Episode 47: Transcript

You are listening to episode 47 of the Path to Motherhood podcast.

Welcome to the Path to Motherhood podcast.

I'm your host and fertility life coach, Sarah Randell.

Join us each week as we walk through navigating your trying to conceive journey.

My mission is to share the skills of managing your mind, processing emotions, and living a full life to create a more authentic path to motherhood.

Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Path to Motherhood podcast, the safe space where we navigate all the challenges of the infertility journey with empathy, with strength, with support.

I'm your host, Sarah Brindel.

And today's episode is about a topic that can really, truly steal a lot of joy on this journey and affect our wellbeing.

And that is comparison.

So before I delve into the episode, I wanna again just express my gratitude.

Thank you so, so much for each and every single one of you that joined me on here.

Just knowing that you are all here listening, that you are taking the time out of your day to tune in to share this with people that you think would benefit from it, it means the world to me.

And I just wanna say thank you.

I am recording this episode at a little bit of a weird time.

I typically record these during the day when everybody's gone, but I'm recording this one in the evening, and there's a concert down the road.

So I can't hear anymore now that I have my headphones on.

I think it'll be fine, but we are closing out the end of the summer concerts here in my town, which means tonight I think is a Beatles tribute band.

We made it to a few as a family.

It's about a 30 minute walk to the park, so it's a couple miles away, and just hang out there in the park and listen to the tribute bands, and it's been fun.

So, missin' out on this one, which is fine.

I need to get some sleep, so we're gonna get this episode recorded and then I'm probably gonna head to bed.

But, like I said, today we're gonna talk about comparison.

And I just wanna say from the start of this, like these concepts, these ways of thinking about comparison are ways to strive towards, right.

This does not mean that every single day is gonna show up in this perfect, never negative thoughts and never having comparison create negative thoughts ever again.

I just want to say that off the bat.

So this is something that we can work towards.

This is something we can kind of consider as we're doing comparison in our day-to-day life, but it's not like it's the end goal where you have to be perfect and never have a negative thought again.

So let's just start off with that and be really clear about that.

But the other thing is that just know that comparison and comparing ourselves to other is an absolute human tendency that we all do, right.

Especially now in the age of social media, we are just wired, right, to compare ourselves to other and see how they're doing and how they're completing their life's mission and how they're being successful in ways and how that compares to how we're being successful in ways.

So we measure our successes, our bodies, our journeys, and often we don't even realize that we're doing this.

But what I know from talking to so many of you is this has an impact on your journey.

And so, you know, I have taken wisdom from a handful of different things, right, from my own experiences, from learning about comparison and totally other areas, which we'll talk about in a little bit with my own coach, with really thinking about this when working with each of you.

And I've And I've kind of pulled all that information together in here to kind of give us a little primer on comparison when it comes to infertility.

So one of the important things I think is really, really needed is that often when we compare ourselves to other in that painful negative way, which we'll talk about, we create a lot of what is called in the coaching world unnecessary suffering.

So what does this mean.

This just means extra pain, extra discomfort, extra uncomfortable emotions that we have to deal with that really never needed to be there in the first place.

And so I think what's really important to come back to just to start this is 150, 200%, whatever you want to say, every single person's fertility journey is uniquely and wholly 100% their own.

And expecting anything less than that is just unreasonable, right.

And so what works for one, what seems to be successful, what seems to keep someone, you know, moving along or, you know, when we have this person in front of me that is just seeming to get pregnant with ease, there is no expectation that someone else's journey should look like that.

And of course that sucks, right.

Like when you're going through infertility, when you're going through loss and you see people around you seemingly moving past you, seemingly having more success than you, seemingly having this come to them with ease when you are just tearing yourself down to get to this, it can feel awful, right.

There's this real, this TikTok going around of this person saying like, "You're telling me that other people literally get pregnant and have a baby for free," right.

Like, I can relate to that.

I've spent thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars.

Some people spend thousands of dollars and never have anything to show for it.

And so I understand why the comparison is happening.

And it's not to say that it should never happen again.

It's just to acknowledge that when we do that, we really are creating a lot of pain for ourselves.

So when we think about someone else's pregnancy announcement, their fertility treatment success, their easily growing family, it's easy to spiral out, right, into the cycle of comparison, self-judgment.

We start asking ourselves, why them.

Why not me.

Why am I broken.

And I just wanna say, again, reiterate, like it's totally normal that this is happening.

If this is happening for you, nothing has gone wrong.

It is reasonable that this is happening.

But at the same time, I acknowledge, and many of you tell me, it's not fun to do this.

We don't want to be constantly comparing and feeling miserable and judging and all of this other stuff.

So if we can cut that back, If we can tampen that down or think about comparison in a different way, then why wouldn't we.

So one of the really important things to realize is that when we are in this ugly, kind of painful comparison, again, it robs us of our present moment.

It robs us of our joy.

It really makes us not focused on ourselves.

It honestly starts to pull us away from even acknowledging any progress that we've made, the strength, the resilience that we've built along the way, I can really truly see that in my own situation when I've been really heavy in the comparison and really in a negative spiral.

And I've met with my coach and they're like, let's just pause and let's really take stock of what's happened over the last few months.

And we have like this huge whiteboard of all these wins that I've had over the last couple of months.

And I have just completely ignored them because I've been in such a negative mood about all this comparison.

So it really blinds us, it distracts us, it pulls our attention away into this 100% negative focused mindset where we really have no other interest in listening to or paying attention to what is working in our life.

And it really pulls us away or makes us forget, this is our journey, it is distinctively ours.

Everyone's path is different, number one.

And remember, every person's path is marked by their own struggles, their own victories.

Every single human's life is 50/50.

Just because we see wins in their life, just because we see things we would kill to have, things that we would give anything to have, does not mean that we know about their 50% negative, right.

I think about this so often with a friend of mine.

She has never really dealt with infertility, right.

It's not been her journey, but she has had big complications with her birth.

Big complications, serious, risky health complications that have impacted her for years to come and will continue to impact her.

Complications that really made her question if she should really even try again.

And now approaching another birth, questioning, was this the right decision.

Do I need to be worried.

What are we watching out for, right.

And so I think about her often, just because I know there were times in my journey, I know there have been times in other women's journey going through infertility where they have thought like, I wish I could be like her.

I wish I could just get pregnant.

And yeah, that's great.

But I am grateful beyond belief that I was able to have an infertility baby, rainbow baby that didn't have any complications.

And I just say that as one example, just one example in my life.

And I know someone listening is gonna say, "Yeah, sure, but you still had a baby.

She still had a baby.

I still don't have one.

" Or there's gonna be someone else who says, "Yeah, I did go through infertility.

I did go through loss.

I finally had a baby and had the complications.

" Yes, absolutely.

That's one of the things I think is so important to acknowledge is comparison can happen in this like they have what I want, they have things coming to them in a way that I wish they were coming to them, but also comparison happens within like the infertility community, right.

The person who has only had struggles for a year and a half versus the person who has had four years of struggles, the person who was able to overcome their infertility with just oral meds versus the person that had to do IUI versus the person that had to do IVF versus the person who never had success versus the person who had to have multiple surgeries versus the one who didn't.

Yes absolutely.

Every single person's story is different and going down that path of comparing and like layering up like whose story is worse than whose it's just not useful right.

Nothing about that is giving you any benefit.

All that is doing is creating more pain.

One of the areas that I really truly learned most of this work, this comparison work, was in a totally different area of life.

It was actually in business.

As I'm building this small business, comparison 150% comes up.

Thinking about like, "Look how fast she's growing her business compared to mine, right.

She seems to be doing it so easily.

Or that person over there doesn't have the struggles I have.

They started with more capital.

They were able to build it quickly because they had that capital.

Oh, she over there was already social media famous.

So she had customers before she even started, right.

Like it can be so easy to get into this comparison trap in like all areas of life.

And so when I worked with my coach, we really talked a lot about how when you do this, when you are in this comparison trap in this negative light, what typically happens, what we don't realize is when we start to think, "Oh, look at them and think bad about ourselves," right.

Look how successful their business is.

Look how beautiful she is.

"Oh, look at my business.

Look how terrible I look.

" What we don't realize is that pushes things away, that pushes success away from us.

we don't realize is that is almost like repelling what we want in the world.

And I have told you time and time again, I don't 100% believe that someone can just think themselves to a baby positively or think themselves out of a baby negatively.

I do still believe that, but there is something to say about your energy.

And if you are going about the day to day of trying to conceive thinking this is never gonna work.

I am so victim in this situation here.

Everyone else has it better than me.

Everything's wrong with me.

This isn't fair.

I'm broken.

You're gonna show up differently.

You're going to take your meds differently.

You're gonna care for yourself differently.

You're gonna be willing to put yourself out there differently than the woman who says, "Wow, look at all these people who have had kids.

Look at all these people who have navigated their infertility journeys, I'm inspired.

I'm going for it.

My story looks a little bit different, but we're gonna figure it out.

It's gonna be hard.

I'm gonna have trials and tribulations.

I'm gonna go through grief, but I'm going for it, right.

And this is what I think is so important.

This is what I truly learned in my business.

When we resent others for what they have, when I resent other businesses for what they have, we diminish our own.

But if we can instead celebrate those around us, we actually call more success into ourselves.

And so what I really did was I sat back and I thought if I've seen this play out time and time again in my business, in my body image, in my career, in my own infertility journey with my clients when I work with them on comparison, it really had me sit down and think like how does this truly apply to infertility.

And something that came up for me was a time when my coach talked about comparing ourselves to things that like really are just are a waste of our time to compare to, right.

Like I know I did this.

I have the world's straightest hair and I used to like look at others that had the most beautiful curly hair and I would just want it so badly, right.

I'd be comparing myself, which is ironic.

My sister has a bunch of body in her hair and I have absolutely none.

So of course we compared our hair.

I think that she saved me from like that comparison lasting too long because I saw the trough that she had to go through of taking care of curly hair that I just don't have to deal with.

But absolutely, there were times in my life where I'm like, "Oh, look how beautiful that curly hair is.

I wish I had that curly hair.

" Right.

Or mine, I think is probably opposite of a lot of you, but this for me was a height, right.

I'm tall.

I used to think, "Why do I have to be so tall.

I wish I could be short.

" These are things that are just a waste of our time comparing, right.

Like, we can't change those things about ourselves.

They're part of our innate self.

right.

She compared those two nature.

When you are out in a national park, when you are at a beach, wherever you like imagine where you find the most beauty out in nature.

For me that is being out on the lake, for some that's at the ocean in the mountains, wherever that is for you, when you're out in nature and you're just enjoying the beauty that is in front of you, nothing about that moment is like oh my god look at that lake is is so beautiful, I wish I was that pretty.

Right, like we don't compare nature's beauty to ourselves, but then we compare other things that we cannot apply to ourselves, like our height, like our curly hair, like, you know, oh, it's not fair that she had more success because she had so many more social media followers when she started her business.

Like why even spend time comparing that when that's just not my story.

is not my journey.

So I think about that a lot when it comes to fertility journeys.

Rather than being the person who says, "I wish I could have that.

" Rather than thinking the person of saying, "This is not fair.

" What if we could look to others and their family building story, whatever it is, and see the beauty in it.

And appreciate it.

and be proud of it and be grateful for it and not beat ourselves up about hours, right.

To appreciate the beauty that is in their journey without beating up ourselves.

So for me, what this looked like is I went and I evolved from thinking, gosh, I wish I was less behind.

I wish I could keep up with these other people in my life who are just seeming to be able to easily build these families and are on their second kid, their third kid, or, you know, et cetera, and comparing myself to, remember when I was trying for my first and everyone around me felt like they were pregnant and I had that miscarriage, oh, absolutely, comparison was painful at that time.

But over time, what I've gotten to is to a place where I see someone else pregnant, I see someone else having success on their journey, I had someone recently in my life who adopted, whatever that is, and I think, wow.

That is just amazing.

Truly, I appreciate the beauty that it is that they are building their family in the way that is right for them.

And I'm just grateful.

I'm happy for them.

Now, I know that that sounds really difficult to get to 'cause I work with so many of you on pregnancy announcements, on baby showers and all of these different things.

So I get it.

This is not something that I got to overnight but I wanna share that it's possible to get to a place where we can just appreciate.

So rather than having comparison start to diminish ourselves, we allow comparison to appreciate what's around us.

And another really, really great, useful way to use comparison is to allow it to create motivation in you.

Allow it to inspire you.

I think it's interesting 'cause jealousy gets this bad rap, right.

But I actually think it can be a fun emotion, not necessarily a painful one.

When we use jealousy to inspire us to go after our dreams, we are literally growing in the best way possible, right.

When we look to those around us and see these beautiful families and see people on the infertility journey around us and share our stories and light each other up with those stories, that can be inspiring, that can motivate us to keep going.

I see on a daily basis stories from women in IVF groups and infertility groups say, I've been at this for three years, for five years, for six years, I've had this many losses, I've tried all the things and look, look right here in my arms, it worked, it happened, it's possible.

I'm sharing this story to remind you that it's possible to inspire you to keep going.

That is a beautiful way to use comparison.

We don't have to use jealousy in the way where we want to like hold people back, right.

Like I wish I could you know keep them from having more kids until I can actually have one.

No, that's ugly, that's painful, that's discomforting.

I can admit that I've had moments of thoughts like that come up.

Totally understandable when you're in a moment of grief and you know painful place but I truly believe when we can get to this place where we believe in In possibility, we open up to this place where we can be inspired.

I always remind myself someone over here getting pregnant and having a successful pregnancy does not make my likelihood of having a baby less likely.

I actually think a lot of times I begin to believe when I see those around me, especially in the infertility world, have success.

That makes me believe more in the possibility of the future for me.

So what I do is I check in with myself.

When comparison is coming up, when I am noticing that I'm in a comparison mode, one of the big questions I ask myself is how am I feeling.

Right.

If I'm feeling less than, if I'm feeling broken, victimized, angry, anything like that, I really question, like, is this how I want to be thinking.

Is this how I want to be approaching this.

Is this how I want to be feeling.

And if not, I go to work on how I can change that.

Right.

And that for me, honestly, truthfully took working with a coach, talking through it, being honest about it.

Now, if I notice comparison is making me feel inspired, is making me feel hopeful.

I'm super happy to have that comparison around.

I love that kind of comparison.

It could inspire me to keep building my business.

It could inspire me to keep going towards our family goals, towards our financial goals, my health goals, whatever it is, right.

That kind of comparison, chefs kiss, right.

Like I would love to have that around in my life.

And is it gonna always be perfect.

Is the comparison always gonna bring these positive emotions.

No.

But if I can work towards more comparison in that direction and just shift my mindset towards thinking, "How can I look towards others to see what's possible for me.

" Rather than, "How can I look towards others to show how I'm losing.

" Then I'm always going to win.

So I hope this was helpful.

I hope that you guys can see that this is a different way of approaching and thinking about comparison but can be super, super beneficial.

And again, like I said, this takes time.

This takes work.

I would love to be there to help you do that work.

If you are interested, please, please click the link in the bio to apply for a consult call so we can talk about your unique situation.

Again, thank you for joining me on this episode.

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