hello my name is Gary Shotton and I’m going to talk today about comparisons and sometimes we get stuck in a rut of always comparing ourselves to other people other situations well I can just start off with this to say how dangerous that is and we’ve all done that we’ve all worked at some point in our lives if we’re being honest about it that we’re not getting ahead like we thought we were our business is not going as well as we thought it was and our could be and work start comparing ourselves with other people and where we think we should be in comparison with those people I’m telling you that’s a dangerous thing to do I have a very fortunate situation of being raised on a farm and ranch my dad was who’s been deceased many years now but I draw on his examples for me many many times all of my life I’m thinking about how would dad do it how did dad do this and it wasn’t in these fields of business on I am but it just in the way handled his life and the way he handled his business to give you an idea dad was an entrepreneur he started back in the late 40s moved to the plains of Colorado USA when there’s just hardly anybody out there and it’s very dry and arid ground it’s not ground that would raise a lot of good crops like other parts of the United States it’s marginal because it’s dry and he started from scratch I mean absolutely nothing and found somebody that let him would he didn’t have money for equipment and this person wanted his land farm so dad started by using that person’s equipment first in order to do what we call a sharecropping where would only get 50% of the cash crop because he didn’t own the equipment after dad was able to buy the equipment he got 2/3 of the cash crop so this is the far end of the spectrum he has no paycheck he has no paycheck no weekly paycheck he’s dependent upon managing his money making sure he has money for fuel a nice family and everything he needs in order to raise a crop and then sell that crop and then do it again and in the cattle in the same business same way he didn’t have a tons of money had to borrow some money for cattle and and that was his business but I will tell you that he was not moved by comparison with other people I just watched it several times over I will tell you other people compare themselves with my dad because he kind of came into an area where he was the newcomer and he wasn’t trying to show off but he started getting more and more land growing acquiring more lease ground buying some ground eventually and and I won’t say that people were jealous but they would watch him more than he would watch them here’s what I mean by some things you do in secret inside a building or inside a house inside your shop guess what when Dad starts to plant wheat or plow his ground he everyone can see that everyone can see it because the tractor is very open very visual the neighbors can see who’s planting or who’s plowing the field dad didn’t he many times he’s a welder clown but I’m not going yet or because it was enough moisture or he would start doing something and and nobody else is doing he didn’t watch other people and try to be in comparison with him to my knowledge now when I got to college got out of college go to my first first job I didn’t try to compare myself oh yeah there was always some thoughts of that but you know I’m doing the best I can you know in a work environment you’ve got to do what you can do within the scope that you have and leave your eyes off of others in most cases you can learn from them you can be astute to see what they’re doing a positive way but not in a negative way that I’m always stuck in the rut of comparison it will cause you to make poor choices I think because you will step out beyond you see that you don’t know what they’re where they’re at in this process always you don’t know how they’re financed how they’re backed up you know you don’t know a lot of things when you hear or see just a news report on it of course you’re going to be aware of it if there’s something negative come off the news that happen we had a situation in the 80s where certain industry owning they say the industry was publicly traded in the stock market and this one industry was just way above the other people in a similar industry and a similar competitive industry approached their CEO this is big corporate information and since they were not matching or equaling the return on the investment of let’s call it corporation a the CEO of corporation B was fired that happens guess what coaches in in almost any sport and colleagues for sure if you don’t win you will get fired so there is some comparison you’ve got to be good at your job but they were comparing Corporation B which did not have such good return on their investment to corporation a what a redemptive action happened when about eighteen months later it was revealed with a serious issue because the one that had the higher returns was basically cooking the books they were adjusting the financials making it look better than it was they were cheating they were lying they were they were misleading people that those people went to jail one guy lost his job because the corporation compared him to that corporation the other guy went to jail because you can’t do that with other people’s money see that comparison can get you in trouble you can work on your brain it can work on your ass you’ve got to clear yourself of those thoughts and say hey listen with what I have before me want to continually learn with God’s help I’m going to take advantage of the situations that he presents in my path I’m going to be the most diligent I’m not going to work be a workaholic so I lose my family I’m not saying that I’m going to take time off for God on the week on Sundays for sure I’m going to take time out of my budget to tithe and give to God’s work out of my personal household budget but I’m going to get ahead because I’m consistently following a path of step by step by step and not always comparing myself and worrying about what somebody else is doing it’ll ill just eat you up it’s not worth it let me tell you it’s not worth it well I hope these are helpful I hope you enjoy these I hope you would share them with others and just thank you for being a part of marketplace talks thank you