Comp growth. I almost rolled my own eyes just writing it. If any of you have ever worked for a consumer goods or services company, then you know that ‘comp sales is life.’ I cannot tell you how many hours I’ve spent stressing over comp sales in my professional career.
For those of you that are fortunate enough to never be sucked in to the ‘comp sales’ tornado, comps are essentially a way of measuring year over year growth. For example, if I make $20 on Tuesday, and subsequently make $22 on that same Tuesday of the following year, I have effectively achieved 10% comp sales growth. When you evaluate company growth by comp sales, every day casts it’s own benchmark for self-comparison in years to come.
Last week, I started thinking: what if I measured my own value via comp growth? I must admit, it was an intriguing proposition. For as long as I can remember, I’ve evaluated my worth against others – in particular, other women. With every woman I meet, the opportunity to ‘size myself up’ presents itself: is she prettier than me? Is she thinner than me? Does she have a better job than me? You get the idea. I cannot express to you how much time I’ve wasted comparing myself to others, stressing and imagining that their lives are better than mine and wondering how life somehow handed me the short end of the stick.
But, what if I took other women out of the equation? What if I evaluated myself solely on personal year over year growth? The thought brought me a strange sense of calmness, of clarity. It gave me a new focus. And so, in 2018, I’m targeting just this: personal comp growth. One year from today, I hope to reflect on this very moment and feel just marginally smarter, stronger, and most importantly, happier than I am today. I have to imagine that’s the only way any of us will ever feel true happiness; we must focus on bettering ourselves rather than being better than others.