Today I was driving through the mist of morning and listening to The One Thing Podcast with Jay Papasan when Jay made a casual comment that became my most important takeaway. It came in response to a hypothetical question of who were you two years ago?

He and guest Courtney Johnson were focusing on Career Cheat Codes and touched briefly on not comparing ourselves to others. Instead, compare ourselves only to who we were a year ago or two years ago.

[Who were you two years ago?]

[Hmmm. We moved to Texas two years ago. I started my business Great Family Legacies two years ago. In fact, we moved into this house on this day two years ago today.]

The windshield wipers pumped.

Jay and Courtney were reminding listeners like me that by doing this, we avoid social comparison and those menacing feelings of imposter syndrome. I’m getting to my aha.

When you asked yourself, above, who you were a year ago or two years ago, did your body make a quick assessment of your own reality? Did you sit up a little straighter feeling a sense of pride? Did you slump a little with a feeling of vague dread? Did you have a well, hell! response that requires its own novella? Or maybe your answer is it’s complicated.

Who was I two years ago?

I instinctively knew the answer.

And so did you.

For me, in some ways, I'm better than I was two years ago. In other ways, I’m not.

But here’s the part of the podcast conversation that captured my imagination, and I wanted to share it with you:

Jay said something on the order of: “Maybe we’re not in a better place than we were two years ago, but maybe we’ve weathered a storm without retreating.”

Maybe we’ve weathered a storm without retreating.

And that’s something.

This nuanced way of looking at this question is, to me, a vision of grit meeting grace.

May your grit meet your grace today.

And thank you, Jay and Courtney.