We live in a competitive world. Athletes compete for the win, politicians compete to be elected, and companies compete for their share of the buyer’s wallet. Even in our day-to-day, we are competing all the time. Who brings in the highest numbers, who signs the biggest contract? The reality is that our results and our performance are measured against others all the time.
We hear the word, “healthy competition” which gets thrown around a lot. We are encouraged to be the best, to beat others at their game. We are constantly thinking on “how to win against your biggest competitor”. I challenge you to think differently. Forget competition with your opponent or colleague. Who is your real competitor?
Look in the mirror?
If you only compete with others, your growth is limited to theirs. If you are aiming to be the best salesperson in your company and the top salesman closes 10 clients a week, you will need to close 11 to be number 1. Who is to say that 11 is enough? If you compete with yourself, then maybe 11 is not the number you should aim for. You should aim for doing better and being better every day. Today that may mean 8 contracts, tomorrow, 20.
It is not about outside competition. Your biggest competitor should be yourself. If you strive to make self-improvement your number one goal, you will win. Push harder and strive to learn every day.
“Don’t set the bar based on what others are doing. Set the Bar as high as YOU can go. Then put the bar higher.”
If you want to be the best at something, pick someone who is the best at it and set the bar at that level. Then challenge yourself to do better by a certain date. Write down your goals , plan out actionable tasks that will help you achieve your goals and set benchmarks for measurements along the way.
I was recently doing a program on P90X3 called “The Challenge”. This particular routine has you set a goal at the beginning for how many push-ups and pull-ups you can do in a certain time. You then rotate between push-ups and pull-ups for the rest of the 30 minutes, repeatedly trying to hit that number every time. Although by the 5th round, I was having a hard time hitting my target, you can bet that I will strive to do better every time. Why? Because my goal is to get better every day. To keep practicing, focusing and disciplining myself to one up myself every time.
[bctt tweet=”“It’s not really about the competition. Your biggest challenge in a race is yourself. You’re often racing against time. You’re frequently running everything through your mind. You’re always competing against preconceived ideas. It’s not really the person next to you that you worry about.” – Summer Sanders “]
It is the same with everything else in life. Compete with yourself. Challenge yourself and keep raising the Bar. Don’t be satisfied with doing enough, do more. That is how you will win against your biggest competitor, YOU. When you win against yourself, you will start to notice that you will start to run ahead of the crowd leaving more and more people behind you.
Do you agree? Should your biggest competitor be yourself?