Comparing yourself to others is a loosed game. Not that you're bad at something, you just have to play by other people's rules and their scoreboard can constantly be changing.
There is always going to be someone with more stuff than you have, present company included. More self confidence, more cash, more followers on IG or whatever else you've decided is important to you this week. And just when you think that you've caught up with someone, our metric will now change. Its no longer about the amount of money you are making, it's about the amount of goodwill that you have created. It no longer about how skilled you are at something, its about what others have done to get noticed. So the finish line is a mirage.
When you take time to compete against yourself, your competition is completely different, like totally different.
When the previous version of you is the benchmark for progress, it can truly be experienced. You no longer have an audience that you are performing for, you are simply building something. Slowly, sometimes poorly, but always in the direction of your own creation.
You won't get a medal or even a pat on the back for this. Nobody is watching. Believe it or not that is a good thing. All of the pressure to perform is now released and your focus will only be on the work and whether or not you showed up to cut wood this time.
The hard part is that comparing yourself to others is constant and involuntary. It is hardwired into us. We will not choose to compete with anyone. We will identify when we are competing and redirect accordingly. We will do this over and over again so there will always be tension between who we are and who we want to be.
With every new recognition of competing against your previous self, the internal scoreboard changes and you can begin counting your wins, even the small wins that are substantial.
That is what each compounding interest rate is, just like no one talks about wealth building and no one talks about fame building, the compounding interest rate of self improvement will continue to develop day after day, and over time you will continue to build more satisfaction for who you are today than the old you.
