Perhaps the kindest thing that has ever been said about comparisons is that they are odious. They are so much worse than that. They are dangerous. They are compelling and they are confusing. They are so, so tempting too, but at their heart, they are misleading and painful.
I was reading “The Daily Stoic”* by Ryan Holiday the other day and he quotes Marcus Aurelius on comparisons: “The Altar Of No Difference” for November 26th, to be precise (I have been catching up!).
“We are like many pellets of incense falling on the same altar. Some collapse sooner, others later, but it makes no difference.”
What Ryan says about this is insightful too, but rather than quote all of it, I’ll give you a couple of little gems.
First: “measuring ourselves against others makes acceptance difficult.” Totally. There’s always someone taller, richer, faster or “better”. If we we were in a different culture, maybe being shorter, poorer, slower or “worse” would be the desired cultural outcome. Comparisons get in the way of seeing what’s really important.
Second, I think he finishes the note with a clincher: “We have too much to do.” That gets to the heart of it, doesn’t it? Comparing doesn’t achieve anything, and takes up so much time and energy.
Time and energy are how we make money. And what we exchange money for. Time and energy are the particles that make up our life, and we waste them on comparison.
As I was thinking about this, it made me realise that this is, possibly, the single best thing about 25X, the “Freedom Formula”. And also the scariest for people learning about it. There is no comparison.
How much your boss has saved and invested isn’t relevant. How well your brother is doing doesn’t matter. You can’t look at your friends’ houses as a guide: this is all about you.
YOUR ASSETS need to be twenty five times YOUR SPENDING.
No one else is involved here.
If you want a big fancy life, you need twenty five times that much. If you want to scale back a ton, get as close as you can to zero spending, you need twenty five times that little.
You need to calculate your spending. You need to decide what your budget is. You need to include everything important – this is no time to cheat and decide you won’t ever need healthcare (you will) – but you also don’t need to include all the stuff you are still just spending on because you haven’t thought about it.
When you know what your spending is, you need twenty five times that number.
There are no comparisons here. None are relevant. This is the best thing about 25X because it’s empowering. You make your decisions, and what other people do or have shouldn’t come into it. It is also frightening, because we always (ALWAYS) look around us to see what other people are doing, to check if it is the right thing for us to do. That needs to stop. Comparisons here are not just odious, they are damaging.
YOU need 25X YOUR spending. What everyone else is doing doesn’t matter.
“But my buddy takes his holidays every year in the Bahamas…”
So? If that’s something you want to do too, factor it in. If it isn’t, it’s just something your buddy does. Forget about it.
It’s just another pellet falling on the same altar. We have too much to do.
(* “The Daily Stoic” is a fantastic book, by the way, one of my favourites, and amazingly, the only book I’ve ever received as a present twice on the same day from different people. Either my family knows me really well, or I am that predictable. Whichever it is, they clearly don’t consult!)