“Before comparing yourself with others, win the battle with yourself. Strive to be better today than yesterday, and better tomorrow than today.” – Daisaku Ikeda
This past weekend we had the chance to cheer each other on and see how much weight we could move and then run as fast as we could, even if it was a little longer than one mile. It’s a fun opportunity to cheer each other on, and see what we’re personally capable of achieving. Whenever we put ourselves out there with a score or weight and others do as well, a leaderboard emerges and it can be really easy to gauge our performance based on others scores.
This is a natural occurrence, and in and of itself isn’t anything bad. It can become an issue when we belittle our own accomplishments because of what the scoreboard says. We see this in sport all the time. What do the silver and bronze medalist feel, or those that do not make the podium? Was the pursuit of the endeavor worthless? Athletes will certainly experience a letdown if they do not achieve the goal they set out to, and the outcome when others are involved is much more outside of our control than in our control.
Establishing a personal goal of what you would like to achieve or work towards is a great way to push our effort and motivation to help us take action toward the things that matter to us. Can we focus our attention and specific goals to the factors that are inside of our control? Our attitude, effort, preparation, routine, and the ways we get ready for and execute during the performance. If we focus on these factors, it will help us to handle our personal performance in a way that allows us to be proud of how we showed up and worked regardless of the outcome.
Our goal for this week is to identify what will make us proud of how we show up at the gym each day and in our lives and judge ourselves by that standard.
