Competing with Yourself
By Maria Khalifé
“The principle is competing against yourself. It’s about self-improvement, about being better than you were the day before.” ~ Steve Young
The sense of striving and competition must surely be inbred or part of our survival mechanism because each of us does it from the earliest days of our lives. I think that moderate competition is an okay idea; severe competition may not be. But what if you only compete with yourself?
What would happen, though, if you had been taught from your earliest days to only compete with yourself – your own last victory? Every single one of us wants to know inside that we are capable of achieving our next victory, that we can accomplish one more good thing if we stretch ourselves a bit. This is how we grew from our infant stage to the adult stage.
Our earlier accomplishments became the foundation upon which we grew. And interestingly enough, it’s our own sense of achievement that holds the carrot that makes us run in front of our own face. We really don’t look for others to award and applaud us. We look inward to our own dear Self to award and applaud us. We are the one who knows just how far we stretched ourselves the last time, and we are the one who knows best just what it took to stretch some more, so who best to reward us?
Many in the world would label this kind of competition “improvement.” I would call it “unfoldment.” I believe each of us was born with all that we would become intrinsically wrapped up inside of us just waiting to be unfolded. It is this infinity of possibilities that knocks on the door of our hearts and souls and says “Let’s try this!” and we are off and running. Our motivations, our stretching, are internal and individual. Your sense of what may look to others like competitiveness is simply your desire to unfold more of yourself – you only compete with yourself.
Your inner score keeper knows when and if you are capable of more, and he/she may be a very demanding voice. You alone know when it’s time to do more, to stretch more, to achieve more. You alone know what our inner vision of success is. You alone know when to exercise patience and when to strive forward again. You know when the energy level is perfect. You know that we are not here to serve the desires of anyone but ourselves, so you only compete with yourself if you want to remain balanced, satisfied and at peace.
“A man’s reach must exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for?” ~ Robert Browning
