Competing With Yourself To Get Ahead In Life Is A Means To Sustainable Progress

In an age where productivity is celebrated, and being labeled a ‘slacker’ is tantamount to having sinned, becoming successful at whatever you do is almost expected — by you and others. Living up to these lofty expectations can be an extremely stressful ordeal for you. Such chronic stress is not only detrimental for your health, but it also undermines your chances of achieving your goals.

Being competitive is definitely a good trait to have in today’s age of unlimited distractions, where it is easy to lose sight of your goals and prioritize comfort and mediocrity instead.

In an age of digital stimulation, where constant boosts of dopamine keep you hooked to social media and media-streaming platforms, peer pressure and ‘negative competitiveness’ are not sustainable ways to keep progressing and inching towards your goals. Here are my top 5 reasons — from personal experience — to avoid getting sucked into negative competitiveness, and to strive for positive competitiveness by measuring your progress against yourself, only.

#1 Don’t Become A Bully

During my childhood, my parents — unknowingly to them at the time — compared me with my sister, my friends, my cousins, friends of cousins, and who not. I believe this is a common experience for most middle-class households, where being ‘one up’ over others, in any matter, is perceived as an accomplishment, no matter how insignificant the activity may be. The negative criticism that follows ‘failure’ only leads to feelings of resentment in my mind — towards others, and towards self. One often starts becoming defensive and confrontational towards others, impacting their growth even further.

#2 Escape Tunnel vision

When you are excessively focused on competing with others, you solely focus on just a few parameters. How you size up to competition on limited aspects, means you compete with them on their own terms. More importantly, you turn a blind eye towards acknowledging your weaknesses. A light-weight boxer who may be a champion in his own division, may only last a few rounds when going against a heavy-weight champion. Understanding where you currently stand, what scope for growth lies ahead, and trying to become 1% better than who you were yesterday, will help you become a better future competitor.

#3 Different Paths, Same Goal

One of the biggest positives that arises from competing with yourself is that you realistically evaluate your strengths and weaknesses. Taking inventory of your positives and negatives is the first step towards self-improvement. A sprinter relies on strength and power to get through to the finish line first, however, a champion marathon runner focuses on improving his endurance and stamina to achieve the same ultimate goal — to win. Similarly, when you are certain and honest about your strengths and weaknesses, you can make measurable changes to your routine to furnish your strengths even more to achieve the same goal differently.

#4 Personal Trajectory

Everyone is standing at different levels in their self-improvement journey. Someone born to a champion parent, may have access to better conditioning, coaching, and influence than someone sharing the same aspirations, but not having the same resources and guidance. If you compete with someone not at equal footing as yourself, you are bound to set yourself up for negative self-criticism, which will hamper your chances of success significantly. Measuring your success against the yardstick of another will only sabotage your own self worth and confidence. Understand that your aim should be to compete with yourself only, to become better with every passing moment and to make meaningful consistent improvements towards the direction of your goals. This approach will ensure you reach your goals — sooner or later, rather than never. The power of compounding comes into play when you make better choices, enforce measurable changes to the way you have been doing things and invest time in self-improvement.

#5 Your Definition Of Success Changes

When you are constantly invested in living up to the expectations of others, you are constantly looking out for external validation to boost your confidence. This is a guaranteed way to set yourself up for failure. Others do not understand the level of perseverance, commitment and dedication that you put into bettering yourself. Besides, you can never make everyone happy; people will always find ways to criticize you, no matter what. When you no longer care about being negatively judged or evaluated, you can concentrate on setting your own parameters for self-evaluation and success.

In Conclusion

Although comparing ourselves to others is the most common way to evaluate progress, it definitely is not the healthiest way to monitor improvement. Self-loathing and the fear of being judged or negatively evaluated are common repercussions of over-dependence on external validation. Self-improvement can only truly be achieved, sustainably, if we emphasize on making ourselves better consistently — without over-reliance on external competition. Everyone is at different stages of their self-improvement journey, and such comparison is not fair. As you start focusing more on recognizing your own strengths and weaknesses, your definition of success may change as well.

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