You know what I’ve never done before? Actually trying to compete. I always told myself that the only person I am competing against is myself. Trying to better myself every day is what I think of as competing. But I’ve read so many books, articles and heard so many stories about athletes and just everyday people who enjoyed competing against others and how it helped them push their boundaries and develop grit. They didn’t let their failures discourage them. In fact, they wear them as a badge of honour, even more so than their victories. Which makes me wonder, why didn’t I ever do that?
Perhaps competing against oneself isn’t always as healthy as it sounds. Sure, it helps you improve, but perhaps only marginally. For example, you are more likely to stay well within your comfort zone. You may never even discover what your bounds are. You are less likely to push yourself really hard because you have little to lose, at least in your own head. Moments of intense focus where you’re at your productive peak are rarer. More importantly, in a work setting where you’re likely going to be evaluated by your manager, there will be a disconnect between what you believe you’ve achieved vs what your manager thinks. Think about it. In your own head, you find yourself working harder, faster, better and taking on more complex tasks and you feel like you’ve come a long way over the last year. Your manager might find that you’re trying hard but just don’t step up to the plate as often as your peers do. He doesn’t know the journey you took from your last evaluation to today. He only knows how far you’ve come relative to your peers.
Competing doesn’t always have to devolve into a rat race. You can’t always be the best and you can’t always win, especially in a professional setting. It’s mathematically impossible. Every one of us in a work environment is part of a normal distribution curve. There are your outliers — on the positive and negative side and there are your middlers — people hovering around the mean. Even if you aggressively compete and stand out, you become part of a new game — you’re promoted, paid more, given more responsibilities and thrown into a new normal curve where everybody else came up the same way as you and so you’re competing again to be an outlier and so on. When you’re focused on outcomes in an environment like this, that’s when your professional life feels like a never-ending rat race. The key is to focus on the process. Enjoy the process of competing, the art of slowly chipping away at your weaknesses while burnishing your strengths. You may never feel like you’re getting better, but that's only because you’re expanding your bounds.
If you stay laser-focused at the peak of the mountain you’re climbing it just feels further away. Look around as you climb and you’ll find your worldview getting bigger and more beautiful. You’ll see how few of your fellow climbers have made it there and how they’re trying to help you instead of outclimbing you. Instead of stressing about how much further you have left to go, you appreciate how far you’ve come. Enjoy the process of competing, the journey you take.
As I write this, I know these words are empty so far. I know they make sense and I know there’s something valuable here, but I am pretty sure I am still stuck in the “competing with myself” phase. Perhaps putting this down in writing will help me change?
