Why It’s Better To Compete With Yourself

You cannot accurately compare to anyone other than yourself! Attempting it is going to drive you mad because it will never be good enough.

No matter how close you are to someone you will only ever see part of their experience.

On Facebook all you see are highlight reels.

In TV shows and movies you often see a couple hours worth of someone’s year-long journey.

And when you compare to anyone at all you never get their exact emotions, thoughts or conclusions.

All you ever get are their best parts. You are comparing your entire existence to those parts and are trying to put your average against their best and win.

In 9/10 cases you will loose that competition.

When you compete with yourself, however, you are competing ‘an eye for an eye’.

You take the whole picture and compare it against another whole picture.

It’s average against average and when you improve your life the new average will beat out the old.

In fact, you don’t even have to do all that much to start yourself down a cycle of positive reinforcement.

You improve a little, compare to your old average, feel proud of the positive difference, and that motivation carries you to improve a little more, and, over time, this will make all the difference.

Originally published at http://quora.com.