When it comes to personal development, I believe the best way to achieve it is by becoming the best version of yourself. That means, the today you should be better than your yesterday version. There’re some strong reasons to believe that you should only compete with yourself, and we will discuss them in this article.
1. You won’t be selfish
Let’s be honest about it. You can’t wish to be better than someone else without eventually feeling selfish. Because that’s the feeling that you will focus on if you 
always match your performance with your competitors. All you will think about is being better than them, and that’s a selfish feeling.
Think about it this way: If someone from the area of your work, that you consider competition, comes at you and requires your help, you will probably doubt yourself if you should do it or not. And that’s not the type of person you want to become
I believe in equality and I believe that strong people help others achieve the same level. Big folks help others and encourage them to achieve high performance. There’s enough abundance in this world for all of us to share. If you have to put somebody down to make you feel a bit higher, that means you dropped to your lowest point possible.
2. You can study yourself faster and better
There’s an issue when it comes to studying competition and trying to out best them. The limitations that will imply such study are many and totally different. You can’t be with them all the time to see their results, what they do, what they’ve changed and what they accomplished. You will just catch a glimpse once in a while, that might even be a superficial detail, therefore it doesn’t even matter. You will think that you are smarter than them, but it’s just a feed for ego and nothing else good.
When you study yourself, that’s entirely something else. You are 24/7 with you at every step, you know your every move and you can improve each detail. That means you can achieve growth much better and much faster. You won’t be limited to information that is superficial and incomplete. You will have deep insights about every method, every result and every aspect of your craft. It’s your own world that you can totally control and master.
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3. You won’t have an external dependency for your growth
Anything that creates an external dependency is limited. You can only grow to a limited amount when you measure your progress with other people’s accomplishments. First of all, we all are unique and we all want different things for our lives. We also have different qualities and different flaws. Something that I’m good at, might be the weak point for another person.
With yourself won’t be a limit. You can expand as much as you wish. You won’t have to wait to see results in others and then maybe apply something to yourself. You can progress with each and every step, improving every second as you do your work. You will have control over your own abilities and qualities, you can use your strong points when advancing through your personal development.
4. If you see them as competition, you won’t learn valuable information
The truth is, we can only master our area if we totally learn everything about it. That means your competition is a very valuable source of information. Of course, you will do it your own way, and you will have your own personal touches, but it’s important to learn and study every aspect of your craft.
All the successful people in the world, inventors, artists, entrepreneurs, they all have this amazing thirst for information. They study their craft as much as applying it. You won’t know and you can’t know all the details about it just from yourself. There’s always a different point of view, and our mind should be open to all of them.
As a motivational speaker, as you can imagine or not, I read one book a week about my area of expertise. I study other motivational speakers, entrepreneurs, psychologists, nutritionists, fitness trainers and everyone who can teach me something new about what I do. I can’t become a master at this if I don’t study it a lot. I’m a performance addict and you should be the same. If you constantly look for ways to improve yourself, you can be successful and you can achieve anything you want. But without constant improvement, you will eventually hit a plateau.
So why would I miss such valuable information, like what others do in my niche, by considering them my competition just to feed a lack of emotional fulfillment? My ego won’t lead me to my success. My learning will. That’s why I see them as mentors. Jim Rohn, Anthony Robbins, John C. Maxwell, Brendon Burchard, just to name a few amazing people who I had the honor to learn from. I had the honor to read their books, watch their videos and just soak in the amazing valuable information they offer. And I use that as a foundation to build my own path.
But that’s not it. Bloggers, speakers, leaders, and anyone who can provide me a new piece of information that I found valuable, is someone I look up to. Because after I get all these insights and details I can get back at the best part of my growth: becoming a better version of myself.
I hope you liked this article and I challenge you, if you ever saw people in your niche as competition, to try finding lessons in them that you can apply now to improve yourself. Leave your comments below, I would love to hear from you. To your progress! ✌
