Whoever really knows me, they will tell you that I am a self-analytical SOB, and recently I was thinking about why I have never felt the urge to be envious of anyone, whether other more successful fellow bloggers or rich movie stars or business moguls. What came to my mind then is something completely logical and it made me happy that I lacked this feeling of envy or desire to compete with anyone. I have never competed against anyone except for one person: myself. And I found that competing against yourself is much better for your than competing against anyone else. After I reached a certain age I began believing that there is no such thing as easy money (in my case at least–I wasn’t born rich), but also that you receive as much as you put in. There was one thing about competing against others that really never made much sense to me, and that is because we all have different situations. For example, some are born rich, others are more educated, some have better communication skills, and then there are those have more time and patience, and the list is eternal. So I know there will always be people in a better position than me which obviously makes competing against them unfair and pointless because I believe I would be wasting too much time on wishing to be like them than actually trying to reach their level.

Push it to the Limit

Competing against yourself is great simply because nothing is ever good enough and you will not be satisfied with one achievement but will demand more from yourself. To some that is hell, to others I think it’s a gift. I know that when I succeed in a certain goal, I feel happy that moment but then I try to build on it. I never leave anything productrive I have done standing alone, I always try to incorporate it sometime in the future. Nothing productive you’ve done should be shunned, but instead it should be applied any time it can come to use. This is also great in the gym when you’re trying to run a certain distance under 30 minutes, and it doesn’t matter what others are getting, because to me it’s all about what I can do the next day, and I push myself in competition against the man I was yesterday.

Emotions Cloud Judgements

Jealousy or envy are emotions and they both can make you think and act irrational sometimes. Just reading a Shakespeare play, you will see the type of treacheries people have gotten involved in out of sheer envy. I think it is one of the most detrimental type of emotions and unless you point it inward it really can eat away at your drive to achieve success to a drive in achieving the other person’s downfall, which doesn’t do good for anyone.

Use the Ego to Your Advantage

People often want to subdue their bloated ego but when you are constantly in competition against yourself, you can try and use the ego in your advantage. Someone who competes against himself and does not have a big ego is capable of not achieving much by simply not even beginning to compete. Those with a bigger ego feel a drive to get something done in order to fuel their pride and arrogance and then that triggers the competition within them to get something greater done next time. It is best to use the ego in a balanced way to begin a project or goal and do it on your own pace, but get it done right without focusing on how other people are doing it. One thing that is imortant is learning from others’ mistakes, but to still feel that you don’t need to be on par with them and instead create your own level or standard that you know is within your reach and something you will feel satisfied with. And once you get that done, build on it or around it in the sense that it will never go to waste but will serve another goal you may want to achieve.