Hello, how are you doing? I am starting to feel pretty excited because myself an M along with our bestie head off to Brazil, Sia Paolo, to be exact, in a few days time for another one of our besties weddings. So yes I am

feeling super excited next week's episode is already recorded in fact that leads me very nicely into what I am talking about today, which is a two-part.

So, although some would say that Tis the season to be jolly for others they might say tis the season to be anxious chal-lala- is because I always look at this period of time as yes there can be a lot of fun and festivity and reminiscing but a lot of people do

reflect a lot of people I feel I think stress about upcoming arrangements and spending time with people who, yes they may love,

maybe they don't necessarily get along with that well, but also I think that a lot of what is behind our anxiety is

comparison. So for instance if we stress about spending time with our family

and we give ourselves a hard time about

them or we stress about the fact that we don't enjoy this time as much or we stress

about the fact that we are in a relationship but we're not in the

one that we want to be in, or we stress about the fact that we are not happy in our

career in some way or just basically some aspect of our life, it is because

we are comparing and that is the subject of the next couple of episodes.

And to kick this off, I want to confess something.

I quietly compared myself to somebody quite a bit over the summer.

And the quick version of this is that remember how you'll remember if you are a fairly long time

listener how I went through that whole book proposal saga and it all kind of came to

a head at the beginning of February. I talked about it in the episode about I failed and I'm okay.

So after all that, you know, it was basically sort of life goes on type of thing, and of course there's a whole

grieving process with that. But it got to a few months down the line and I was feeling in a pretty good place and

do my own thing. I had several friends who in the space of about a week had books coming out.

Some had had books out before and I was pretty happy for them, I shared it it around there was a little part of me I wouldn't say it felt away but it was like oh this could have been you and then it was like whatever I'm moving. But then in the midst of all of this, somebody else I know

had their book come out. And this person is somebody that I was compared to a lot as a child.

...