Oprah Knows Best - Run Your Race- No One Compares to You

Comparison is the Thief of Joy

This is such a true statement and one of my favorite quotes; the quote is attributed to either Christian writer Dwight Edwards or Theodore Roosevelt. Social media makes it easier than ever to compare ourselves to others. At any given minute we’re just a click away from knowing about someone’ s career, social life, body, clothes, challenges, and triumphs. Of course, we have a tendency to compare; the only thing is we’re comparing our behind the scenes with everyone’s finished, edited, and yes filtered product.

When you compare yourself to someone else’s progress, you neglect your own. I had to remind myself of this fact the last few days. It’s been a challenging week, a ceiling leak that no one could fix, unexpected expenses, and back sliding on my healthy curves work out plan. So, needless to say I was frustrated and more vulnerable this past week. Of course it seemed like everywhere I looked someone was doing something amazing or looking amazing or you know, saving the world, at 10 years old. OK, that last one kind of made me more hopeful for the world, but you get the point.

I had to stop myself from comparing and remind myself that when you look at others to compare yourself, you take your eyes off of YOUR goals. Oprah said it best in this clip from her Master Class on Own.

Run Your Own Race

"The way you step up your game is not to worry about the other guy in any situation, because you can't control the other guy. You only have control over yourself. So it's like running a race. The energy that it takes to look back and see where the other guys are takes energy away from you. And if they're too close, it scares you. So, that's what I would say to my team all the time: Don't waste your time in the race looking back to see where the other guy is or what the other guy is doing. It's not about the other guy. It's about what can you do. You just need to run that race as hard as you can. You need to give it everything you've got, all the time, for yourself." — Oprah

So this week, my goal is to be better than I was yesterday, to run as fast as I can toward my goals and work hard to acheive them because truth be told I AM my biggest competition.

Let’s use this as our Monday Motivation and remember, the only person you’re in competition with is Yourself.