Stop Comparison from Killing Your Joy with Rob Stubbs
Stop Comparison from Killing Your Joy with Rob Stubbs
Rob helps ambitious leaders and business owners to stop spinning their wheels and unlock the clarity, confidence, and direction they need to create meaningful impact. With a background in leadership, strategy, and transformation in well-known companies, he blends deep strategic expertise with a heart-led, practical approach—helping people reconnect with their purpose and move forward with bold, aligned action. Follow him on Linkedin. Unlock your path to purposeful impact through this 10-minute assessment.
Comparison is one of the biggest joy killers at work. We look at others’ success, promotions, or achievements and suddenly, our own progress feels small. But what if we stopped letting comparison hold us back and instead, used it as a tool for growth?
In this episode, I sit down with Rob Stubbs, founder of Sparked Ambition, to break down the four biggest ways we fall into unhelpful comparison traps—from measuring ourselves against someone’s highlight reel to assuming success happens overnight. Rob shares how to reframe comparison into action, so we can shift from frustration to focus and move forward in our own careers with confidence.
Key Takeaways from This Episode:
✔ The four most common types of comparison—and why they’re so misleading
✔ How comparison creates self-doubt, fear-based decisions, and misaligned goals
✔ Why eliminating comparison isn’t the answer—but changing how we respond to it is
✔ Three powerful ways to reframe comparison and use it to fuel progress
✔ How to stop measuring yourself against others and focus on your own growth
Action Steps to Break the Comparison Cycle:
1️⃣ Build awareness—notice when and why comparison happens (social media, work colleagues, etc.).
2️⃣ Unpack what it’s telling you—is it envy, admiration, self-doubt? What can you learn from it?
3️⃣ Turn it into action—set a goal based on what you want, not what someone else is doing.
4️⃣ Compare yourself to your past self, not others—track your own progress and growth.
Comparison doesn’t have to derail you. With self-awareness and action, it can be a tool for clarity, motivation, and personal success.
If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment. It's a 30-minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you down. I call it Derailed and it's a fabulous place to begin a joy-at-work redesign.
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Stop Comparison from Killing Your Joy with Rob Stubbs
[00:00:00] Why Comparison Steals Your Joy
Lucia Knight: Comparison is an evil thief of joy at work. But because all the nastiness of comparison happens inside our heads, it doesn't get much airspace. And that's why when I heard our next guest, Rob Stubbs, speak so powerfully about the dangers of comparison at work, I knew I had to hear more. And I wasn't disappointed.
Rob is the founder of Sparked Ambition and in this episode we unpack the different types of comparison and explore how unfairly measuring ourselves against others can leave us stuck, not moving, not changing, just comparing. And Rob also shares a fresh way to reframe comparison, turning it from a joy killer into a tool for action.
Let's dive in.
Rob, types of comparison do you see in your daily work?
[00:01:01] The Four Types of Unhelpful Comparison
Rob Stubb: We've all seen haven't we? We're working hard. We're making progress and then you see someone land the promotion or announce a success and suddenly your own achievements start to feel like they're not enough. And that's comparison.
I think comparison's everywhere. It's a natural human tendency, but I think all too often it's unhelpful for us.
The common patterns I see first one is success theater. So we compare someone else's highlight reels to our behind the scenes, but it's a distorted reality. We're not seeing their setbacks. We're not seeing the doubts or the challenges, all the stuff that they're going through.
And it makes it easy for us to feel like we're falling behind. Even though we're actually making really good progress.
The second one is timeline compression. So we see other success and we assume it's happened overnight. And we ignore all the years of work that's gone into it, right?
And we just go, ah, wow, that's happened for them. And it causes us to reframe our own milestones. So we start thinking, oh, I should be further ahead. I'm not going fast enough. And it pushes us into that kind of impatience or even makes us question our own path.
The third one, and I've done this myself it's composite comparison. So we take all those seemingly best bits of other people and their journeys and we combine them into this unreal, impossible standard for us to live by. We've all had the advice to go look and learn from people that we admire, and it can be really helpful advice, but not if we take all those bits and we create an impossible measure that we're just never going to live up to.
And then the fourth one is my favorite, right? It's the seemingly aspirational comparison. This is the sneaky one. So we all know we shouldn't compare. But we do it anyway, and then we disguise it and we justify to ourselves and go, Oh, it's inspiration. We convince ourselves it's helpful, but underneath we're still measuring ourselves against others. It's still unhelpful and it's still derailing us.
And so at the heart of all those, we've got a lack of context, right? We know our full story, but we were only seeing fragments of what others are doing. Then we apply that selective and bias focus. It goes through all of our filters and our beliefs and our assumptions, and then we don't do anything constrictive with it at the end.
And that's what causes comparison, I think, to do more harm than good when we get stuck in that cycle.
Lucia Knight: Oh My God, I think I've lived all of those, Rob.
Tell me more about why does comparison keep us stuck?
[00:03:27] How Comparison Keeps You Stuck in Self-Doubt
Rob Stubb:
I think ultimately comparison creates resistance. It's slowing us down. It blocks that progress and it starts to widen the gap between where we are and where we know we should be. And the specifics are quite individual, but I think there are some common symptoms that we see. So the first is it starts to affect our mindset.
Rob Stubb: We start to doubt ourselves. We start to think I should be further along. I'm not doing enough. I'm not as good as them. And that second guessing means we don't move forward with intent and the more we let it in, the more it slows us down and it confuses us and it saps our energy.
Lucia Knight: Yeah.
Rob Stubb: The other thing it starts to do is we start to operate through fear based decision making.
So when comparison is dictating our actions, we start playing safe. We start going, who am I to try? They're doing that great thing. I could never do that. I can't achieve that level. So we play small. We avoid risks, we shrink our ambitions, and of course that annoys us and it frustrates us and it keeps us stuck.
We can start chasing the wrong things so we get that shiny object syndrome, right? So we assume somebody else's path should be our path. We start chasing the things that we assume are making them successful. But that leads to more confusion, more frustration, because we don't know. And their path and their strategy and their strengths are different to ours.
And we might even start chasing misaligned goals entirely. And we see that, and I'm sure you've seen it, with career paths. We get caught up following a path that we see others on. We don't ever actually stop and think, is this really the right thing for me? And that's when you end up going, you look back in a couple of years and go, Oh, why did I get it?
And then the other really interesting one, I think, is we start to focus on reputation management. So we start to think about how we appear rather than what we're doing, because, and I think what happens here is we're spending our time scrutinizing other people, so we assume they're scrutinizing us.
So we turn it back on ourselves. So instead of leading with intent, we become performative. We manage perceptions. We get externally focused rather than internally focused. And of course the irony of all that, as you'll know, is we focus less on the things that actually matter. And so our progress slows and we'll repeat the cycle.
So over time, if we don't break that routine, it dents our confidence, the hesitation builds up, makes it harder for us to move forward, and exactly that, our growth slows, and it puts an artificial limit on our potential.
[00:05:53] Can Comparison Ever Be Useful?
Lucia Knight: Okay. Now let me ask you this question because all of that is negative. All of that. No one wants that. And nobody deliberately decides to do that. But can comparison ever be a useful tool in bringing out a little bit more joy at work?
Rob Stubb: I think it can, and I think the question for us to ask ourselves here is what if we could shift how we think about comparison. So instead of it holding us back, we're actually using it to accelerate our growth and our joy and our purpose. And I think. You can do that, but only if we pivot it in an intentional and a constrictive way.
And look, this is deeper work. We need to understand what's really driving that comparison for us and the triggers and the fears that it's tapping into.
[00:06:42] The Three Ways to Reframe Comparison for Growth
Rob Stubb: But I think there are three ways that I can share that we can start to turn that comparison into growth. first one is shifting our perspective.
So often we need to reframe these things. So instead of feeling inadequate or jealous or demotivated, we can start to ask, what have I noticed? What is it about that success I'm seeing in someone else that's making me react? And what's that comparison maybe telling me about what I truly want?
It's giving us some clues and we've got to listen to them. The second one is we can then be a little bit more strategic about the way we use comparison. So we can really learn from those that we see are ahead of us. So instead of thinking, Oh, I can never do that. We can ask, what can I learn? What are the behaviors and skills that I see in them that I can develop to help me?
And don't do this on your own, right? Can you close that context gap by actually speaking to them? Can you actually make them an ally in what you're trying to do? Because we want to turn that observation into a tangible and practical action. And we can use that comparison productively. And then the third one, I think this is the judo move, right?
This is the flip where you turn comparison inward. And I think this is the most valuable kind of comparison. So we stop measuring against someone else and we start to think about our own progress. So you say, how have I grown compared to my past self? What have I learned? What am I grateful for today? And where am I heading next?
And why is that important to me? So we use those tools of comparison on ourself, annoying and unhelpful way, but something that's going to push us forward. Because yeah, comparison is not bad. Exactly. Comparison is not bad. It's just how we use it. So we can approach it with all those great things of self awareness and joy and compassion.
It becomes a really powerful tool rather than something that holds us back.
Silence.
Lucia Knight: Fabulous! So if someone is listening and they feel themselves stuck in this comparison loop, and not taking practical action, where can they start this week, unpicking what's going on there?
[00:08:44] How to Turn Comparison into Action
Rob Stubb: Yeah, great question. So number one is build that awareness. So start to notice when and why that comparison is showing up.
Is it triggered by a specific person that you see? Is there someone at work you're actually a little bit jealous about that you're not really owning? Is it spiraling after you're scrolling on social media and you're seeing other people's success? Or is it triggered when you get some unexpected news?
You're going along quite happily, then you spot someone else who's done and you go, oh! So if you understand when the comparison is happening, You can start to catch it earlier and you start to slow down your thinking.
At that point then, you can unpack what's happening. Because our default might be to ignore or squash down that comparison.
But it's still going to be working away in the background. It's still unhelpful. So lean into what's uncomfortable, right? You go, what am I really feeling here? Is it envy? Is it frustration? Is it admiration? Is it self doubt? And then again, what can I learn from this? Now that I understand a little bit more about what's going on. And then turn that comparison into some action. Doesn't matter how small, use it positively. Do it on your own terms. Can you use it as a driver to push you forward in a way that's going to be helpful for you? And that's back to focusing on your path and your progress.
So if you're struggling with comparison, it takes awareness and intentional action. Once you interrupt that cycle, slow down the thinking and lean into it a little bit more, you'll start to understand it and build more healthy habits and more intentional actions.
[00:10:17] Final Takeaways: Focusing on Your Own Path
Lucia Knight: We're at the end of our conversation together. Is there anything else that we've missed?
Rob Stubb: Yeah. So I think comparison isn't something to eliminate. I think we, we know that comparison isn't helpful, but it's a natural human trait. And the big difference is how we respond to that initial comparison trigger. The most successful leaders and business owners don't avoid comparison. They develop that self-awareness to catch results and ask, what can I learn?
And when we remember that our journey is uniquely ours, shaped by our purpose and our strengths and our vision. And you get clear on what you're doing and the impact you want to make. Comparison starts to lose its power a little bit because you shift from measuring yourself against others to measuring your own progress and your own potential.
And that's where the fulfillment and the joy emerges.
Lucia Knight: If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment. It's a 30 minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you down. I call it Derailed. It's a fabulous place to begin a joy at work redesign.
