Progress is made by comparing yourself to your past achievements, not to others

Progress is made by comparing yourself to your past achievements, not to others

There used to be such a thing as being a big fish in a small pond. But now, thanks to the internet, even the concept of a small community is a thing of the past. These days, we’re all part of a global community, and no matter where you are, there is always someone better than you.

This brings us to the issue of self-criticism. Now, it’s important to be critical of one’s self – if we weren’t then we’d have nothing to strive for, no motivation to better ourselves and our lives would quickly become meaningless.

Luckily, it’s a human tendency to always see the present as lacking and the future as promising much better. There’s a reason for this tendency, as it helps us stay motivated to push forward and take action.

However, self-criticism can get ugly when it becomes all about comparing ourselves to others. When this happens, we quickly lose sight of our progress.

First of all, this leads to thinking in black-and-white terms: we’ve either succeeded or failed. This prevents us from seeing the incremental improvements that are often small, but nonetheless important.

Comparisons also lead to losing sight of the big picture by focusing on a single aspect of our lives and blowing it out of proportion.

For instance, let’s say you’re reviewing the past year and notice that you weren’t as productive at work as some of your peers. You could instantly end up feeling like a total failure. But if you were to zoom out and look at all the aspects of your life, you might realize that you made some real improvements in your family life.

This is why the fourth rule is to never compare yourself to others, and to always judge yourself against your own prior accomplishments.

Comparing current results to past ones will also keep you moving forward. If you start to think that you’re always winning, this is a red flag that you need to do a better job of taking risks and giving yourself challenging goals.

When checking in on your progress, think of yourself as a home inspector. This means looking at things from top to bottom and categorizing every problem. Is it a cosmetic or a structural fault? Before you can give a stamp of approval, make a list of things that need to be improved.

This detailed approach is likely to keep you so busy on yourself that you’ll be unconcerned with how you stack up against others.