Do You Suffer from Comparisonitis?

I was talking to my new friend Emily Hay the other day, and I was telling her how impressed I was with the videos she produces for her blog. I said something along the lines of “I’m hoping to start publishing some fun videos for my site, as well. Hope they are half as good as yours! You nail it every time.” Emily jumped in right away and said something like, “Oh, don’t get caught up in comparisonitis. That’s a dangerous habit. and we all do it!”

And she was right.  I was still healing from a from a serious bout of comparisonitis, and should have remembered the early warning signs.

When I was building my website, I spent hours scouring the web, picking out things I liked; reading blogs and “about us” pages from competitors. I jotted down all the things I thought I wanted for my own site. A fun plugin. A color scheme that I thought would fit. I dissected close to 50 websites by the time I was through–eventually having to STOP researching and start building something.

I wanted my websites to look like ME, to sound like ME, and yet I spent hours and hours looking at what everyone else was doing. The strain of comparisonitis that I was suffering from was so bad that even when my new site was done and ready to be launched to the world, I picked at it a little more. Clicking back and forth to those “other” sites, I found myself removing this or that, adding in something new. At one point in the process, I deleted all the content and started over. I labored over every single thing, focusing on the  all the blemishes I saw when I compared it to the “others.”

The header banner was too big. My photo looked dorky. My bio sucked. My design was mediocre, at best. Perhaps I should just start over?

Comparisonitis was crippling me, inhibiting me from moving forward with my business. I was focused on what I thought I wasn’t, and I knew I couldn’t live in that place if I was going to be productive. I couldn’t afford to have those conversations happening inside my head. If I wanted to stand out in the crowd, I needed to take a step back to my original plan. Just be me.

“Comparisonitis is a momentary choice where we are forgetting who we are,” says Jonathan Budd in this recent video post.

So how are you doing with that in your business? Are you spending too much time comparing yourself to your competitor? Trying to be something you’re not, instead of focusing on your strengths?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this terrible illness. Surely I’m not the only one who’s suffered from it?