Today I did the triathalon in Lausanne. I was one of the last to finish and was initially embarrassed at how far behind the main crowd I was. But then I realized that life is about competing against yourself. We all pick our own races in life and if we never want to lose than we can choose not to enter the race or only compete against people we are better than.
We are taught in school to compete. You might be on a curve against the people in your class – so if they do better you do worse. The fact is that in school you don’t really have a choice to pick your competition but when you enter the real world you can pick your opponents. You might be in a job that is a little easy for you so that now you can ‘shine’ against the colleages that you are against. You might choose not to race in the division above as in your current division you are in the top tier.
There will always be people who are better than you – if it is not in your county, than perhaps in your country or the world. You need to pick what level you are competing at and remind yourself that it is not the end of the world if you don’t win – the fact is in life you will lose more often than you will win – otherwise you are not picking the right races.