The floors theory One step, nine times.

1. The first floor

Have you ever started something and felt that you were only at the beginning, and that this was exactly how it should be? It might be a new business or a service you are offering your clients for the first time, and at the start everyone knows there is learning to do and takes it for granted.

Then comes a moment when you look around and see someone far ahead of you. From then on the first floor no longer feels as fine as it did a minute earlier, even though nothing has changed apart from your point of view.

2. Measuring ourselves against others

Whether we mean to or not, we always compare ourselves with something, and so with other people too. When we see someone with what looks like an unbeatable lead from where we are standing, we easily lose confidence and start to see everything we have achieved so far as smaller than it is.

I call this falsely downgrading the potential inside us. When you are on the first floor and the other person is on the tenth, you tend to undervalue what you have done so far and what you still have in you. The good news is that this is surprisingly easy to change once you look at the stairs a little differently.

3. Nine single steps

Many people underrate themselves because they see a huge challenge in the climb. Something like this goes on in their heads. “I would have to climb nine floors at once, that is far too much, I cannot do it.”

Reality is much kinder than that. Nobody climbs nine floors at once, everyone takes one step nine times, and a single step no longer looks impossible at all. Whoever is standing on the tenth floor got there the same way, they simply started earlier or took the stairs a little faster.

4. The way you have already come

It is worth looking back at where you started, too. When you feel you are only on the first floor, you may in fact be much higher up, since you got this far somehow. The steps you have already taken needed just as much work and courage as the next ones will, so you have no reason to undervalue them.

And what if the person you compare yourself with is not at the top yet either? They may be only a few steps ahead, looking up at someone who stands even higher.

5. A direction in other people’s results

How much more could we achieve if we saw other people’s results as a direction we would like to go in too? Asking whether this is a good direction for you gives you far more than “I will never get there, it is too far away”. If the answer is yes, the other person’s path becomes a kind of map showing that the stairs can be climbed.

The same is true for businesses. A larger, better known competitor’s work can easily discourage you, yet the same work also shows what the market values and which way your own path could lead.

6. How I see it

There is a sentence that stayed with me for a long time, and I think it sums up this way of thinking well. “If someone else can do it, so can I. If nobody else can do it, I will do it anyway.” To me it says that the stairs exist, and if someone has already climbed them, there is something for me to step on too.

When I started out I was on the first floor as well, and to this day there are people far ahead of me. To me they are signs that there is still somewhere to climb. The next time you catch yourself belittling your own path while looking at someone else’s results, think of the stairs. It is enough to focus on the next step and to give yourself credit for the ones already behind you.