How do you handle fitness comparison?

Welcome to walking as fitness.

This is a podcast of action, providing a little extra motivation to help you keep that

fitness promise you made to yourself.

Hi, I'm Dave. I've been walking for fitness since 2013,

averaging about 21,000 steps a day. I'm walking right now and would love to have you join me

for the next 10 minutes. Recently saw a post on Facebook from someone named Carrie. I don't know her.

I don't know the particulars about her fitness journey other than she walks. She's made a commitment to walking. She's making progress.

It's hard, but she keeps at it. And recently, someone said something to her, not intentionally to discourage her, but it was more

along the lines of an offhanded comparison. Carrie had recently reached a milestone, a personal

record. And for someone else, what Carrie was doing was something that was like easy.

And in an offhand way, mentioned that and it really was discouraging for Carrie.

Fitness comparison is dangerous. In fact, any kind of comparison can be hugely discouraging. For example,

and this is where I'm going to be honest here, this is where I'm prone to this and where I can

feel quite a bit of discouragement as I approach retirement and I'm drawn to articles in the media

about retirement and particularly the profiles of people who either have retired or are approaching

retirement and you know they kind of give an overview of how much they've saved and

invested and that sort of thing. And it's so easy for me to look at their numbers and then look

at my numbers and feel super discouraged, particularly because they're

younger than me.

Like what?

What?

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