The Only Competition You Should Be in is With Yourself
Stop comparing yourself (and your life) to other people
In 1913, Arthur R. “Pop” Momand created a comic strip called Keeping Up With The Joneses. This popular comic strip ran until 1940. However, it has now been over 100 years, and people relate to this idea, and they still participate in this activity.
Trying to “keep up with,” or compete with other people is unhealthy. It is exhausting. It can be depressing, and if you are actually winning, it can turn you into a hateful, prideful person. Don’t let this happen to you.
Do you compare yourself to other people? Do you try to compete with neighbors, family, friends, co-workers, or even people you do not know? Why? What has this ever done for you? If an activity has no positive outcome in your life, you should get rid of it.
If you are a competitive person, you should instead try to compete with yourself; this is a lot more healthy and so much more satisfying. So, how exactly does one compete with themselves?
There are many ways, and how you do it is primarily based on what works for you. Here are my two favorite ways that go hand-in-hand.
Goal Setting. If you are not already a person who sets goals for yourself, start now. Goals could be as short as what to get done in the next 30 minutes. They can also be as far in the future as to where you want to be 10 years from now. I highly recommend doing both short and long-term goals.
Goals can be based on anything. Yes, many people set goals based on business, work, and money. Those goals are fine. However, your objectives could be based on several other essential things, such as the type of person you are, the people you allow in your life, the quality of your relationships, and how you feel about yourself.
Make a Game Out of It. The second part of goal-setting is how you track and celebrate your progress. Sometimes I look at my goals as playing a very personalized video game. Let’s look at some straightforward examples.
Say I have a blog or a website. As a score, I could look at the number of visitors, visitor engagement, ad revenue, or other income. Every time these numbers go up, I equate it to hitting a new high score. When I have an off day, month, year — whatever, I just had a bad game, and it is time to reset and try again.
This would work for anything, including freelance writing revenue, medium readership, etc. Apply something you do all the time to the video game analogy — it is a lot of fun and can be so satisfying when you hit a high score.
The final thing we need to address is failure. So many people have an intense fear of failure. No one likes to fail, but most people fail to grasp and accept that everyone fails. Everyone fails A LOT. You are not alone.
However, when you are stuck in a cycle of competing with others, all you ever compare is their perceived successes. But do you know how many times they failed?
Even if they never failed at anything for some reason, do you also consider what kinds of advantages they started the game with? If you are starting from scratch, trying to do something in your 3 free hours a week.
Was this how they also started? Or were they were already independently wealthy or had no real responsibilities outside of this one thing they are succeeding at? Wouldn’t it make sense it was so much easier for them to meet their goals?
The best thing you can do is learn to embrace your failures. Learn from your mistakes. Most importantly, do not let failure stop you from trying something again!