The Single Most Important Person To Constantly Compare Yourself To

How do you compare?

Are you better?

More skilled?

More experienced?

More prepared?

Further ahead?

Go ahead, compare yourself.

“The only person you should try to be better than, is the person you were yesterday.”

Be Better Than Yourself

You’re guilty, I’m guilty, we’re all guilty of comparing ourselves to others at one point or another in our lives.

If you’re still doing it, stop.

The only person you should be comparing yourself to is yourself.

Use yourself as a measuring stick of how well you’re doing. How far along are you? How much progress have you made? Are you better than who you were yesterday? Last week? Last month? Last year?

Comparison  is good when it’s you you’re comparing yourself to.

Comparing your success and results to that of others, is a sure recipe for failure and disappointment.

It’s not about how others are doing that matters  – it’s about how you’re doing.

Regardless if others are succeeding or failing, it has no implication on your results. It’s what you’re doing that matters, that’ll determine your success or failure.

Run Your Own Race

It’s perfectly fine to respect and look up to others whose work and progress you respect.

Mentors, role models, leaders – call them what you want, they’re valuable with their ability to inspire and motivate us to do more, be more.

Regardless of what others are doing around you, always focus on your own race, how well you’re running, how you’re feeling, how well you’re pacing.

We all run at our own pace, achieve at our own pace, create at our own pace, heal at our own pace, and succeed at our own pace.

I elaborate more on this in another one of my posts which you can read here: Stop Comparing Yourself to Others & Start Running Your Own Race.

Focus on you.

Same Race, Different Pace

It doesn’t make sense to compare the progress of someone whose goal it is to lose 50 lbs, who’s been eating, training, and exercising for 6 months, with someone who has the same goal but has only been at it for 6 weeks.

It isn’t fair to compare the financial returns of someone who’s been investing for 15 years, understands the market, trends, etc., with someone who’s new to investing and just getting started.

The success of a business that’s been around for years will be different than the success of a new start up.

The chemistry of a relationship, any relationship, that’s existed for years, will be different than a brand new one.

The race may be the same, but the time and the pace will vary considerably from person to person.

You vs. You

What workouts and exercises are you doing to get stronger, have more energy?

What foods are you eating to help you lose more weight?

How much debt have you paid off and money have you saved or invested?

What steps are you currently taken to advance your career?

What new products or services are you creating to grow your business?

What efforts are you making to better the relationships you have?

How many books have you read or courses have you taken this year?

What are doing today to make you better than who you were yesterday?

The only person you need to constantly be better than is yourself.

“Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better.”

~ Jim Rohn ~

Commit To Yourself

Success, any type of success, doesn’t happen overnight.

It comes with time, commitment, hard work, hours upon hours of practice and beating on your craft.

All the guarantees and promises of overnight success are bullshit and misleading. They create false expectations that set you up for failure when you don’t achieve the unreasonable results you were promised.

The only comparison to others that will yield you positive results is to identify, study, and mimic the daily habits of those whose work you respect and whose footsteps you wish to follow in.

What are they reading, studying, creating, writing about? What does their day look like? What are they eating, how are they exercising? What and where are they investing their time, effort, and money?

It’s perfectly fine to use the same framework others have used to create their own success, to create yours.

Why reinvent the wheel if there isn’t a need to?

Compare habits, not results.

Keep Moving Forward

As children, we’re provided with new and different skills as we progress from grade to grade.

You have more skills in 6th grade than you had in 5th grade. You have more skills in 7th grade then you had in 6th grade.

As children, we’re constantly in a state of progression and expected to acquire and perfect certain skills in a given period of time so that we can keep moving forward, keep advancing into the higher grades.

Your progress, compared only, to your own competence.

You get promoted into the next grade based on the skills you’ve developed, the successes you’ve had. You’re not promoted based on how well you compared to others in your same grade.

As kids, you know this, you expect this. Why should it be any different for adults?

It’s not.

Be Your Best

Strive to be better – to have more skills, to know more, do more, be more.

Keep making progress.

Be better than you were yesterday, last week, last month, last year.

Compete and compare yourself to yourself everyday, no one else.