Chasing After the Wind: When Comparison Creeps Into Our Work
There’s a quiet pressure that many practice owners carry, often unspoken, but deeply felt.
It’s the pressure to measure up.
Before you continue reading, I want you to ask yourself what areas of your life and in your business are you easily prone to comparison?
Sit with that. Ponder on it. Let’s begin.
The Urgency To Be Seen As More
In Day 25 of The Practice of Becoming, I share a moment from a conference that captures this tension perfectly. A speaker referenced a practice owner’s revenue as six figures. From the back of the room, the owner corrected them loudly: “No, it’s a seven-figure practice.”
That correction lingered. So much so that even when the room wasn’t quiet, those words echoed like a never-ending corridor.
Not because success is wrong, but because of what it revealed. The urgency to be seen as more. The need for the number to be right, publicly, immediately. The subtle belief that revenue defines worth.
Scripture doesn’t mince words here:
“All toil and all achievement spring from one person’s envy of another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”
— Ecclesiastes 4:4
Comparison Leads To Tiredness
As entrepreneurs, and even more so as faith-based practice owners, we are not immune to comparison. Money becomes shorthand for value. Growth becomes proof of goodness. Success becomes identity.
And yet, it leaves us exhausted. Since when did the very things that we consider trophies become a weight rather than a reward?
It almost reminds me of when the Israelites built the golden calf in the wilderness while they were waiting for Moses to come down from the mountain with God. The very thing they built, God revealed to them that it was simply worthless. The very thing they bowed down to just moments before was then realized as a big hunk of nothing. Their toiling after this thing was for nothing.
Vanity never satisfies. The momentary boost we feel when we compare ourselves favorably quickly fades, sending us back into the race, chasing the next achievement, the next upgrade, the next reason to feel secure.
No wonder so many business owners are tired. The way many of us are operating is not in God’s design.
Lent gently interrupts this cycle. It asks us to slow down and examine our hearts:
Where am I comparing myself to others to feel better?
Where am I sharing “wins” to serve, and where might I be sharing to shine?
Am I trusting God to provide, or am I trying to prove my worth through numbers?
Lent: A New Way Of Doing Things
My new book, The Practice of Becoming, is a Lent devotional written for practice owners who want to step out of the rat race and into something truer. It’s for those who desire to walk with God through growth, struggle, surrender, and healing. It’s not about getting it right. It’s about becoming.
This season, may we stop chasing the wind and learn the quiet freedom of contentment, rooted not in revenue but in God’s faithful provision.
If this reflection speaks to you, you can explore the full devotional and walk through Lent alongside other practice owners (including me), who are choosing presence over perfection.
You’re allowed to rest. We are all allowed to rest. Rest in the fact that God is leading you somewhere that you may not fully understand right now, but are willing to hear what He has to say about it.
