Growing Forward · Letter No. 7 · October 2026← All letters

Comparison Is the Thief of Joy

It is easy, as a man, to compare yourself to another man. What job does he have? What car does he drive? How much hair does he still have? How fit is he? Where does he live? How much does he make? But here is the good news: none of that actually matters. But try telling that to yourself at two in the morning, or scrolling, watching someone else's highlight reel.

I want to share a little more of my story with you, taking you back to when I was 17. I got kicked out of high school and ended up at a continuation school. I eventually graduated and started community college. Somewhere in there I met the girl of my dreams, and we had a son when I was 19. By 23, I had run up so much credit card debt that I filed for bankruptcy. I had also dropped out of college, because I could not balance work, a family, and school all at once. By any normal measure, most people looking at my life at 23 would have said the same thing. High school dropout. Bankruptcy. A kid at 19. He is failing.

Around that same time, I remember watching people I knew head off to Ivy League schools, and I felt like a complete failure in comparison. I could not see anything past that moment. I only saw what I did not have.

Fast forward to today. I am an executive at a healthcare company, living a life that feels successful and balanced. I have two college degrees. If you met me on the street, you would never guess any of what I just told you. The comparison I carried at 19 does not even matter anymore. It never actually mattered. I just could not see that yet.

Here is what I have learned since then. The quality of your life is built on the decisions you make today. You might not see the impact of a good decision today, or even this year. But if you keep making good decisions, one after another, eventually you will. I did not always believe that. But it has held up every single time.

Look at the men who built something lasting. Colonel Sanders was turned down over a thousand times before anyone said yes to his chicken (KFC), and he was 65 years old when he finally started franchising it, the age most men are thinking about retiring, not starting over. Sam Walton opened his first Walmart at 44, but by then he had already spent almost twenty years running small variety stores, learning retail from the ground up, long before anyone knew his name. Neither man was behind. They were building something with purpose, at their own pace, long before the world caught up to them.

Here is how this shows up for you today. Are you worried about your next career move? Worried about a promotion that has not come yet? Worried about retiring, or affording the life you want? Worried about paying for your kids' college? Worried about affording a vacation? Stop worrying. Worrying does not do a damn bit of good. All it does is stress you out and make you believe you are not enough.

Think about how many men have come and gone before you, carrying that same exact worry. Ask yourself what it actually did for them. Did it change the outcome? Did it make them feel any better? Does comparing yourself to someone else ever make you feel any better? If it is working for you, I want to know, because for me, it never has.

Have a little faith that it will work out. Just for fun, when you were 10, did you know where your life would take you at 20? Or when you were 20, did you know where you would be today? My guess is probably not, yet somehow, someway, you are still here, standing today. And that is not an accident. The better way is to get clear on what actually matters to you, and build your life on that, on your own principles, not someone else's scoreboard. Then, each day you live in line with those principles, you will know you are doing it right. Not because you kept pace with the man next to you, but because you stayed true to your own.

I'd love to hear from you. If this stirred something up, hit reply and tell me about it.

Jonathan Worrall