It’s a Trap! It’s a Trap!

Let’s face it. Not a day goes by that you’re not tempted to glance to the left and to the right to see how you measure up to the people around you.

But it doesn’t stop there, does it?

You’re tempted to compare your children to other children, your spouse to other spouses, your salary to others’ salaries, your car to others’ cars…and your stocks to others’ stocks.

It’s frustrating.

It’s exhausting.

It’s a TRAP!

Charlie Munger, a great investor and one of the best students of the mind I’ve ever come across, says…

If you are comfortably rich and someone else is getting richer faster than you by, for example, investing in risky stocks, so what? Someone will always be getting richer faster than you. This is not a tragedy.

You see, the real tragedy of our life is not that someone else is getting richer or healthier than us, but that he is getting there faster than us.

Comparisons are Unfair
Here’s an old joke.

After twenty years, a man decided to track down his three best friends from school. He was shocked at what they had become.

The first was an alcoholic who never got a job. The second had been in prison for robbery. However it was when he saw the third that he felt sick to his stomach.

The third one got a fantastic job and a really attractive wife. 🙁 🙂

Munger says…

Envy is a really stupid sin because it’s the only one you could never possibly have any fun at. There’s a lot of pain and no fun.

Now, the root cause of our envy is comparisons we make in life.

Comparison is a trap! But that is what the marketers sell for that is what we have grown up with.

Like I am not surprised to read the frequent sales letters from a company selling stock recommendation services, where the usual pitch is…

Life is treating you unfair. Someone else is making money faster from stocks. Now we will “reveal” to you a way to “safely” create tremendous wealth over the next few years. We will unravel in front of you a simple yet foolproof investment strategy that has made millionaires out of several small investors.

So while I am trying to get over the comparison trap, I read such a sales pitch and curse life to be unfair on me.

While you continue to receive several such sales pitches that pit you against someone else (the man who has already become a millionaire and for whom life has been fair), my encouragement to you (and to myself) is to run our own race.

You may find others around running faster or with more flare but nobody else around you has your unique capabilities, experiences or skills.

Nobody else can be like you – so the sooner you get comfortable in your own game, the better.

Please stop comparing!

My experience says it’s self-sabotage and it’s not worth it.