There will be a time when you would have to compete with others but wait!!

Do it when the time is right or, better still do it when it’s time to compete.

Until then just compete with yourself and find your own measures of success. 

Life may be a competition but not a race against anyone else. What matters at any given stage is YOU. Just you. When you compete with yourself, not only you develop yourself, but you also save a lot of time which you end up wasting otherwise in convincing yourself against others’ opinions.

There’s a beautiful quote by Matshona Dhliwayo that reads as

“To be a champion, compete; to be a great champion, compete with the best; but to be the greatest champion, compete with yourself.”

It is easy to compete with other people in routine and define your victory based upon the outcome. You may win but it may not necessarily be due to your own strengths. It could be due to the shortcomings of the other person.

Therefore, winning in this scenario is not going to take you too far because when you compared yourself with others, you analysed your performance based only upon your metrics vis-à-vis the other person.

Your victory may make you feel competent and superior than the other person temporarily, but it may affect your true potential that you may possess deep down. By following such kind of an approach, your potential may just remain untapped.

Therefore, the best approach would always be not to compete with anyone else except on the day of your match when you do not just compete but play to win.

“Be your biggest competitor, challenge yourself each day to be better than you were yesterday.” – Kaoru Shinmon

When you learn to compete with yourself, you sail on your own journey of Badminton as a sport. You know that you will achieve what you are working for at the right time. You are not in a rush; you are not in a panic situation. You are just calm, composed and focused on what your goal is.

You are looking inwardly analysing yourself rather than outwardly and comparing your game with the others. You understand that your comparison with others is not going to take you anywhere.  

Therefore, remember that the toughest competition of all times will always be the badminton player you see in the mirror.

Your success would be defined by the person in the mirror. He or she is the one who decides how successful you are. That person is the one who decides your freedom to achieve greatness on the court.

When you stop competing with the rest, your sense of success gets clearer. You are not bothered about what others think and expect out of you. You define your own success and live by its terms.

In competing with yourself, you become stronger, develop your grit, remain liberated from the comparison metrics with others that define temporarily how good you are.

You must remember that there is more to your success in future than competing with others now. Therefore, enjoy the journey of your own hard work and focus on your vision.

You can get inspiration from PV Sindhu who trains so intense that her training session lasts 12 to 13 hours a day.

“I sit down sometimes and think I actually don't have time.” - PV Sindhu

Obviously, her top priority is Badminton and she is willing to pay the price for her triumphs. It doesn’t come so easy.

You can have a glimpse of her training video that went viral in 2019 when she was preparing herself for the Olympics.

"The biggest competition is myself. I am not looking to follow others or pull them down. I'm planning to test my own boundaries." – Rain

When you have a self-competing attitude, you envision becoming the best Badminton player that you can be. The pleasure you get from defeating another player in your practice session is momentary whereas the motivation you get from looking inwards for your future achievement is eternal.  

This kind of an attitude is far better to possess than otherwise.

"Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best that you are capable of becoming." - John Wooden

So when you are constantly working on the ways to improve yourself and trust your ability to develop your skills, your level of skills against others become issueless. Then, you become your own self-motivation.  

Your true competition is not any other guy, but the one who is looking at you in the mirror.

I am outlining a few valuable outcomes of competing only with yourself on a daily basis and why it’s the best way forward to improve yourself:

1. You remain focused on your goals

Staying focused is the key. When you ignore competing with others, your entire focus would automatically switch to yourself. You would begin to explore your own potential rather than comparing your daily activities with the rest and getting distracted.

2. You become your own yardstick

You would become your own yardstick of progress and performance. What you did yesterday would become your milestone to gauge your performance of today.

With a focused mind, you would mend yourself in a way that would bring you closer to your vision and goals.

3. You become self-motivated:

You would have no one to demotivate you with your daily progress and you would simply adhere to your routine activities and goals, progressing one step at a time.

This consistent practice with persistent mindset would do better than having to compare yourself with others occasionally.  

4. You don’t get overwhelmed:

At any given stage, having an inferiority or superiority complex can struck you with demotivation. When you begin to compete with yourself, you shall have no one to make you feel overwhelmed with your performance.

Your next milestone would be to surpass the milestone you set up yesterday.

5. Self confidence

When you are your sole focus and surpass your milestone, you begin to develop your self-confidence which is the ultimate key to your performance.

Nothing beats self-confidence on any front.

6. No jealousy whatsoever

You have no one to compare or match against until the D-day and hence, you refrain from hating those who may perform better than you on a given day. No jealousy whatsoever means focus on your own training and doing your best. 

The best bet therefore is to compete with yourself only and let others be.

Look inwards than outwards.

If you continuously compete with others, you become bitter but if you continuously compete with yourself, you become better.

“Living one's life as if it is a competition between oneself and others, is an inevitable path to a stressful life.”

When you are unto yourself, you own the training, you define your success and finally, you own your journey.