People often want to compare themselves against others, but this is a terrible idea.
The best way to improve your performance is by competing with, and setting high goals for yourself. You can’t control what other people do, but you can control your own actions. Comparing yourself with others will only lead to frustration and a lack of progress. Life’s too short for that. Focus on making progress in your own business or career. Let’s dig in deeper…
What is the point of competing with others?
The point of competing with someone else is to try and do better than them. There is a risk that by competing you will become frustrated when you see that they are doing better than you. You should strive for your best but should never forget that other people have different abilities and strengths.
A better approach is to strive for your best and only focus on yourself. By doing this you will avoid the negative aspects of competing with others.
When you compete against yourself there are no losers.
When you compete against yourself, You always win. If your goals are difficult enough, you will always improve because meeting your expectations is a better way to grow than beating someone else’s performance in the past.
Beating yourself builds confidence. Competing against yourself or your own expectations is a sure-fire way to grow your confidence, and confidence is one of the main drivers for success
The only competition worth fighting for is the one that makes you better than yesterday.
The media tends to make us believe we should be comparing ourselves with our peers. We can’t control peer comparisons, so why compare yourself to them? Why not just work on getting better at what you do? How about improving your relationships? Improve a skill or learn something new? Be the best version of you. There is only one person we can be sure that we are better than, and it’s yesterday’s you!
So, what can you do?
Decide that you deserve it.
The first step toward success is deciding that you deserve it! If you want more out of life then start competing with yourself instead of everyone else around you. This means setting goals for yourself and measuring them against the results from yesterday, not last year’s results or what other people are doing right now.
Set goals for yourself and work hard to achieve them.
Every time you set a goal for yourself, you must make sure that it is high enough that you know there will be some struggle associated with it. It’s okay to set very high goals for yourself. If your goal is too easy, the results will be just as unsatisfying.
Achieving these goals will build your self-confidence because they are under your control.
Focus on what you can do better than the last time.
Rather than comparing yourself to other people, stop focusing on what you’re not good at and focus on doing better than your last performance.
Take your last workout for example. If you’re a runner, don’t think about how slow the other runners are running. Rather, try to beat your previous best time. If you want to start making more sales calls, don’t compare yourself with the top salesman at the company; instead think about doing better than your last few days of calling.
If you can get into that habit of competing against yourself, it will improve your performance significantly and you’ll start to master your craft.
You should focus on improving what you’re not good at rather than just trying to catch up to other people.
This world is made for those who hustle, not those who wish they could.
The world is changing very quickly. You probably aren’t the same person you were last year or even 6 months ago. You will change your mind about what’s important to you as you start a career, get married, have kids and everything else that happens in life. So rather than focusing on the things that are important right now, think about what’s going to be important in 5 years or 10 years.
You should always look at the bigger picture and never get caught up in your day to day activities. Focus on how you’re going to stay relevant in the future, not just now. Try to think about things from a higher level so that you can help the bigger cause rather than just caring about what’s going on today.
Taking control over your life means you have to be more strategic and understand where things are headed in the future. Don’t get caught up in small details.
What are you doing today to make yourself better than yesterday? Let everyone know in the comments below.