I was driving through Leek on the way to visit family the other week.
And I stopped to get some fuel (and, as I often do, I got a drink while I was there because I kid myself it’s free as you may do too and I’ll explore tomorrow).
Petrol was only 137.9 pence per litre and diesel 143.9p.
I sent my wife a photo of the pump display.
“Leek fuel is cheap :)” I said.
Of course, prior to last year it had never been that expensive before.
When it rocketed up to nearly £2 between March and July.
137.9 only feels cheap by comparison to then (and to Macclesfield fuel which always seems to be more).
And how we feel about many things is more influenced by comparison than we realise.
It’s what’s called a “comparison frame”.
And we’re very good at them.
Our mind is making comparisons all day everyday.
Comparing the information that’s coming into it to what it seen and experienced before.
If we had to judge every single bit of information coming in with no frame of reference, then we wouldn’t be able to do a tiny fraction of what we do achieve.
What we perhaps don’t realise though, is we can be selective of our comparison frames.
We can realise that the ones were using now don’t serve us as well as they could.
And we can choose to try different ones on for size.
We might go back to the old ones, sure.
But we might like the new ones better.
We might stop comparing our normal days to the best days we’ve ever had, which sets us up to feel they’re far worse than they probably were.
We might become more selective with who we compare ourselves to and in what ways (remembering that “never compare yourself to anyone” probably isn’t going to happen and will lead to us making default comparisons).
Making tactical comparisons with those who we perceive to be similar to us, who have achieved goals we desire with similar challenges along the way.
We might stop comparing or “behind the scenes” with everyone else’s social media curated highlight reel.
We might stop comparing our lives with the publicly available view of a celebrity’s life……..
And perhaps compare to what life was like a generation or 100 years ago for most people.
Maybe stop comparing how much we have fitted in on our most productive day ever with how much we could realistically fit in today.
We make comparisons all day everyday.
Stopping that isn’t going to happen.
We can come up perhaps, just become more skilful in the comparison frame that we choose.
Much love,
Jon ‘<, >, <= and >=’ Hall
P.S. The day after tomorrow I’m going to help you challenge a commonly held misconception that “fuel has been getting more expensive for decades”.
P.P.S. I’ve got a comparison to make for you. Click www.myrise.co.uk/apply and changing your life on our programme. Or not and not.
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RISE in Macclesfield was established in 2012 and specialise in Group Personal Training weight loss programmes for those that don’t like the gym and find diets boring and restrictive!
