Entrepreneurship makes comparison easy. You see someone building a successful business, reaching a milestone, gaining a ton of customers, or creating the kind of life you’re working toward, and suddenly your own progress feels small. You might even start questioning whether you’re moving fast enough, doing enough, or even capable of getting where you want to go.
Comparison can become a distraction when you use someone else’s progress as a measurement of your own. The most valuable comparison you can make is much closer to home: Who are you today compared to who you were yesterday?
Measure Your Own Progress
Growth becomes easier to recognize when you measure yourself against your own starting point. Look at yourself and see what kind of progress you’ve made in just a year.
- Have your communication skills improved?
- Are you more confident making decisions.
- Have you become more disciplined?
- Did you learn any new skills?
- Are your relationships stronger because you’ve been more intentional with them?
- Have you finally started taking action on something you’ve been putting off?
Those improvements matter.
Your aim shouldn’t be to impress others, it should just be to improve in a way that’s meaningful to you. Pay attention to the small changes that are moving you forward. Did you handle a difficult situation better than you would have before? Did you follow through when you normally would have given up? Did you make a decision with greater confidence? Those are signs of growth. And no matter what your growth goals are, you can take them one day at a time!
Look Up Without Looking Sideways
There is tremendous value in learning from people who are further along. Find people who inspire you. Study what they do. Ask questions. Learn from their mistakes. Pay attention to the habits, decisions, and principles that helped them get where they are.
Let their success give you direction and inspiration.
Their progress can show you what may be possible, but it doesn’t tell you where you should be today. You don’t know everything that happened before you saw the result. You don’t know their circumstances, resources, opportunities, setbacks, sacrifices, or starting point.
Use successful people as teachers, examples, and sources of inspiration. Give yourself permission to admire what they’ve built without turning their progress into a judgment of your own.
Become Better Than You Were
Take a look at who you were yesterday. What did you learn? What could you handle better? Where did you show growth? What’s one thing you can improve today?
You don’t need to become someone else to move forward. You need to keep developing the person you already are.
Celebrate your progress while staying honest about where you still have room to grow. Let other people’s success inspire you without allowing it to diminish your own.
Your path belongs to you. Your pace belongs to you. Keep learning, keep improving, and keep becoming stronger than the person you were yesterday.
The best person to compete with is the person you were yesterday.
Oh, wait! One last thing! Improving is hard. There’s no doubt about that. Some days it’s more difficult than others. But the great thing about that, is you always have the choice to pick what hard thing you do next!
