s writing for 30 minutes before checking any social media. This grounds me in my own creative process before I risk getting pulled into someone else’s highlight reel.
The race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself. The creators you admire aren’t your competition—they’re simply other people running their own race on a different track, in different weather, with different starting points.
Your job isn’t to run their race. It’s to run yours, one step at a time, one day at a time, with your eyes focused on the path ahead of you.
So today, before you open Instagram or LinkedIn, ask yourself: What’s one thing I can create, build, or improve that’s entirely within my control? Then close the phone, open the document, and do that thing.
The peak will take care of itself. Your job is to show up for the climb.