Life is a swimming competition — there’s no time to look around. It’s all about staying focused on your lane and pushing forward. The only thing you can do to get ahead is to break your personal record.
Instead of comparing yourself to others, focus on your background, motivation and goals. No one knows you better than you know yourself. Only you know all the obstacles you’ve overcome. It’s important to highlight your abilities, the standards you’ve set for yourself and the personal and professional aspirations you strive for.
“(You versus you) is the strongest match you will ever have,” said Keylan Morgan, assistant director for college readiness at the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. “You have to constantly challenge yourself internally. And with respect to that, you also have to understand how you are motivated. Some people are extrinsically motivated, where it’s what’s going on around them is what drives them. But I often tell people they have to find that drive within.”
In order to fulfill your potential, you must discover your passions and work to develop them without getting distracted by others. Everyone has different driving forces and paths in life, and that’s OK. You might be tempted to blindly follow someone else’s steps thinking that you’re both headed in the same direction, but you run the risk of ending up in a different destination.
“At the end of the day, you’re here for yourself and you need to prioritize your goals and push yourself,” finance sophomore Alessandra Garcia said. “The goal isn’t to compare yourself to others because you’re working for what you want. Everyone has their own life goals, everyone has their own plans. What may be working for someone else may not work for you.”
Moreover, appearances are powerful and deceptive, so comparing ourselves to others is foolish. For instance, there have been many times when I feel like I’m the only one struggling in a class and later find out that everyone else was struggling as much or even more than me. Most people don’t admit their struggle and pretend like they have everything figured out, even when it’s not the case. This is why competing against others can lead to imposter syndrome.
“One of the biggest challenges that all students face at UT is imposter syndrome, and I think we get that by comparing ourselves a lot.,” Garcia said. “No one’s perfect. We really only see what people want us to see at the end of the day. So, when we compare ourselves to others, we only see the surface level of someone.”
Critics might argue that comparing yourself to others can be a source of motivation to push yourself beyond your comfort zone. While this can be true, we have to be careful when we’re competing against the inauthentic versions of others.
Remember, the real competition is you versus you. Don’t let others deceive you when you can’t see what’s happening behind the scenes.
Mendoza is a philosophy junior from El Paso, Texas.
