Compare yourself only to who you were yesterday

By Joyce Nalunga Birimumaso

Confidence has no competition. Set goals and put forth the best in you. Your competition is yourself and not other people. Differentiate yourself so that you can complement others, not compete with them.

It is not about the childhood friends we cherish neither the close families nor siblings. Who your old school friends are is different from who you should be. What they own now is not what you must own. God can even give you much more if you compete with yourself in making proper financial and investment decisions now.

I grew up from a humble background, my folks struggling to make ends meet. My mom taught me the power of contentment from the word go and the need to strongly compete with who I am so that I can be better. But in real life sometimes you feel as if your peers are far ahead of you in terms of their investments, academic levels and status in society. But the truth is it is not about others but who you are. We are different but with great potential to be anything we strive to be if we can compete with ourselves not them.

If you do introspection our competition must target our procrastination and comfortability stunts. Each time I procrastinated about doing my daily fitness drills I could add more weight feel unfit and unhealthy. Now regardless of the mood, I am in I must do daily 30 minutes cardio or skip my rope. Even if it’s raining like this morning I still persist and at least do indoor fitness exercises. The power of consistency and persistence which achieves great results lies in continuing to do something while the mood to do it no longer exists.

We ought to compete with the ego that makes us so comfortable to do the hard things. As we seek to be better we have to choose to do much better than what we have always done. Individually we must play stronger, bigger, harder and smarter than before. It is not about fighting that workmate who has emerged the employee of the year, it is about improving your individual work skills/strategies so that you are better than before and then you will acquire work recognition. Have you noticed that the common 'job-related insecurities' and 'inferiority complex' at work stem from workers who are seeking to compare themselves with others? There is a need to continuously do a personal evaluation and identify areas of improvement to be better. Compare yourself to only who you were yesterday.

At work be your own competition and learn the best and excellent work skills for example create work timelines and beat them, be fast and creative within your role, think of new ideas to be best, improve your communication and social skills, network and strengthen teamwork, innovate merchantable projects that can elevate your organisation, selflessly support your boss. The so-called ``unethical job politics'' and `work mudslinging' is typical of workmates who failed to master the art of competing with themselves. If you continuously compete with others, you become bitter, resentful, angry, envious, jealous which mentally drains, obstructs an analytical mindset,

definitely deters personal growth and high performance. Unfortunately, the more such ignorant and bitter employees focus on others the more they do not improve in any way and inevitably diminish in work performance.

The biggest competition is myself. We should not be looking to follow others or pull them down. We must individually work ourselves, plan to test and enlarge out boundaries retooled and reskilled. Incidentally, it is so costly to pull down others. The game of being better than anyone is not worth it, strive to be better than who you were yesterday and the sky will not limit you. Remember when you compete with a person you can only be as good as or better than the person to win. If you compete with yourself, there is no limitation to how good you can be (Chin Ning Chu).

This year please look in the mirror, that is your competition. Our competition is in the mirror not out in the world. The goal lies in beating your last performance not your workmate's performance. The more I compete with myself the more I improve tremendously. Focus today on outdoing your past instead of other people.

Compete against your ego, attitude, habits, unhealthy food consumption, knowledge acquisition you neglect, lack of creativity and excuses. Being a winner does not mean reaching the finishing line first but giving everything you have got to reach your goals.

When you compete with yourself, you become better and best. If you compete with others, you may not win. If you compete with yourself, you always win by becoming better. Self-competition is key to excellence. If you continuously compete with yourself, you discover great potential. You also become unstoppable because your strength is within. Huge achievements are found in individuals who compete with themselves. It builds self-esteem and enhances efficiency and effectiveness. You can only give the best version of yourself if compete with yourself. It is worth it, peaceful, joyous to tap into your hidden potential. It is magical and liberating. You learn more and display the best character traits.

This is a principle concerned about self-improvement and being better than who I was a day before. I am passionate about motivational speaking. I have had various engagements but after each of them, I evaluate my performance, seek feedback and capitalize on areas to improve. Self-improvement comes from absolute self-competing in all areas of our lives. I compete to be a great motivational speaker than I was –yesterday.

People who compete with themselves are more successful than those that compete against them because they understand that winning is more than the competition.

Competing with yourself dismisses other people’s measures of success. It is stretching your boundaries and trying out the great ideas that fled your memory. Competitiveness should be associated with ambition and betterment.

Tunnel your energy to compete against yourself rather than the people around you. The reason why you should compete with yourself is that you have a much healthier measure of your success. It is running your race. The hard truth is someone is always going to be better than you at something. While you are pursuing your career, someone else got the wedding and the kid you wanted, while you were doing a masters' someone else got a dream job.

When you compete with yourself, you do not panic because someone else got something first. You know that good thing will come to you at the right place, at the right time, when you put in the work or the heart required to get it.

You can get a better sense of what you are capable of. Another hard truth is that there are some things you will succeed at while others you will not.

When you compete with yourself, you develop positive energy for the world. This means you cannot do what others succeeded in. We are unique and guided in different significant areas.

When you compete with yourself, you explore Arenas that you know and set for yourself. Self-competition opens yourself to the infinite things you could improve on and pursue which can make you happier yet more fulfilled than what everybody else is doing.

You get to define your success. We know what success is all about. Millennials” success” is what we watched our parents do; graduate from university, get a life partner, get the right job, buy land, construct a home, have kids etc.

To me, this is not the absolute measure of success. Success is every life you have touched and impacted positively. Each you compete with yourself, you define your success and get fulfilment.

Self-competition is freedom from people’s judgement. When you compete with yourself, you are actually dismissing other people’s measure of success. You cease to be subject to what others think or their judgements. You do not have to answer to them. You only have to answer yourself. It also allows you to have a lifelong pursuit to improve and challenge yourself in new ways and when you are looking inward for that inspiration you always will.

Remember success is not measured by what you do compared to what somebody else does. Success is measured by what you do compared to what you are capable of doing (Zig Ziglar).

The writer is a senior advocate and motivational speaker