25 Aug Comparison is the thief of Joy
The winner doesn’t take it all.
While it might seem that the whole point of running a race is to come first, approaching the start line with the belief that winning is everything can actually be harmful.
Healthy competition can be motivating. It can push us to work harder, challenge ourselves and reach levels we may not have thought possible. But unhealthy competition puts a disproportionate amount of emphasis on the outcome rather than valuing the process, the experience and the journey.
And this applies to far more than just sport. It applies to almost every area of life, including work.
Think about a job interview. You walk into the room knowing you really want the role. You prepare, you perform, you answer the questions as well as you can… and then someone else gets the job.
Or perhaps you have been working towards a promotion. You believed you were ready, you put yourself forward, but ultimately the opportunity went to someone else.
Of course, there is disappointment. That is completely natural.
But losing out doesn’t necessarily mean you have lost.
That interview may have taught you how to communicate your experience more effectively. It may have highlighted areas of your technical knowledge that you could strengthen. It may have challenged you to think differently about how you present yourself.
And that promotion you didn’t secure? Perhaps it has made you think more carefully about what you actually want from your career. Perhaps it has identified skills you need to develop before the next opportunity comes along.
Sometimes, not getting what we wanted gives us something we didn’t know we needed: perspective.
The problem starts when we constantly compare our journey with someone else’s.
We see someone getting the promotion, securing the big client, launching the business, buying the house or seemingly achieving everything we want, and we measure our own progress against their highlight reel.
But we rarely know the full story.
We don’t see the setbacks, the uncertainty, the sacrifices or the failures that happened behind the scenes.
And more importantly, their journey isn’t our journey.
Healthy competitors are less concerned with how they stack up against everyone else and more interested in stretching into new realms of their own potential.
The question becomes less “Am I better than them?” and more “Am I better than I was yesterday?”
That is a much healthier measure of success.
Because perhaps winning isn’t always about coming first.
Perhaps winning is having the courage to put yourself forward.
It’s walking into the interview.
It’s applying for the promotion.
It’s starting again after rejection.
It’s learning from the feedback.
It’s developing a new skill.
It’s becoming more confident.
It’s discovering what you’re capable of.
And sometimes, it’s simply having the resilience to keep going when things haven’t gone your way.
The winner doesn’t take it all.
There is enormous value in the journey, and there can be multiple winners when we stop viewing success as a finite prize that only one person can claim.
So by all means, compete. Be ambitious. Set big goals. Want to succeed.
But don’t let comparison rob you of the enjoyment of getting there.
Your only real competition is the person you were yesterday.
And if you’re continually learning, stretching and moving forward, perhaps you’re doing far better than you think.
References taken from Breath Journal Magazine
Rotheram Carrington Financial Recruitment