Scroll through social media for five minutes and you’ll see someone faster, stronger, richer, more successful, or seemingly further along in their journey than you are. It’s easy to fall into the trap of measuring your progress against someone else’s highlight reel.
But comparison has a cost.
It can steal your focus, drain your confidence, and shift your attention away from the one thing that actually leads to progress: competing with yourself.
Over the course of my career as a professional BMX racer, I learned that one of the most powerful forms of competition isn’t against other athletes—it’s against the person you were yesterday.
Learning to Compete Alone
People often imagine elite athletes constantly surrounded by competitors, pushing each other in training every day. And while those moments do happen, the reality is that a lot of training is done alone.
Throughout my career, there were countless days where it was just me, my program, and the work that needed to get done.
That meant if I wanted to improve, I had to find a way to compete with myself.
Sometimes that meant trying to beat a previous lifting number in the gym.
Sometimes it meant shaving a fraction of a second off a sprint time.
Sometimes it meant executing a skill just a little cleaner than the day before.
Those small internal competitions became the engine of improvement.
Don’t get me wrong—I loved training with competitors. Being around other high-level athletes can raise your standards and push you to another level.
But when those training partners weren’t there, the standard still had to exist.
That’s where self-competition becomes powerful.
Instead of asking, “Am I better than them?”
The question becomes, “Am I better than I was last week?”
Why Comparison Is So Dangerous
The problem with constantly comparing yourself to others is that you lose control of the scoreboard.
Someone will always be ahead of you.
Someone will always be faster, stronger, or further along in their career.
If your sense of progress is tied to other people, you’re putting your motivation in a place you can’t control.
And in the age of social media, the comparison game has become even more intense.
You see someone landing a big deal.
Someone hitting a new personal record.
Someone celebrating a huge milestone.
What you don’t see are the setbacks, the failures, the quiet days of grinding when progress feels slow.
When you compare your everyday reality to someone else’s highlight reel, it’s easy to feel like you’re falling behind—even when you’re actually making great progress.
A Humbling Reminder After Retirement
I was reminded of this lesson recently after retirement.
A friend encouraged me to compete in a HYROX race. For those who aren’t familiar, it’s an endurance fitness competition that combines running with a series of challenging workstations. It’s a completely different kind of challenge than BMX racing.
I decided to give it a shot.
When the race was over, I finished around 400th place out of roughly 1,000 competitors.
To be honest, that was probably the worst placement I’ve ever had at a sporting event.
When you spend years competing at the highest level, that kind of result can be a humbling experience.
But it was also a great reminder.
Because instead of focusing on the placement, I started thinking about something much more productive: my own performance.
What was my time?
Where could I improve?
What would it look like to do better next time?
The next time I line up for a race like that, I won’t be worried about whether I finish 300th place or 500th place.
My goal will be simple:
Beat the version of me that showed up last time.
That mindset is freeing.
The Power of Self-Competition
When you compete with yourself, progress becomes much clearer.
You don’t need to know what anyone else is doing.
You just need to know:
- What did I do last time?
- What can I do better this time?
That approach creates a very different kind of motivation.
Instead of chasing someone else’s results, you focus on incremental improvement.
A little faster.
A little stronger.
A little more consistent.
Those small gains compound over time.
In sports, that might mean shaving fractions of a second off a start or lifting a little more weight in the gym.
In business, it might mean improving your process, your communication, or your leadership.
The principle is the same.
Progress comes from improvement, not comparison.
The Goal: Be a Little Better Than Yesterday
One of the simplest and most powerful performance goals you can set is this:
Be a little better than you were yesterday.
Not perfect.
Not the best in the world.
Just better than the previous version of yourself.
That might mean:
- Learning something new
- Improving a skill
- Putting in a little more effort
- Showing up with a better mindset
Those small daily improvements might not look dramatic in the moment.
But over time, they create massive growth.
It’s the same philosophy that guided me throughout my career as an athlete. Every training session didn’t need to be extraordinary—it just needed to move the needle forward.
Focus on the Only Standard That Matters
The truth is, comparison will always exist.
There will always be someone ahead of you and someone behind you.
But if you constantly measure your progress against others, you’ll always feel like you’re chasing something.
When you compete with yourself, the game changes.
Your focus shifts to growth.
Your motivation becomes internal.
Your progress becomes measurable.
And most importantly, you stay in control of your journey.
Because at the end of the day, the only standard that truly matters is this:
Are you becoming a better version of yourself?
If the answer to that question is yes, then you’re already winning.
– Connor Fields
