When I was a little kid, my mom would sometimes have the Julia Child cooking show playing on TV. My mom says that little four year old me would look at those knives and dreamily sigh, "Why can't we have knives like that?" For some reason I was absolutely fascinated with her kitchen knives. I thought they were the coolest thing on earth.
Fast forward, and I have become, quite by accident, somewhat of a knife collector.
Somebody asked me once, "what's the best overall survival knife?" Well, I wrote a five page document, ranking several knives in order, and talking about why you would choose one over the other, and what some suitable alternatives would be for the price.
The reason that was five pages long, the reason I have more than one knife, the reason a person might want more than one car, is all comparison. There's something better about each one. There's something that's a drawback about each one.
Inherent in every design in knives or in people, are strengths and weaknesses.
We are prone to compare ourselves to others all the time. This comparison game, good or bad, is something that's wired into us.
To take the Habit Finder Assessment, go to https://natewalkercoaching.com and click the Habit Finder link. You and I can schedule a time to review the results, free of charge.
To get hold of me and talk about how I can best help you, go to https://natewalkercoaching.com/contact-1 and share your thoughts, notes, comments, or aspirations in the comments section. Or, DM me on Facebook, etc. Tell me how I can help you best, and we'll schedule some time together, free of charge, to discuss it.
Please share this podcast with family and friends.
When I was a little kid, my mom would sometimes have the Julia Child cooking show playing on TV. My mom says that little four year old me would look at those knives and dreamily sigh, "Why can't we have knives like that?" For some reason I was absolutely fascinated with her kitchen knives. I thought they were the coolest thing on earth.
Fast forward, and I have become, quite by accident, somewhat of a knife collector.
Somebody asked me once, "what's the best overall survival knife?" Well, I wrote a five page document, ranking several knives in order, and talking about why you would choose one over the other, and what some suitable alternatives would be for the price.
The reason that was five pages long, the reason I have more than one knife, the reason a person might want more than one car, is all comparison. There's something better about each one. There's something that's a drawback about each one.
Inherent in every design in knives or in people, are strengths and weaknesses.
We are prone to compare ourselves to others all the time. This comparison game, good or bad, is something that's wired into us.
To take the Habit Finder Assessment, go to https://natewalkercoaching.com and click the Habit Finder link. You and I can schedule a time to review the results, free of charge.
To get hold of me and talk about how I can best help you, go to https://natewalkercoaching.com/contact-1 and share your thoughts, notes, comments, or aspirations in the comments section. Or, DM me on Facebook, etc. Tell me how I can help you best, and we'll schedule some time together, free of charge, to discuss it.
Please share this podcast with family and friends.
Podcast 59 - Knives, Cars, and Comparing Ourselves To Others
Hello my friends.
When I was a little kid, my mom would sometimes have the Julia Child Show playing on TV. Now, for those of you who are young and inexperienced and have no cultural references whatsoever, Julia Child had a cooking show, and evidently my mom says that little four year old me would look at those knives and dreamily sigh, “Why can't we have knives like that?" For some reason I was absolutely fascinated with her kitchen knives. I thought they were the coolest thing on earth.
Well, fast forward, and I have become, quite by accident, somewhat of a knife collector. I've got a bunch of knives. I think knives are really cool. They range in price from, 30 or 40 bucks to uh, a ways over a thousand dollars a piece, even for pocket knives, and that sounds like a ridiculous amount of money. A thousand dollars for a pocket knife? Just chill out a little bit and know that one of my favorite knives is made by a company called Shirogorov, and I think their most expensive pocket knife is 13 grand, so I'm on the low end of that. You should be very happy about it. My wife once said, "Nathan, you can't buy food with knives." (I have a client who sometimes pays me in knives instead of money.) She said, "you can't buy food with knives," but then she read an article about when things go bad, and one of the most valuable things you can have is knives. So there you go.
But here's the question that I get asked, actually, quite often. People will say, yes, but why that? What's the best knife? Why don't you just get the best knife and be happy? My wife asked me that, of course, because that's her job to question everything I do. She said, why didn't you just get the best knife and be happy?
Well, that's a little bit like saying, why didn't you just get the best car and be happy? If you want to haul a large load of stuff, you probably need a pickup. If you want fast and smooth and corners like crazy, you might want a BMW. If you want the best possible gas mileage from a hybrid car, you might want something like a Prius. You can't haul a load of rocks with a Prius—not a very big load of rocks anyway. There is no one car for everything, and there kind of is not one knife for everything.
This one is the Kaiser mini sheep dog in brass; feels nice and heavy in the hand. It's really pretty, kind of a cute little thing to look at, and it has a cleaver-shaped blade. It's a great little knife, but doesn't fit in a pair of dress pants very well.
If somebody said, you can only have one pocket knife for the rest of your life, and it has to be good at everything: Spyderco Paramilitary 2. Why? Has a really good shape. It's very lightweight. The blade shape is really unusual, but good for everything. You can prep food, you can build a shelter, you can cut open boxes, you can do everything with this knife and this blade. If I could only have one knife, it's probably this one. Perfect overall knife. So how come it's not my absolute favorite?
I'll show you. This one right here. You're going to want to watch this on video now, aren't you? I'll put it on YouTube soon. This one right here; you can see a little bit of a purple hue to it. This is a Shirogorov F3 NS. Some versions of these are over a thousand dollars and they're very, very beautiful. Just absolutely a work of art. It feels great in the hand. In a recent review on YouTube of the 50 best knives, this one was given the number one spot. If I could only have one for the sake of beauty, it might be this one.
Somebody asked me once, “what's the best overall survival knife?” You're out in the woods or something and you just want to get by. Well, I wrote a five page—I’m not making this up—I wrote a five page document ranking several knives in order, and talking about why you would want to choose one over the other, and what some suitable alternatives would be for the price. The reason that was five pages long, the reason I have more than one knife, the reason a person might want more than one car, or different cars for different things, is all comparison.
There's something better about each one. There's something that's a drawback about each one. Inherent in every design in knives or in people, are strengths and weaknesses.
We are prone to compare ourselves to others all the time. This comparison game, good or bad, is something that's wired into us. We make decisions based on whether a thing is good or bad for us, whether a situation is safe or unsafe, whether this is something that we would enjoy or not enjoy. We are prone, more and more, to make comparisons between ourselves and others. "This is a good person." "This is a bad person." Or more directly, "I'm a good person," or "I'm a bad person."
We are prone to compare our very worst to others' very best. Nowhere is this more common and more dangerous than on social media. That always prompts the discussion, “social media is evil. It's a blight on humanity, and it's going to destroy everything.” Social media is neither good nor evil. It's just a thing. How we employ it, how we use it, and what our motives are, have a great deal to do with the effect of that social media, for good or for evil. When you compare yourself or judge yourself by the number of likes you get, the number of followers you have, or how you look compared to so-and-so, who's perfect, that can be a pretty harsh criticism of oneself. If, for example, I look at clothing online and I see guys who are 30 years younger than me and in way better shape who have had fewer injuries, but more hair, who have managed to keep their muscles taut and trim and their bodies well-nourished, I might find myself comparing in a way that's not healthy. I might decide to dislike myself. I might complain about my life. I might worry that things will never be better. I may fear the future. I may fear the judgment of others. Comparison is really, really harmful when we compare our worst to someone else's best.
You've heard me talk about the Habit Finder assessment. I will link to that in the podcast notes. Those of you who wish to see what unconscious patterns are running inside your head that you're completely unaware of, but that drive your life, are welcome to take that. Just go to my website at https://natewalkercoaching.com and click the Habit Finder link.
When I'm coaching somebody through the results of a Habit Finder assessment, we run across one that shows up pretty often. And it's comparison. I'm going to read you a little tiny bit of this just so you get an idea of what we're talking about.
"Should you choose to surrender to this habit of thinking you might engage in the comparison game, comparing your very worst against someone's very best, and beating yourself up for not stacking up, creating unrealistic standards for self-acceptance. If you listen and engage, your thoughts will question your ability, have concerns about your appearances, doubt your competency, and or downplay your accomplishments. This sabotaging habit of thinking can leave you feeling discouraged, resentful, and even jealous."
That's bad. Here's worse. The problem with comparison is that the most harmful, most dangerous, and most common one is not comparing ourselves to others. It's comparing our view of what life should be, or what we should be, to what we think we are not. Comparing oneself to oneself.
If things haven't turned out the way you hoped, you may question everything. You may question your choices, your ability, your own worth, your own value. You may question whether or not there is a God. You may question your philosophies, and your relationships. You may be tempted to blame your lack of success, or your failure in one area or another, on someone else. You may damage your relationships, fear of the future, regret the past, or carry around a heavy weight of negative emotion.
When you compare yourself to what you thought you might be, and those comparisons are done in the area of your own worth and worthiness, you are on thin ice. You're at the lip of the volcano, looking down into the abyss, from whence flows molten rock, fire, and pain.
Comparing you to you is something about which you must be very, very careful.
You are valuable because you exist. You are not perfect, nor are you expected to be so. Carrying around the pain of regret or guilt for years and years and years does not help you overcome pain, regret, or guilt. Failing to forgive yourself will never make you feel the way you wish to feel.
Do you remember the story in the Bible of Jesus talking about people who served him and said, "I was enhungered and you gave me meat, thirsty and you gave me drink. I was in prison and you came unto me, naked and you clothed me." And the people said, "Master, when saw we thee enhungered and gave thee meat, or thirsty and gave thee drink, or naked and clothed thee, or in prison and came unto thee?" And he said, "Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, you have done it unto me."
if you wish to compare yourself to anything, compare what you are today to what you have chosen to become tomorrow. Then on the morrow, look back. How am I doing today compared to yesterday? Have I done a little more good? Have I served someone? Have I paid a little more attention to my physical health? Have I done anything to strengthen my body or my mind or my spirit? Have I showed kindness or done anything good? And then celebrate every single one. In the areas where you feel you have fallen short, say, "I didn't do well in that. I'll be a little more aware of that tomorrow." And then you move forward.
In your personal comparison game, you might consider comparing only your best with your other best. "This was the best I could do today." Now, you might wish to argue, no, I probably could have done better, but you didn't. If you didn't do better, then this was the best you could do today, all things considered. And then tomorrow, say, that was the best I could do yesterday. Today I did a little better. You don't have to be one person good at every single thing, and good for every single task. You don't need to be made of the finest steel, have the finest handle, the most beautiful artwork on the outside, the best appearance or the finest handling.
You just need to be an increasingly better version of you. Not somebody you saw online. Not someone you admire and continually compare to, and find yourself falling short. None of those. You compare the perfect and only version of you, the one that exists right now, to the increasingly perfect and increasingly better version of you. The one that you can choose to become tomorrow.
Then celebrate all of the good. Ignore those things that are in the past that you cannot change. Live right now. Going back won't fix it. Going so far forward that you think the future can be something you can only imagine, but with no actual effort toward it; that doesn't help you. Deal with now, today, and tomorrow. Those are the ones that you can influence most effectively. Become the knife in the hand of the master carpenter. That's the one that will make you happy.
We'll talk again soon.