Change the Benchmark
Read on kevferrell.com
Welcome to REWIRE | REBOOT, a weekly newsletter where I share reflections from my ongoing personal growth journey and provide tested ideas, frameworks, tools and practices to help you create the life you want.
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In this issue:
- Rewire - Who Are You Comparing To?
- Reboot - Stronger Than Yesterday
- Toolkit - Track Your Progress
- One Action - Change Your Benchmark
Rewire - Idea I'm Exploring
Who Are You Comparing To?
It sounds like a simple question, but there’s a lot to it.
Because the person you compare yourself to often becomes the benchmark you use to judge your own life.
Your neighbour, colleague, or friend.
The stranger at the gym.
The person on social media who seems to have more money, status, freedom, or success.
But what are you really comparing?
Most of the time, you are comparing your full life to a slice of someone else’s.
Your internal experience to their external presentation.
You see the house, the car, the job title, the perfect post.
What you don’t see is the full picture.
The trade-offs, the stress, the pressure, the full cost of maintaining that life.
That is why comparing to others can be such a losing game.
Not because comparison is always useless. Sometimes it can be helpful.
It can show you what is possible.
Reveal a standard you may want to move toward.
Motivate you to improve.
The issue is not comparison itself. It’s letting the wrong comparison choose your goals for you.
Unconscious comparison is dangerous.
It creates the wrong benchmark.
And the wrong benchmark can pull you away from yourself instead of helping you become who you want to be.
You start wanting things because someone else has them.
Measuring your progress against someone else’s timeline.
Feeling behind in a race you never actually chose to run.
If your expectation is that you need to make more than the person beside you, have a bigger house than your neighbour, drive a better car, or reach a certain status because someone else has, you have set yourself up for constant dissatisfaction.
Because there is always someone with more.
If you set your bar based on what it is you want to achieve for yourself, that's what you should measure against. Not what anyone else is doing.
So the important question is: what do you actually want?
Not what looks impressive or proves something.
What you want for yourself.
Once your basic needs are covered, the gap between satisfaction and dissatisfaction is often created by expectation.
What you have minus what you want.
Not what you need. What you want.
The clearer you are on what you actually want, the easier it is to define success for yourself.
And if you are genuinely happy with what you already have, you are already rich in many ways.
That does not mean you should stop striving. I do not believe that.
You can be grateful and ambitious. You can be content and still want to improve. You can enjoy what you have and still pursue what is next.
This is an area where I constantly challenge myself.
I face an ongoing tension between being minimalist and enjoying the fruits of my labour.
I like simplicity. I like the idea of having less.
But I also like nice things.
So I try to be honest about why I want them.
If I want something because I will enjoy it, use it, appreciate it, and it fits the life I am trying to build, that is one thing.
But I also assess whether it’s going to add more complexity to my life or take up more mental surface area. Because I don’t want that.
If I want something because it proves something to someone else, that’s where I draw the line.
I do not like drawing attention to what I have. It makes me uncomfortable. So when I notice myself wanting more, I try to ask whether the desire is real or reactive.
Do I actually want this?
Or does it just feel appealing in the moment of desire?
Or because someone else has it?
Changing the Benchmark
The better benchmark is internally focused, not external.
Who you are today compared to who you were yesterday.
And who you are today compared to who you want to become.
Those are the two comparisons that matter.
Your past self gives you perspective. It reminds you how far you have come, what you have learned, and where you have improved.
Your future self gives you direction. It reminds you where you are going, what standard you are trying to live up to, and what gap you still need to close.
That is the right benchmark.
Not someone else’s life, timeline or highlight reel.
Your own standards.
Aim to be a little bit better every day. You won't always be, because progress isn’t linear.
But over the long run, if you are improving against your past self, you're winning the race you should be running. Your race.
Do not shame other people because they are in a different position than you.
More importantly, do not shame yourself because you are not in the same position as somebody else.
Change the benchmark.
It changes how you feel about yourself today.
Reboot - Health & Longevity
Stronger Than Yesterday
Nowhere is this topic more relevant than in your exercise routine.
In the gym, it is easy to compare yourself to the wrong person.
There is always someone stronger, faster, leaner, younger.
But that person is not your benchmark.
They might be an inspiration. But they are not your daily comparison.
Your real comparison is what you did before.
Did you:
Add a little more weight?
Complete another rep?
Run a slightly faster time?
Improve your form?
Show up when you didn’t feel like it?
That’s progress.
You are not trying to lift more than the strongest person in the gym (admittedly, I still struggle with this one). You are trying to become a little bit stronger than you were.
You are not trying to run faster than the experienced marathoner. You are trying to improve your own pace, endurance, or consistency.
This is also why you should not just go through the motions and perform the same workouts every week with no intention.
All movement is good. And consistency matters. But if you want to improve, you need a target.
That target might be a new personal best, one more rep, better technique, maintaining strength during a busy stretch, reducing pain, improving range of motion, or rebuilding capacity after time away.
As you get older, the target changes.
At some point, age takes its toll. You may not lift what you used to. Recovery may take longer. The warm-up matters more. Form and technique become even more important.
I am firmly in that boat.
But I still set high expectations and milestones. The goal is to stay as close to my high standards as I can while improving form, reducing the likelihood of injury, and minimizing strength loss or exercise capacity decline.
As you get older, a lot of the game becomes slowing the rate of decline.
But you may be surprised by what you are still capable of if you continue to push yourself with intention.
Not recklessly, not with ego, and not to prove something to anyone else.
Just steadily measuring yourself against your own past performance.
Your competition is who you see in the mirror.
That is why tracking comes in handy.
If you track your workouts, you can see your progress over time. You can look back and know what weight you used, how many reps you completed, how you felt, and what you might try to beat today.
Without tracking, you are guessing.
With tracking, you have the data. A baseline.
And once you have a baseline, you have something useful to compare against.
Toolkit - Something I'm Doing
Track Your Progress
I track every workout or organized bout of exercise.
I keep a daily exercise log that includes the basics:
- Date
- Time of day
- Location
- Exercises - weights, sets, reps, tempo
I also track details that might affect performance:
- Food before training (if any - I often train fasted)
- Supplements
- Relative energy level
- Notes related to soreness, fatigue, and anything else relevant
There are numerous apps for workout tracking. But I just record mine in a simple note-taking app while training. I use Evernote for no reason other than I’ve been using it for more than 10 years. Then I transfer the information to a spreadsheet later and complete the rest of the details.
In a separate tab, I track progress over time of the weight, reps and tempo for variations of three core compound lifts:
- Squat
- Bench press
- Deadlift
The details matter less than the habit.
You do not need a perfect system to start.
Just start by recording what you did each week.
Once that becomes a habit, you can make it more detailed if you choose.
The point is not to turn exercise into accounting.
It is to create a record of your progress so you can compare yourself to the only benchmark that really matters.
Your own.
One Action
Change Your Benchmark
Identify one area of your life where you are comparing yourself to someone else.
It could be career, financial wealth, status, lifestyle, fitness, material possessions…anything.
Then ask:
- Is this the proper comparison?
- Do I actually want the life that comes with what I am comparing myself to?
- Where was I six months or one year ago?
- Where do I want to go from here?
Change the benchmark.
Compare yourself to who you were.
Then compare yourself to who you want to become.
That one shift can change how you feel about your progress today.
Share your story. Just reply to this email.
Inspirational Quote
“Do not compare, do not measure. No other way is like yours. All other ways deceive and tempt you. You must fulfill the way that is in you.”
– C.G. Jung
Do not compare to or measure against others. Compare to your past self. It's just that simple.
Readers Corner
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Until next week,
Kevin
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