In business and in life, it’s easy to get caught up in comparisons. We look at colleagues who seem to climb faster, friends who appear more successful, or leaders who always seem two steps ahead. The temptation is to measure our worth by where others stand.

But your greatest competitor isn’t sitting across the table, it’s the version of you from last month or last year.

Why Competing With Others is a Trap

When you make external competition your focus, you hand over control of your progress. You tie your success to someone else’s journey, goals, and circumstances, things you can’t control.

• A colleague may have had different opportunities.
• A peer might have strengths you don’t share.
• Someone else’s success might not even align with your definition of fulfilment.

Comparisons don’t just drain your energy, they cloud your vision. You stop asking the right question: Am I better today than I was yesterday?

The Power of Competing With Yourself

Growth comes from measuring against your own benchmarks. When you look inward, the focus shifts from envy to improvement.

• Progress becomes personal. It’s about your skills, mindset, and resilience.
• Success becomes sustainable. You’re not sprinting against others, you’re building long-term growth.
• Learning becomes the metric. Mistakes aren’t failures, they’re lessons that fuel your next step forward.

Ask yourself:

• Have I grown since last year?
• Did I learn something new last month?
• Am I making choices today that my future self will thank me for?

If the answer is yes, then you’re winning, regardless of how anyone else is doing.

Practical Ways to Focus on Self-Competition

1. Set Personal BenchmarksDefine clear, measurable goals that reflect your own growth journey, not someone else’s milestones.
2. Track Your ProgressKeep a journal or digital tracker to see how your skills, habits, or mindset evolve over time.
3. Celebrate Incremental WinsSmall steps forward, a new skill learned, a challenge overcome, a habit built, compound into meaningful growth.
4. Reflect RegularlyTake time each week or month to ask: What did I learn? How did I grow? Where can I push myself further?
5. Redefine SuccessStop using someone else’s scoreboard. Define what growth, fulfilment, and success look like for you.

The Leadership Perspective

For leaders, this mindset is especially powerful. When teams stop competing against each other and start striving to improve themselves, collaboration flourishes. Instead of hoarding knowledge or chasing credit, people push to elevate their own performance, and, in turn, elevate the whole organisation.

Remember

The only person you need to outperform is the one you were yesterday. Growth is a lifelong race, but the lane you run in belongs to you alone.

Measure your progress by looking back, and ensuring you’ve moved forward.