227 | The Dangers of Comparison in the Culinary Industry

Welcome back to the Show Chef.

Ever find yourself scrolling through social media wondering

why you're not achieving the same accolades or recognition as others?

Does the pressure to outperform your peers leave you feeling

drained, uninspired, or inadequate?

Are you secretly worried that you'll never measure up no matter how hard you push?

In today's episode, we're gonna expose how comparison silently undermines

your confidence, creativity, and joy, and provide actionable strategies

to break you free from its grip.

We'll get to that in a whole lot more right after this message.

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leaders take control of their kitchens, build resilient teams, and create

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I'm Chef Adam Lamp, your host, leadership coach, and industry veteran.

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Welcome back.

We're talking about thriving in the kitchen and beyond.

Today we're talking about a habit that plagues way too many chefs.

Comparison.

You know what I'm talking about?

The endless measuring of our success against someone else's.

The constant pressure to be better, faster, more creative.

But here's the kicker, comparison is a thief.

It steals your confidence, your creativity, and most

importantly, your joy.

So let's break this down and talk about how to stop sabotaging

ourselves in an industry that thrives on competition thrive.

The culinary industry is built on comparison.

Every service we're judged by critics, guests, and online reviews.

Social media makes it worse, seeing perfectly plated dishes.

Michelin starred kitchens and chefs getting recognition that

we crave the competitive nature of kitchens fuels this mindset.

Someone is always younger, faster, or seemingly more successful,

but the problem is that constant comparison creates imposter syndrome.

Am I good enough?

Do I have what it takes?

It turns learning into a competition instead of a process.

It makes it impossible to celebrate our own wins because we're always looking at

someone else's and that fucking sucks.

And if you believe that story feels like shit, but is that the story?

It's one thing if you're comparing yourself to somebody that you see in the

media, but the weirdest thing is when you start comparing yourself to your

best friend, which let's face it, is an occupational hazard for over 20 years.

I compared myself to a guy who I once hired as my sous chef and as he climbed

the ranks and became a chef in his own right, a great chef, I started to watch

him from afar and compared myself to him.

Our competition went back just as far at one point, we used to send

dishes back and forth to one another in a cab for each of us to critique.

I. While the competition felt good natured, at one point, as our careers

started to diverge, I started using that as a point of comparison, trying to figure

out what he was doing, why he was getting the accolades that he was receiving,

and to judge my career against his, when in fact our lives became different.

What was important to him became different than what was important to me.

I didn't understand it so much later that those choices came with certain costs.

Was I willing to pay the same price that he did?

Then I finally understood that as long as I envied him, I wasn't spending

any time trying to make my career better or to live in my choices.

Basically comparison was a great excuse from being fully where I was, having what

I had and creating gratitude around that, which my life was, instead of constantly

hoping that it would be something else.

And once I got to this space where I could authentically celebrate his

wins as well as my own, that's when I understood what true power was.

The power to make a positive choice in my life and my career moving forward

free of comparing myself to anybody.

Who do you compete against?

Who do you compare yourself against?

Who do you silently envy wishing that their life or career was yours?

The damage comparison causes, well, first and foremost, burnout and anxiety.

You're feeling like you're always behind, creates an unsustainable work ethic.

Pushing yourself harder and harder without real purpose except to go

deeper in the grind, pedal faster, and instead of improving for the

sake of growth, you start chasing validation from those around you.

I'll be the first one to admit that validation feels good, but if that is

your motivation for anything that you're doing, except for the pure joy of the

process of being present to the magic that's happening right in front of you,

once you replace that with hoping that people are gonna acknowledge the fact

that you've been working really hard at this and giving you that validation

back then that is a bear trap your heart will never ever get out of.

Because here's the simple truth.

If you're looking for anyone, even other chefs to appreciate how much of you you

are putting into what you do, then that's a fool's errand because no one will be

able to appreciate everything that you've done in order to produce what you do.

So expecting other people to understand that and appreciate that when they don't

know is really a fool's errand and you're asking to get let down every single time.

Comparison is a creativity killer.

Constantly measuring yourself against others.

Stifles risk taking and originality.

Instead of experimenting, you worry about whether your dish is good

enough to compare with others.

You're caught in a paralysis of analysis and you never quite get on with that

which is presenting itself to you because you're always worried about how

other people are going to interpret it.

Will they accept it?

Is it gonna be good enough for them?

Again, placing your validation over there with them instead of here with you,

your heart and your brain in concert.

Connected to the process of creativity.

Comparison also breaks down team culture.

Comparison doesn't just hurt you.

It affects how you see your peers and eventually how they start seeing you.

It turns colleagues into competitors creating tension

rather than collaboration.

And in.

Regards to me and my best friend.

I spent years holding him in judgment that his career was

doing so much better than mine.

And that secret thing that I held against him, he must have known,

even though I didn't say it out loud, because that energy was

present every time we connected.

And to have to release that, because what I came to understand

is I valued his friendship.

The Messai tribe in Africa have a saying that only a spear

can sharpen another spear.

And while I appreciate it and benefited from our competitiveness,

what I recognize is that's exhausting to be doing that all the time.

I just wanted to drop my spear and just give 'em a hug and just be friends

and, uh, not have that between us.

And that was my decision because I had to let that go because it

hurt my heart to do otherwise.

The last way it breaks down team culture is it starts to

become a toxic kitchen culture.

When chefs feel like they're constantly being ranked.

Instead of being valued for their unique contributions, I once worked

at a restaurant on a hotel property.

They closed that restaurant down.

They let go of the chef of the hotel and then asked me, well,

chef, you're out of a job now.

Would you like another job?

And so they put me in competition with the banquet chef to see who would

become the chef overall of the property.

And that was a miserable.

Six weeks of us trying to outdo one another and be seen as having the

capacity to lead, uh, the entire team of this hotel until such time as they

made a decision, put me in charge.

And it turned out that that animosity could have killed that relationship

between me and the banquet chef Instead, laughingly, uh, for a Christmas party,

we put a band together and 15 years later we were still making music.

So I'm really, really thankful that, uh.

That we were able to come together and heal the breach that existed within

that team culture and build that team even better than it was before.

But I couldn't have done it without his help.

Not all organizations can go through that type of competition and not

completely lose their team cohesion, which is the most critical part of

any successful culinary operation.

How to escape the comparison trap.

Well, number one.

Redefine success on your own terms.

Instead of comparing your chapter two to someone else's, chapter 10, define

what success looks like for you.

This is one of the first steps I take with all my coaching clients

in order to understand and deeply embody what your core values are,

what your goals and your mission is.

It's really important to spend some time doing an imagination practice called

Your Perfect Day, and that is imagining your life one year from now, three

years from now, five years from now.

And it's one thing to say.

I open up a food truck.

It's another thing altogether to spend some time thinking about that, connecting

with the emotions, and then write it down.

And the best way to do that is imagine your perfect day in that life.

You wake up, you do what?

What's the next thing?

How do you feel when you're having breakfast?

You're spending time with your kids?

What's the next step?

What's next step?

You write that out as your perfect day, and what you're actually

doing is you're future projecting what your life will be like.

At whatever point in your future, but it starts you down the road of defining

like, what's, what is success to me?

Is it money?

Is it accolades?

Is it family time?

What is it that matters most to me?

Because conversely, then that becomes your non-negotiable core values.

Those are the things that you're not willing to bartter away just for a job.

Is it leading a happy, high performing team, running a sustainable kitchen,

having balance in your life?

The only chef you should be competing with is the one you were yesterday.

I constantly talk about the 1% way, which is to say, today I'm gonna

be 1% better than I was yesterday.

That.

Is my only goal 1% better than I was yesterday because in reality, that

is the only outcome that you have power over that you can influence.

You can't influence someone else's life, but you can certainly influence

the person that you're gonna be tomorrow based upon your thoughts,

feelings, and actions of today.

That's why it doesn't matter what your outside circumstances look like today,

tomorrow can be completely different if you're focused on what that is and

creating an energy around it that is higher than your present circumstance.

I know that's a little bit of mumbo jumbo quantum mechanic stuff, but it's true.

The shit works.

Define what is your perfect day.

Write it out.

Put that in a piece of paper, put it away, and come back to it next year and see just

how close you came to achieving all those incredibly important emotional points.

Not necessarily what you do, but it's the emotion that's attached to what

you do that will redefine your success.

Point number two, practice gratitude and reflection At the end of each

shift, instead of asking, did I outperform someone, try asking, what

did I do well today, what did I learn?

How did I contribute to the team?

Lastly, before you go to bed, make sure that you have a journal next to your bed.

And the last thing you do before you go to sleep is write down three

things that you're grateful for.

Everybody can find three things to be grateful for.

I got up this morning.

I. There's some people in the world that didn't do that today, that you could

breathe freely, that you could put your uniform on, that you had transportation.

There are three things in everyone's life that you can, that they can

write down, and once they write that down, reflect on that and actually

experience gratitude for those things.

Because here's the thing, once you start shifting your perspective to

looking for things to be grateful for, conversely, you'll find

more things to be grateful for.

It's weird the way that works, right?

Number three, use comparison as inspiration, not judgment.

Instead of why am I not as good as them ask, what can I learn from them?

I remember looking at my buddy's menus and being completely perplexed about

some of the stuff that he was putting on.

I mean, I understood the dishes, but I was like thinking about

process and how you do it.

He was the first guy I ever knew that did Su V and I was calling him for months.

Trying to figure out how to do what he did, not to replicate what he

did, but to use those same principles and processes in what I was doing,

how I can incorporate those things.

And it became a point of celebration and inspiration instead of me looking

at it, which I had previously done, and go, shit, man, I'll never do that.

Reach out, collaborate, ask questions.

Chefs you admire are more approachable than you think.

All it takes is a dm. See him on Instagram dm. Hey, listen,

I've been following your work.

Really love this.

Have a question.

You got time.

Question mark.

No one is that unapproachable that they can't spend a couple minutes connecting

with somebody who's authentically trying to connect with them instead of just

trying to get something out of it.

Right?

It's always important to make sure that you bring value to that conversation and

figure out how you can recompense them for any value that you receive from them.

Right?

Number four, limit the social media spiral.

Oh my God.

So in my new book that's coming out, I talk about the, the 1% way,

and I talk about the narrow path as a process for which development

can happen spontaneously.

And one of the things is on a narrow path, what you do is you limit

anything that is not directly, uh, relatable to your particular goal.

And a lot of that is.

Trim it down, your social media, turning off your notifications.

I mean, time and time again.

If you look through your day, you can find so many things that are a distraction from

you and take you off your present task.

And here's a little bit of science for you.

They call it context switching.

If you're doing one thing and you're deep in that hole and you are a grooving

on that thing, and someone asks you something and pulls you away from that

task to do another thing, it can take you up to two to four hours before you

can refocus in on that previous task.

Get in it.

That's why it's so important to time block and make sure that you're doing

things within a certain time block so you can focus deeply on that.

And then after that time block start focused deeply on another thing.

Recognize that what you see on online is a highlight reel.

I want you to understand that what you see online, whether it's Instagram,

Facebook, I don't care where you look, that's a highlight reel.

That's not the full story.

Very rarely is anybody posting about what it's like to actually create this

particular dish, but there are some absolutely stunning pictures of the

dish afterwards, which leaves me in particular, I'll just speak for myself,

wondering like how the hell they did that?

And conversely gives me an idea of like, shit, I probably can't do that again.

That's what means by stifling creativity.

And after a while you get a bad case of the fuck its, well, I'll

never be that good, so fuck it.

Why try?

Following certain accounts makes you feel worse about yourself than others.

It's time to unfollow them.

Again, it comes back to using comparison as an inspiration, not as judgment.

And I know that's easy to say and hard to do, but if you want to stay present

to where you're at in your development such that nothing stands in your way.

Then you are gonna have to disassociate yourself from anything that makes you

feel like shit or tries to convince you that you're not good enough.

And let's face it, we all have that voice inside our heads that is always

telling us that we're not good enough.

But that voice is just the voice of our ego.

It's a protective mechanism.

And.

The story that it's telling is not the truth.

It's just a story.

And when you can identify with it as just a story, not right,

not wrong, just a story, you can have a different perspective.

Thank you for sharing.

Fuck you, for caring, and not take it as the little truth of who you are, what

you're, what you're capable of producing.

Listen, chef comparison will always be part of this industry.

It's built into the way we work, train, and compete.

But it's up to you whether you'd let it drive you or destroy you

instead of looking sideways.

Look forward instead of measuring yourself against others.

Measure how far you have come today.

I challenge you to catch yourself the next time comparison creeps in.

I want you to take a deep breath and remind yourself

your journey is yours alone.

Keep pushing forward, keep learning, and most of all, keep.

Keep cooking with passion.

Here's your action steps.

Number one, identify one way comparison has been holding you back.

Number two, set a personal goal based on growth, not competition.

Number three, celebrate one.

Small win today, no matter how minor.

And number four, at the end of the day, write down three

things that you're grateful for.

If this episode resonated with you, share it with a fellow chef, and if you're

ready to reclaim your passion, purpose, and process in the kitchen, hit subscribe

and let's keep the conversation going.

Until next time, stay tall and frosty.

That's a wrap for today's episode of Chef Life Radio.

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Remember, leadership isn't about perfection.

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So take what you've learned today and apply it in your kitchen,

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Chef Life Radio is more than just a podcast, it's a movement.

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Remember, the secret ingredient to culinary success isn't just in

the food, it's in the leadership.

Keep learning, keep growing, and as always.

Lead with the heart.

See you next time.