Achieve Greatness. Stop Comparing and Start Competing with Yourself🏆

Published: Tue, 04/04/23

“To be a champion, compete; to be a great champion, compete with the best; but to be the greatest champion, compete with yourself.”

― Matshona Dhliwayo

The day I understood that the only person I was competing with was the person I was, yesterday was a life-changing day for me. I was one of these people who wanted to be the best at what I did, using other people’s achievements as a gauge of my own self-worth. If I wasn’t matching or exceeding the accomplishments of some randomly chosen success story, then I’d beat myself bloody about it. The abuse that left me mentally black and blue never motivated me to do better; it made me feel sorry for myself.

Do you want to promote your creative brand in my weekly and monthly newsletters?

Email me at marksmanstudios1@gmail.com and lets talk.

Compete with Yourself and root for everybody else.

The way I see it, someone will always seem “better” or “greater” than you, depending on your metric.
There will always be someone who can do more things than you.
So there really is no point in competing for the number 1 spot amongst all of us incredible humans because, in most cases, you’ll always find someone “better”.

Read My Micro Story - All Men are Monsters.

And when you do. What then?

Do you consider yourself a failure like I did? Instead of elevating myself at every opportunity, I would tear myself down because someone was in a position I thought I should be in. Why bother doing what you do if you can’t be the best at it? Is there a point?
My mental model was flawed.

And if I kept on thinking that way, I would lose all perspective and drive. I’d become one of the faceless masses who believe they have no control over their lives.
I took steps to alter that and worked hard at instinctively reframing how I looked at the idea of competition. I changed the definition of competition in my life and decided not to compete with others.

One of the strategies I use to maintain that point of view is the idea that no one can do what I do the way I do it.

I’m the best at being me on the planet.

And that’s not hyperbole but fact. No one can create the way I do. Write the stories I write. Make the reader feel the way I make them feel.

The same goes for you in whatever you feel passionate about.

We all have a unique God-given individuality. A jen ne sais quoi quality that makes us unique. Our job is to find, express, and use it as our only yardstick on how well we do in our lives.

Am I a hundred per cent free from that kind of thinking? Of course not. I have what I call my Stephen King chart, a fun way to compare how good a writer I am with the great man himself. Whenever I do that, I leave that mental exercise empowered to be and do better. I’ll discard it the day it does not serve me that way.

What most people won’t tell you is that competing against yourself every day can often be tougher than competing with others. You can’t size up your competition by checking their strengths and weaknesses and adjusting to stand out. Instead, you’re forced to have honest conversations with yourself every day because the only person that will be disappointed in you is you. When you look in the mirror, there are no excuses. You set the rules and define the goals.

Here’s the thing. What really matters is that I’m doing me. There are no politics. I keep on learning and growing, and I keep on getting better. I need to surprise myself by doing something that I once didn’t know how to do. Once I can keep doing that, I will be challenging myself sufficiently enough to be in a constant state of growth. And that’s all I need.

So the next time you compare yourself to others, remember that you only need to compete with yourself. It’s taking what others have done and using their story to inspire us to learn and grow in our life journey. Set your own standards, focus on your own progress, and be proud of the unique journey that you are on.

Be Your Own Hero.