S3E26: Self-comparison week: Think similar, but different

Full transcript:

Good morning and happy Monday! You are listening to the Language Confidence Project, the daily dose of language courage for those who love languages and those who really don’t, but have to learn one anyway. And every day this week, we are going to be talking about a topic that I know looms large for so many of us, and that is, self-comparison.

So one of the things that comes up a lot in my work is the question of how to deal with the problem of comparison, and I’ve found that actually, it’s surprisingly hard to find really good advice about it. If you google that you’re struggling with self comparison, one of the biggest problems with the results that come up is that a lot of the advice is actually about general comparison, you know, scrolling through social media and seeing one person who’s on holiday in a beautiful city, one person who’s just got engaged, someone’s bought a house, someone’s celebrating their promotion, and endless examples of people who you think are more beautiful, more fashionable, wealthier, luckier or more successful than you are. And the advice there is to unplug from all of that. Get off the social media or unfollow the accounts that make us feel inferior. Other people are coming back by labouring the uselessness of comparison, say that we need to recognise that it’s bad for us and it’s unproductive and to well, basically, we should just stop doing it. And other people are telling us that if we were 100% dedicated and passionate about our own goals, we’d have no time to spend on comparisons.

But I’m not sure much of that really applies to language learning. The thing is, as language learners, our comparisons aren’t just, whatever random good things are happening in people’s lives, whether they’re the same dreams we are also chasing or not. They’re specific. And when self-comparison and personal development overlap, it’s really easy to tell ourselves that we’re doing comparison because the secret to our success, the thing standing between us and our goals, is whatever it is that this person knows that we don’t. The thing we’ve all heard that says we’re all on our own journey and we should keep our eyes on our own lane, well, we can very quickly counter that by telling ourselves that we are learning from these people because that’s how we can be who we want. The road might be a bit different, but the destination is very similar and they look like they know the shortcuts.

So, what are we supposed to do? And again, this is just a conversation that I’m starting, with myself and with you, and hopefully over the next few years it will evolve with us. But this week, I’m going to be talking about five different ways to help us to be in the language learning circles, to mix with the people and engage with the content, without the Self Comparison Goblin rearing its ugly head and throwing you off course.  

And to kick off this week, I want to share some really simple advice for if you need motivation, and you need inspiration, but you don’t need the dose of self-comparison that goes with it.

And that is, think similar, but different.

Take your inspiration from people on similar but different journeys.

If you need help with motivation and discipline and habit setting, look to the people training for marathons. Look to the people studying for medical and law exams. Follow some personal trainers. Whatever it is that feels close enough to resonate with you and your current difficulties, but far enough away from what you are trying to achieve that it’s not just going to wake up that voice that says “but you should be doing that too!” or trigger you into feeling guilty rather than inspired. 

If you need help with general language learning concepts and methods, look to people studying another language than you. Maybe look to people doing memory training or revision tips.

As I mentioned before in S2E13 of the Language Confidence Project podcast in September, if you need help with the intermediate plateau of language learning, look up writer’s block. Look up the concept of the messy middle in the creative industries and entrepreneurship.

And if you want content to help you deal with uncertainty, deal with being on a long road where you don’t really know where you’re going or what you’re doing, look up the quarter-life crisis, it doesn’t matter how old you are. Look up the experiences of people working towards making it as artists or building unconventional lives for themselves. 

Do you know how much I’ve learnt on a YouTube channel called Film Courage during the time I was rebuilding my life? It’s a channel aimed at screenwriters and documentary producers. I’ve never thought about filmmaking. Years of watching it, and I’m still not thinking about filmmaking. But we all know that the film industry, for the vast majority of people trying to enter it, is a long road, it’s an uncertain road and it’s a road that requires a lot of sacrifice and slow rewards, so it needs you to find joy along the way, sit with the doubt and to find that balance between living and waiting, and it is so full of wisdom to help you do that.

So if there is one takeway from this episode, it’s think similar but different.

The wisdom that shines through is often so helpful, and so applicable to your own road even if the goals look completely different from the outside. Sometimes, the wisdom comes easier when it comes from people who don’t feel like your competitors, whether they are actually your competitors or not.

So if the language learning circles are too much right now, look at your language problem and think “who else might be struggling with this?” And then go and find those people, find those communities, find that advice and support. As counterintuitive as it sounds, sometimes moving our of your sphere is the best way to feel less alone. And it's amazing how often the key to solving your language problems lies outside of the language learning sphere at all. And then, you can bring all that wisdom from your language learning journey and pour it into other aspects of your life.

Good luck today, language learners. I know the road is long, but you can do this. You are doing this, and as much as you look up to other people, there will be other people looking up to you and wishing they were where you are in your language learning.

And before I go, just a reminder that the doors are open for my 100 Conversations project, where I would love to speak to 100 listeners of the Language Confidence Project, to meet you, to hear about how your language journey is going, and to find out what carving your own path means to you. It’s a really informal 30 minute Skype chat over tea or coffee or whatever beverage you should like to bring, it’s completely free, nobody’s going to try and sell you anything, it really is just a chat, where we can just hang out and chat about languages. If you would like to book a call, I have a Calendly link in the shownotes, and it’s also in my Instagram bio at @teawithemily.