The Thief of Your Joy

When President Teddy Roosevelt said, “Comparison is the thief of joy,” I doubt he was thinking specifically of you, the sports parent, but he probably could’ve been. That word of warning applies to any area of life, but you might find yourself fighting this battle, especially in the bleachers, more than you should or maybe even more than you realize. Today I want to encourage you to see clearly how dangerous a life of comparison can be for a sports parent, and to challenge you to focus your attention instead on what really matters.

Helping your child become a champion athlete means helping them reach their full potential – helping them become the very best version of themselves they can be. If that’s your purpose here, then who they are compared to someone else becomes much less relevant and much less important. You’ve got plenty to worry about without bringing anyone else into the equation. In reality, helping your child become their best is a long, slow, challenging process of teaching, training, and cultivating what they need to become their best. Some of what they need they may not possess at this point; some they may have but need more time and experience to fully develop. This is not quick, easy, or painless work we're talking about. It takes time for your child to try, to fail, to struggle, to learn, and to improve. But if you want them to reach their full potential, that’s the only way it can happen.

The problem with comparison is that when we focus on comparing our kid to others (less important), it takes our focus off helping him or her get better (more important). Roosevelt said comparison is the thief of joy, but comparison can also be the thief of growth and development and improvement, too. And without those things in the center of your focus as a sports parent, you can kiss your child’s full potential goodbye.

There are two ways you can spend time comparing your child – when they're better than others and when they're worse than others. Let’s look for a minute at how each can be detrimental to raising a champion:

If your child is a skilled, talented athlete – if they're better than those around them, you might enjoy the opportunity to compare. Why? Because it's fun to be better than everyone else! But if you look around and see your child's above the rest, then you face a unique challenge. It's a challenge most sports parents probably think they’d love to face, but it's a challenge nonetheless.

We’ve defined a champion athlete as one who’s reached their full potential. As a parent, that’s your objective – to help them become their very best. But when your child is better than others, that objective can easily get distorted. It’s not hard for either of you to focus less on being the best they can be and focus more on just being better than everyone else.

For example, if the goal is for your child to do their best, it will require them to give 100%. But if the goal is just to be better than everyone else, then they'll likely only give what’s necessary. That’s just human nature. If it only takes, let's say, 70% for them to be better than everyone else, then that’s likely what they’ll give. Mission accomplished, goal achieved, objective met.

But when you and your child train yourselves to think this way, you’re headed for trouble. As the Navy Seals say, in the big moments your child won’t rise to the occasion; they’ll sink to the level of their training. Someday soon real success will require their very best, but train long enough at 70%, get comfortable and used to accepting that standard, and 70% may well become their new best. Instead of preparing for success in the bigger challenges to come, they've prepared themselves instead for failure when it really matters. Comparing may feel good today, but you’re setting yourselves up for disappointment tomorrow.

If your child isn’t the most skilled or talented athlete, then your struggle with comparison probably looks different. You might occasionally find yourself feeling some tiny, secret envy over another player’s talent or ability level, or making judgments about what your child is or isn’t, compared to someone else. If this is you, then you’ve got to re-connect with the truth about raising a champion: it’s a long process. No matter how old or how talented your child is, they can still get better. And as we said earlier, the more time you spend comparing or envying or judging, the less time you spend focused on helping them improve.

Sure, there may be other athletes better than them today. And who knows, maybe they always will be. But if you're a champion sports parent, one committed to the process of growth and development, you might be surprised by how much better your child can get, and how much fun that improvement can be – regardless of who else is around.

Don’t let comparison steal your joy, your perspective, or your purpose today. No matter how talented your child is or how talented those around are, make who your kid’s becoming your most important priority. If you feel the need to compare, try comparing who they are today to who they were yesterday. If recognize a change for the better, then you deserve to be excited. And if you’ve been intentional about helping them grow and develop, then you probably deserve the credit for making it happen.