The only person who even has an idea of what is going on in your mind is you, and chances are that you don’t really know or don’t understand. But only you can even begin to know about your fears and sleepless nights. It may be that in times to come there will be scanners that can do that, but for the moment, you have to rely on your own imperfect judgement to try to understand what is going on inside you. You may well get it wrong anyway.

You cannot tell what is going on inside anyone else. You have no idea what really makes them tick. All that you can see is the outward persona that they project. You see their outer shell that they have made to hide what is going on behind it.

So, why do we insist on beating ourselves up when we compare our inside with others’ outside? If we are all truly the same physically once you peel off the skin, then surely, we must all think the same thoughts and have the same fears, worries and emotions. We all have sleepless nights.

But when you look at another business, particularly in the same industry, what you see is the polished exterior. It is the website, the number of staff they employ. You think that they have been more successful than you. You cannot see their fears and count how many sleepless nights they have suffered. You may have no idea of their profitability, cash flow or whether they have good employee relations. For the most part, all you know is what they want you to see.

The other thing to bear in mind is that you only see the businesses that have succeeded. Those who failed, possibly many years before, are invisible to you. We know, because we have seen it, that lawyers and accountants go bust. Their businesses fail, and they disappear. But when you look around you, you only see the success stories, and they all seem to have managed better than you and been more successful.

As Ivan Misner says, comparison is the thief of joy, and it can encourage us to feel that we are somehow not successful. The good old “imposter syndrome”. But it may be that your competitors look over at you and have the same emotions.

Don’t permit comparison to poison your self-worth or make you fearful in some way to carry on with what you are doing.

Anyone who has built up a business knows that it is hard work. You have put in the effort and succeeded in your own way, so don’t denigrate your abilities. You may say that it was just luck, but luck can open doors, but hard work walks you through them. Luck may light the match, but hard work and perseverance build the fire. Now, we all know that hard work does not guarantee success. Those lawyers and accountants who went bust studied hard and passed all of their exams. They probably worked hard to build their businesses. Without hard work, there can be no success.

So, you had a little bit of luck, you worked hard and persevered, and you have got to where you are today. You have made your way in the world, and that deserves credit. But most people don’t give themselves the credit they deserve. They do not see that they made it happen when somebody else may have given up or failed long ago.

So, next time you start to think that anyone could have built what you have built and better, consider this. Somebody may have managed to do just that, but most would not have got as far as you and given up long ago. Your qualities got you to where you are today.

Alan E Long

The Long Partnership

07770 738770