You are listening to My Freedom Grove podcast with Gretchen Hernandez, episode 39.

Welcome to My Freedom Grove podcast. This is where strong people, just like you come to have honest, open discussions about anxiety, depression, and frustration, but we don't stop there. We go deeper by learning and applying mindset management tools to once and for all break free from the pain, so we can actually enjoy our lives. I'm your host, Gretchen Hernandez. I'm so glad you joined us.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi, my strong friends. I want to start off this episode with a Listener Shout Out. As you know, My Freedom Grove podcast is available on all of the different podcast apps like Apple podcast, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio. There's probably about 20 different apps out there that you can use to listen to podcasts on each of those. There's an opportunity to leave a review and comments.

Listener Shoutout

I want to honor one of my listeners and show my appreciation for the comment that she left on Apple podcasts. This one comes from Carin Mosher. She writes...

"A Mindset Must. I recently found My Freedom Grove and Gretchen Hernandez, and I can honestly say I was divinely guided. She is such a warm, welcoming and approachable person. I have learned several easy mindset shifts to make. Slight tweaks in how to approach a situation that have positively impacted not only my business journey, but my coaching and relationships as well. I am less anxious and more willing to just try. It's not win or fail, but win and learn. And that is pure gold."

Carin, thank you so much. I really appreciate this feedback. For anyone else that would like to leave me a comment, I will also give you a Listener Shout Out. I love getting feedback.

In today's episode, we're going to talk about the comparison shame game. This one keeps popping up with folks that are reaching out to me, with my current clients, and even myself. It's so easy to allow comparison to send us into a shame spiral that prevents us from taking action on going forward in our journey. Comparison is inevitable. We don't live on this planet all by ourselves. We're all just trying to figure out how to do this thing called life. So we'll go out looking for ideas. Well, sometimes ideas will just come and present themselves to us, whether we wanted it or not.

What your brain does with these ideas can mean the difference between progress or pain. You get to choose. Comparison can be your best research or your worst nightmare. I'm going to share 3 techniques that I use with my clients that can transform your comparison critic into your best friend.

These specific techniques are quite simply:

• Anchor
• Empower
• Reverse Engineer

1. Anchors - What we do to determine if the ideas that we're seeing, that are being presented to us, if they're even relevant to us in that exact moment.
2. Empowering - deciding what is the one thing that you wanted to change in your life? And then how would you use this idea to help move you forward?
3. Reverse Engineering - once you have decided that you want to move that 1 thing forward:I

a. t's going out and looking for a whole bunch of examples, on purpose, to figure out... What are all of the different ways people have tried?

b. And then design your own experiment.

So that's:

• Anchor.
• Empower.
• Reverse Engineering.

Don't worry. I'm going to go through a lot of examples so that you can see how this can be applied.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Psychology of Comparison

Before we jump into our examples, let's do a little bit of the psychology background. What is the comparison, shame game?

Defense mechanisms.

Our brain has all sorts of psychological defense mechanisms that we use to keep ourselves safe. Typically, we're trying to keep ourselves safe from:

1. A loss of status.
2. A loss of love.

Shame shifting is one of those ways that we help to protect ourselves. So we might want to make sure that we're not going to fail. Because, maybe that would cause us to lose status in somebody's eyes. Or maybe our own eyes. Or that we might get rejected by someone. That they wouldn't like us or they wouldn't love us. So we use shame shifting as a way to keep ourselves safe and maybe motivate us to go do something. Or motivate us to not do something that could jeopardize our status or our lovability.

One common example is that we'll see somebody else out in the world that seems to have it all. They have the status, they have the love, and then we start to feel shame.

This doesn't feel good. So we start to try to shift that shame onto somebody else. We point out all of the reasons why that person had it so good, right? They had natural genes, natural ability. Someone just gave them the good life. Whatever it is.

Or we start to shift blame and shame to other people in our lives. That it's because of all of these people, that we don't have, what this (other person) other example, out in the world, has.

For those of you that have a big dream out in your life: you might have an unconscious fear of success. You see these people that have the life that you want. Maybe they have a profession that you want to be in, or they've created a company or they're in a leadership position that you aspire to be in. And you start to have this fear of, well, what if I did actually achieve that? Right?

There might be some fear because now you're very public for everybody else to see. To have their thoughts and opinions about. Or maybe you're worried about the workload that might come along with it. Or the impact that it could have on your life. Whatever that fear is, your brain is now going to try to keep you safe. So it's going to start shifting some shame onto you. That "No, it's not possible for you to have that life."

So your brain is going to try to keep you safe by shifting some shame onto you and coming up with a whole lot of these stories that you're not good enough. That you can't do it. That you're just a failure. That you've never been able to do any of this before. Again, this is just that comparison shame game. It's your brain's way of trying to keep you safe.

We can say "Thank you brain, but really, we're going to be fine."

This shifting of shame back and forth is just a distraction. Your brain is pretending that it's necessary, but it's just a diversionary tactic to keep you from taking action and moving forward on your journey.

When we're not conscious of that psychology, our unconscious mind will play the comparison shame game to keep you stuck in the status quo and shifting the shame to other people and blaming them. All that's going to do is put you in the victim chair. It's going to make it seem like things are not possible for you unless somebody else changes or until the whole world changes and sees you differently. This can result in no change for you, or maybe even put you on a path of self destruction. And that's not what we want to do at all.

We want to keep you healthy and happy and moving forward.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lifestyle Comparison to TV Shows

I'm going to share one of my recent examples of when I could have gone down that path of self destruction. Last weekend I was enjoying a Sunday morning with my husband snuggled up on the couch, having some coffee and we're watching HGTV's show called Amazing Water Homes. Now, before we moved, we used to watch Beachfront Bargain Hunt all the time. Because we wanted to have a waterfront home. And now we do. We have a house that overlooks the ocean.

It was a really good motivator watching that and getting some ideas. But now we're watching Amazing Water Homes and I'm seeing all of these really amazing homes. And the thing jumping out at me is that these homes are very elaborate and everybody in them is looking nice and happy and fit. And there are kids that are well behaved and playing around, having a good time. All of the houses are super clean and the families are very energetic. They're doing all sorts of activities. Going out, jet skiing and having barbecues. Just living it up.

I found myself starting to play that comparison shame game. I started thinking well, but that's not what our life is. And look at how huge these houses are. And these people must be really rich. And how are they able to keep their house so clean? They must have a whole staff to keep it clean. I was starting to beat myself up. Like I'm not able to keep my house as clean as what they have. My house isn't as big as theirs. My family and I are not having that kind of active lifestyle. Our lifestyle looks a little bit different.

I felt my mood just slipping quickly. Like this was supposed to be an enjoyable Sunday morning. And here it was starting to go down this path of misery.

I had to catch myself.

A conscious mind recognizes when the comparison shame game pops up and then does something constructive with it.

Since I was well aware that my brain was starting to get into this shame game, I caught myself. It's like, unh-uh, no way, I want to actually have a day that I can enjoy. So I use those 3 techniques that I mentioned.

• Anchor
• Empower.
• Reverse Engineer.

Now these 3 techniques make up something that's called Benchmarking. It's very similar to comparison. In the corporate environment, we would use benchmarking specifically. The concept of benchmarking is that you have a goal for yourself. And then when you find that you're not meeting your goal, you can go and look for external sources to get ideas on how you can meet your goal.

This enables you to shift your life from reactive to proactive.

So sitting there watching this TV show, I was definitely falling into reactive mode.

When you live life stuck in reactive mode, you'll find yourself playing this shame game too much and staying stuck in your status quo.

First I had to Anchor. What is it, specifically, about these ideas that were being presented in the TV show that were relevant to my life in the moment? There were a lot of ideas being presented, but the things that were actually relevant to me at that moment: I wanted my house to be a lot cleaner than it was. And I wanted to be able to play during the day. Not spend the whole day cleaning. Not spend the whole day working.

Empower was the next thing. How could I empower myself? Instead of shifting the shame around or shifting more shame onto me, how could I actually empower myself to move forward? Well, I could do some cleaning today and we could figure out an active activity that we could do as a family to enjoy the day.

The next one was Reverse Engineer. I had to figure out how would I do this? Reverse engineering refers to finding other examples of how people were able to do this specifically. So on this TV show, they didn't show the mechanics of how they were able to have their house clean and still have time for all of the fun. So I got in the Way Back Machine, my memory.

When I was a kid, my mom had this really great habit that she had us in. Which was to always clean the house Saturday mornings, before Saturday morning cartoons. So that would be my enjoyment. Once I did all of my chores, I would get to watch cartoons. Sometimes I spent way too long getting my chores done and I'd miss all of the cartoons. This was back in the day that you could only watch cartoons until about noon on Saturday. And after that, cartoons were only available maybe between three and four in the afternoons. And that was it. You didn't have cartoon network or anything like that.

I decided, well, what if I picked two rooms of the house and cleaned those until noon? And then after 12 o'clock we would go out and we would play. And that's exactly what we did. When I started to get out there and clean, so did the rest of my family. Somehow we just made it fun together and I wasn't even expecting it. I didn't even say anything to anybody else to clean. It's just, I got up and I was role modeling it. So they did it too. And then we got to have fun. It was great.

So I'm gonna share four other examples with you that you might be facing or, someone else you know is facing. I've had folks out in the community reach out to me. And some of my clients reach out to me about these specific topics. So I thought, why not share it all here? Because I think that we can all benefit from these particular parts of our lives.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Work Promotion Comparisons

So the very first one is getting promoted at work, or should I say the lack of promotion at work? Have you ever found yourself where you're there, you're working your tail off, doing everything you're supposed to do and you're not getting promoted, but everybody else around you seems to be getting promoted. I experienced this myself in my own career.

The shame game that I would get involved in was that my employer just didn't value me here. I was doing everything I was supposed to do. Maybe I was going above and beyond and doing extra stuff and they just didn't value me. So I was shifting the shame off of me and onto them. That it was their problem.

Some of my clients would share with me about how they thought that the person who got promoted didn't deserve it. Because they were comparing the other person to themselves. Doing that shame game back and forth. Why did the other person get promoted? They didn't deserve it as much as they (the person sharing) did.

And then of course, I think all of us have done this, that the company itself is unfair that their practices were unfair. So all of that is just shifting shame either to ourselves, to the bosses, to the other employees, to the company itself. All that does is keep us in the victim chair.

But if we Anchor ourselves, Empower ourselves and do some Reverse Engineering, we can focus on our own journey and we can move forward.

So in my instance, where I was getting frustrated that I wasn't promoted, I was in a job for 10 years at the same level without a promotion. It was very frustrating. I would definitely do a lot of the shame game, especially towards myself. I'd beat myself up a lot about it. Reality was...there weren't any levels available above my current level. I was hired in at the glass ceiling. So the only way that I could be promoted is if I applied for a different job altogether. Or if I proved a business need and they created a new position, that was a level higher than what I had. So I had to Anchor, Empower and Reverse Engineer so that I could move forward.

What was relevant to me when it came to getting a promotion? It wasn't a title change. It wasn't the number of the level that was important for me. It was the income.

Since I had been in the same job for 10 years, I had been getting really great raises and bonuses throughout the year. But I was now the top of the salary range for that position. No matter how spectacular of a benefit I could deliver for the company, they couldn't give me a very large percentage of a raise because they had to make sure that there was still money available to give me raises in the coming years. So the percentage of my raises got smaller and smaller each year, even though I was performing in a much bigger, impactful way.

I had a family of seven with more and more expenses getting piled on. I needed to make more income. So I had to Empower myself. I could either sit there, shaming myself or blaming them, or I could figure out what are some of my options for how I could make a bigger income.

Then I got into the Reverse Engineer. I started to look at other people that were able to get promotions that were making a bigger income than what I had. I also looked at how to get a new level created above me.

I started to do some company strategy investigation. To figure out what business need did the company have, so that we could create a new position. For me, that was a level higher with the bigger income bracket.

I also looked at some other jobs within the company that had more layers built into it. It gave promotion opportunities. Those promotion opportunities would come with bigger income brackets. I interviewed other people at the company to understand what their career path had been like. And I learned that many times they would take lateral moves.

A lateral move means that they moved from their current level to a different job family, or a different department that had the same level, but that it had more promotion opportunities. That was the part that I was missing. I loved my job and I didn't really want to leave it. But if I had this definite financial need, then I'd have to take a lateral move.

The cool thing at the end was that I had done both.

I had been presented with a lateral move. I was being recruited by another department. And I had finally proven the business need. So my current boss was presenting me with a promotion opportunity. At that point, I had the option to choose. That was definitely empowering.

I did choose the lateral move of all things. You would think I would have chosen the promotion. But the lateral move has proven to be exactly what was right at the time. And what has led to my journey of opening My Freedom Grove.

One of my favorite parts about the example, that I just shared with you, was learning how to understand business need based on strategy. And then how to create positions that would advance the company to move forward towards meeting their strategy.

When I had another client come to me and she was experiencing something similar: she wanted to get a promotion. Other people were getting promoted and she wasn't. She was a high performer. She had a lot of potential to offer this company. They just didn't know it yet. I coached her through being able to understand the business strategy and need. Then how to draft a pitch to create a new position for herself. She went through all of that and sure enough, her company approved her pitch and it created a brand new position just for her. It was a great promotion. She got a really big raise as a result.

I was also able to take that same technique to be able to launch My Freedom Grove. A whole business that was creating the position of my dreams and eventually some positions for other people.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Entrepreneurs & Business Website Comparison

That leads perfectly into the next example, which is building a business website. This one I have encountered myself. I've also had clients that encountered this. And then of course in the entrepreneurial world, all of us get together. We talk about these things. We're trying to figure out not only how to build a website so that we can present our companies well, but also all of the content that goes into the website. When you're a business owner, checking out other people's websites, the shame game can pop up.

When you're looking at the other business owner and thinking, Oh, I'm not as good as them. There's no way I could be that successful. I don't look like them. I don't have that kind of experience. I haven't been doing it as long as they have. I don't have the same kind of following that they have.

You might even shift the shame on to them in some way. Onto their circumstances. Thinking, it's just because they had a lot of money. Or because they had somebody who was like a guardian angel and helped put them into the place that they're in. That somehow it was so much easier for them that they didn't actually have to work at it.

Or you might start to shift the shame onto the world in general. That the world won't accept or help a person like me to have a business. That the cards are stacked against me in some way. So again, that's just your brain trying to protect your status quo.

It's so much easier to stay where you're at. Even if you're not happy with where you're at. Because once you do become successful, it opens up different problems for you. And then there's always the fear of failure. In podcast episode 17 What if I Fail? I gave you all sorts of ways that you can make sure that you're never failing at anything. It's always just an experiment. It's just learning. You can always go forward.

You can just calm your brain down and say, "Thank you brain for trying to protect me, but I got this." And then you're going to try the three techniques:

• Anchor.
• Empower.
• Reverse Engineer

Anchor - try to remember what is the specific relevant thing right now for why you're looking at that website?There's so much that you can look at. You can look at the colors, the fonts, you can look at the products and services. You can look at the pictures, all of that, but focus on just one thing at a time. Otherwise it gets too overwhelming. And that comparison shame game is just so tempting for your brain to focus on one relevant thing.

For me, when I started out on this venture, I was looking at products and services. How do people package their products and service? What format are they using? Some people are using courses. Some people are using one-on-one services. Some people have a widget that they might sell. So I anchored down on what are all of the different things. Because I was trying to figure out how to package my products and services.

The next part is Empower. What am I going to do so that I'm moving myself forward? I could just look at a few things and then call it a day. But I chose the best way to empower myself was to write down all of the different configurations of products and services so that I would have a list of all of the examples. Then I didn't need to look at the websites anymore.

Next comes Reverse Engineering for this. I was looking for other entrepreneurs that had their products and services stated clearly and were having success. I was specific. I was looking for people that were light houses. I use the term light house to define a person who is willing to share all of their stories, all of their struggles. They are courageously vulnerable in sharing everything so that other people will have a guide in their own storm. Creating a business definitely can feel like a storm.

I found that in Marie Forleo. Marie Forleo is the creator of B school. That's short for business school. She authored a book called "Everything is Figureoutable." I was trying to decide if I wanted Marie to be one of my teachers or not. And it was really important to me that she be a lighthouse.

I went and I checked out her book. I'm specifically looking for, did she struggle at any point, trying to figure out her products and services, because remember that's what I had anchored on. And sure enough, in her book, she talked about a time where she started off as a coach and she had her very first workshop where it was just in a friend's basement. She only has five students. It's her parents and three neighbors. She's there with these stapled packets of paper as her workbooks. And she's just doing it. And now she has evolved to B School, which is huge out in the entrepreneurial world. She's very successful. She's helping a lot of people. And I decided, okay, this is someone that I can learn from. I've also found other lighthouses out in the world that have helped me figure out what I want to create and how to evolve it?

I'm moving forward. Don't let other company's websites get you into the comparison shame game

• You can anchor - pick your one specific thing you want to learn that day.
• Empower yourself.
• Reverse Engineer it.

When you've completed that one aspect of your business, and you're ready to go on to the next aspect. Bo back and do it again. Anchor on the next one aspect. Empower yourself. What is it, that you can do for that one aspect? And then Reverse Engineer.

Don't let the comparison shame game be a diversionary tactic that gets in the way of your journey. You've got this!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Teamwork & Team Player Comparison

All right. My next example is Teamwork. When have you been on a team where everybody has specific tasks that they're supposed to be doing? Everybody's contributing to the end goal and you have at least one team member who is not doing their part.

Alright. I'm imagining my audience of listeners and all of us probably have our hand up right now. I know mine is really high. So this is a different type of shame. In the other examples, I was talking about how we were feeling less than someone that we're doing comparison with. Now, in this instance, it's actually the reverse. Where we feel like we're doing the right thing and that someone else is not. It's a reverse comparison. That comparison shame game still happens.

Some of the thoughts that might pop up for you is that this is just my luck. This always happens to me. It's not fair. I'm going to look bad because this is a shared outcome. We all have to contribute. And so those of us that are high achievers, overworkers or over responsible, tend to take on the extra work. Because we want to deliver, according to our own standards.

We might also shift the shame onto the other person. It's all their fault. We start picking out all of their different problems. We might even start to shift that shame over to the boss or the company that it's their fault for allowing this injustice to continue. So all of these things put you in the victim chair. It keeps you from moving forward on your journey.

I'm going to share a client example on this one. This is a large company that had multiple capital expense projects. These were really expensive, high dollar projects that had due dates that needed to be hit so that it could go forward. What was happening was that the approval process to get the finances for this was not happening by the due date. It would cause a lot of problems for finance. The money that had been allocated, but wasn't able to be spent at the right time. Plus you'd have all of these workers waiting around to execute the project. They couldn't because they didn't have the approval.

We needed to anchor down on this aspect. I had whole project team and the project leads and the portfolio manager that were definitely caught in that comparison, shame game, blaming and shaming, everybody fingers were pointing everywhere.

Anchoring down on the one aspect that was relevant. We needed to figure out where was it getting held up in the process? There was a signature that needed to happen by a certain date. And that signature wasn't happening. That signature happened to be the CEO of the company. Once this was discovered, the comparison shame game was popping up again. Where people were definitely talking about this problem. And they were saying things about the CEO, but they weren't actually solving any of the problems. No one was actually talking to the CEO, no one wanted to call him out and say, "Hey, you're not doing your job." Because, essentially, he's the boss of everybody else. They were too afraid they would lose their job.

Going on to Empower. What could they do in order to move forward on this journey? At the time we were working on developing visual management. They had key metrics that were up on walls, visible for other people to see. One of the key metrics that was put up there was the adherence to due date for this particular step. This is their way of collecting data and showing data. See data has this really great way of being objective. Nobody has to call anybody else out. It's already written up there. Who's responsible for that activity. It's showing the metric that either the requirement was met or it wasn't met. And then if it is presented with the rest of the end to end process, it can show all of the other parts of the process were working. Everything was adhering to all of those due dates. This was the only one that was holding it up.

At that point, they could bring the CEO by show him the data that's up on the wall. And the miraculous thing happened: the CEO saw it. And then he went, "Oh, wait a minute. That's my step." The data itself let him know. All of a sudden he resolved that issue. The problem was solved and there was no shame involved. It was just objective data.

For the benchmarking part of it: this particular company was working with me as their coach. I was able to provide examples from other companies that had struggled with the same exact issue. I also had been involved in going to LEAN summits where visual management was used a lot across every industry. This particular way of showing tasks that needed to be completed was very effective. It motivated the responsible party to make sure all of the tasks were completed on time. Having all of those examples and knowing that it actually worked for other companies, gave them the courage, try it.

All it was was an experiment. Put it up there, see what happens. They found that it actually worked for them. There's always a solution for your problems. You just have to experiment to find it.

If you stay stuck in the comparison shame game, you're always going to be in the victim chair and you're never going to be able to move forward.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dating Comparison for Singles & Divorced Individuals

All right, moving on to our last example. This is with relationships. I have many clients that are single or divorced and they're feeling a little lonely. They'd really like someone in their life. They are looking around at their friends that are already coupled. They're doing that comparison shame game. They're feeling bad about themselves. They're thinking back about their relationships that ended in divorce. They're looking at their friends that are not divorced and doing that comparison shame game.

Some of the thoughts that are coming up is that I'm not desirable. I don't have the right appearance. I have all of this baggage. No one's going to want me.

Or they're shifting the shame onto other people. They are thinking the other single people are only interested in themselves, they're gold diggers, or they only want the perfect person.

They might be shifting it onto society and blaming saying, well, men have to look this certain way to meet this standard. Or they have to have these skill sets or have this type of income. Women are doing that to themselves too. Thinking, well, I have to show up this way. Or I can't have any kids. Men are also thinking I can't have any kids. Who's going to want me with kids? Right? That society itself might be to blame. Thinking, well, because I don't fit this mold that society puts out there, that TV shows put out there, I'm always going to be single.

Again, this keeps you in the victim chair. It doesn't keep you moving forward on your journey.

Go back to your three steps. Anchor, empower, reverse engineer.

I'm going to share my example after my first divorce. I had two toddlers at the time and I was definitely thinking, who's going to want me? I had these two toddlers. I had all sorts of self esteem issues. So I didn't think anyone was going to want me. I was showing up like kind of needy and desperate and obsessive in my thinking about trying to find anyone who would want me.

That became my anchor. It was just to answer the question: am I desirable to be around? It's not even all the way through getting to the finish line of being married and having a family. It was just that very first step of... Would anyone want to be around me or want to date me now?

My best friend was concerned about me. She had seen me go from one longterm relationship into the next longterm relationship without sampling in between. So sampling, meaning dating a couple of people before you decide on one person to settle down with. She just wanted to make sure that that next relationship that I got into longterm was going to be a good fit. She actually gave me a challenge. Actually, an edict at the time. And she said, you must date 18 men before you pick one to have a relationship with. I thought, "Oh my gosh, 18?" Like, I don't even think there's one guy out there that wanted to date me.

I had to empower myself. I decided, okay, I will step up to this challenge. 18 guys. How would I move forward so that I could actually do this? Going back to episode 17 What If I fai? I used a learning and experiment approach. I wanted to learn as much as I could about these different people that I would be meeting. And also learn about myself and how I showed up. I was going to do my own debrief and evaluation after each date.

First for the other person. What did I like about them? What did I not like about them? Is there anything that I would want to look for in the next person that I dated? And then I'd also do that for myself too. Because I wanted to make sure that I was showing up in a way where I was comfortable and feeling authentic about myself and that I was providing an enjoyable date for the other person.

What was it that worked for me and for them? What was it that didn't work for me and for them? And then what would I adjust for next time? So I ended up having these lists. I know. Very analytical and logical. But it shifted my direction off of "Oh my gosh, no one's going to want me" to "What is it that I want in them?" And "What is it that I want in myself?" It had nothing to do with wheather other people find me desirable.

My next part was Reverse Engineering. I had to figure out what is it that I even enjoy? This ended up being a really interesting self learning event. What activities do I even enjoy? I realized I had been a people pleaser most of my life. I always focused on what other people would enjoy. I just showed up and I'd be there whether I enjoyed it or not. Just because I wanted to be there with the person.

I wanted this to be a good fit for the long haul. What were the activities that I actually enjoyed? Then the reverse engineering is - okay, now that I've found the things that I like:

I liked comedy clubs. I like going camping and nature hikes.

Where could I meet other people that also enjoyed those things? Of course there's online dating. Everybody knows about that. But there's also things like meetup.com that had activity groups. Where you could be a single individual. You could go look on there for activities that you actually like to do and then sign up and go. You'd meet all sorts of people that were there.

We tend to overlook some of those simple things like our jobs. My husband and I actually met at my job at new hire orientation. I wasn't even looking for anyone to date at the time. I was just there asking questions. It was a room full of people. Everybody was a new hire for this company. I'm asking questions and it turns out that's what caught my husband's eye. That's what made him enjoy being around me. I was willing to ask all of those questions.

We may have these ideas that people enjoy being around us because of appearance or what we have going on in our life. My husband enjoyed my company because I'd ask questions in front of a large group. Who would have guessed that one, right? There are ways that you can reverse engineer it to find the things that you enjoy doing. Then you find the people that are also there. Then you try to find that common of how you enjoy each other. And then you experiment.

Maybe it's not the first person. We don't have to be so desperate and grabby. There's plenty of time. We have a whole lifetime to find someone that you actually want to be with. That you enjoy. Make sure that you're also showing up in a way that makes you feel comfortable and authentic. And that you're a good match for them too,. Sometimes that's all it is. It's just, you're either a match or you're not. It doesn't mean anything specific about you. There's no shame involved. It's just, maybe you have the same interests. Maybe you don't. It's that simple.

One of the other benchmark things that really helped me when I was going through that time, especially when I was going through my divorce, was listening to the radio. I was working graveyard shift at the time and I was driving home, listening to the radio. John Tesh had some kind of a talk show. I don't even know how I had found this. It was the only time I ever listened to it. He shared a statistic that something like 80% of people that went through divorce were remarried within three years. I can't remember the exact percentage. I think it was something like 80% or maybe it was 75%. this was 15 years ago. I'm sure the percentage is different now. But just hearing that made me feel so much better. For some reason I had it in my head that it just wasn't possible. That because you had kids that you wouldn't end up getting remarried. Now, of course, that's ridiculous. That happens all the time now. But having actual statistics provided a lot of comfort to me. So, something you might want to check out.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alright, my friends, next time you find yourself in the comparison shame game, remember those three simple steps.

• Anchor
• Empower
• Reverse Engineer.

You get to live your life being proactive, not reactive.

So when something starts to show up, you're watching a TV show on a Saturday morning while you're drinking coffee, ideas are just being presented to you. It doesn't mean that they're relevant to you in that exact moment. Catch yourself before you get into that comparison shame game.

Anchor, Empower, Reverse Engineer.

Comparison can be your best research or your worst nightmare. What will you decide when you're ready to move forward on your journey? I'm available to be your guide.

If you find yourself getting stuck on your journey, if something is standing in the way, especially a comparison shame game, know that I'm available to help you through it. I can be your guide. I can get you through those stuck, mucky parts and get you moving on your way to the life that you actually want.

You can reach out to me either through email [email protected] or you can go to my website, www.myfreedomgrove.com and then go to the coaching tab.

My friends get out there, empower yourself and have a fantastic life. I will talk with you next week. Bye bye.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you for listening to My Freedom Grove podcast. I hope this podcast provided you some relief and some inspiration. If you know somebody else that can benefit from this podcast, please share the link with them together. I know we can make a difference to access more podcasts and offerings. Please visit www.myfreedomgrove.com Until next time, take care of yourself. This world needs you.