Competing With Yourself Is The Key To Success

Competition is an effective tool needed to keep mankind on track on the path of success. This tool as a two cutting edges and therefore can produce two opposite results depending on which edge is in use.

I like to compete in life but only with myself. Any other form of competition such as competing with your friends’ achievements, that of your siblings, neighbors or foes is an erroneous move which puts unnecessary pressure and restrains on you and your achievements.

Have a close look at your fingers and you will quickly come to a quick realization that “all your fingers are not equal”. No matter how much competition they dig into with themselves, they can never be equal, yet they all have important and unique function to perform.

Examining and scrutinizing your life in efforts to have a vivid picture of your achievements and thereby setting up goals to attain the targets you have set for yourself is what I call “competing with yourself”.

For instance, if you just wrote an examination and you attained a pass mark of 70 and looking at your “own” achievement, decide to improve on this by targeting 90 the next time, it is perfectly right and a good move. This is what competition in life should all be about, “Competing with your own achievements”.

What competition in life should not be about and yet it has become a common practice of all of us is putting ourselves in competition with others. Looking at the achievements of any other person apart from yourself and indulging in a direct or indirect competition with that person puts unnecessary pressure on yourself.

You are different from any other person and the circumstance under which the person achieved “something” can never be the same as that which you will find yourself. Even if the circumstances look identical, they are never the same.

Apart from the unhealthy pressure you bring to bear on yourself when you set your achievements in a race with others, competing with others is likely to breed jealousy and rivalry. What happens if you are not able to achieve what your opponent does or have achieved? Where is your uniqueness and identity if all you do is to put yourself under pressure to achieve what others have attained?

Do not get me wrong, looking at the achievements of others and drawing motivation or inspiration from them is absolutely right. There is a clear distinction between drawing inspiration from someone’s achievements and setting yourself in competition with that person or any other person.

This is a new day and it will be prudent if you can re-examine the sort of competition you are engulfed in, as far as life is concern. Are you in competition with yourself or with others?

Life is not a race and competing with others is exactly what we say life is not. Set up your own realistic goals; compete with yourself to achieve these goals. This minimizes all external life pressures; it is the key to success. Grab this and you will see a significant difference in your life achievements.