Be in charge of your path

Yoseph reveals startling yet absolutely correct insights into the concept of competition, especially at school level. Is it really true that comparing ourselves to others will just hold us back even more?

Going to school, learning everything that is being taught, and doing well in exams is a challenge that many of us students face. However, there is added load to our cart which comes from the pressure to do good, or better. Parents dream of their children coming out best from their class, school, region, and even country. Sometimes, we find ourselves with a desire to do better than others. Do we really need to compete in order to succeed? Yes and no.
Does the fact that my classmate got an 85% in a Physics test affect my performance? Are our scores related in any way? The answer is simple: no! The grade or score you get is in no way affected by the grade your classmates get, therefore competition between students simply becomes unnecessary. Some people may argue that competition helps to motivate you to do good when comparing yourself with others. If I want to get a 90% in Maths because my friends got 90% in Maths, then I will be trying to satisfy my ego that keeps on telling me, ‘you have to prove that you are as good as him, that you can do better than others.’ Sometimes we find ourselves wishing our neighbor performs badly so that we can console ourselves that we can do better than others. This is the spirit that such competition instills in us, and it is not healthy, because we can end up losing valuable friends, and at the same building huge ego. And, most importantly, at the end of the day, performing better than someone doesn’t make your intelligent or smart! It simply means that there are people who performed worse than you.
Therefore how can you motivate yourself to work harder? One of the good ways is competition. But this time, it is a slightly different from the kind we talked about earlier: it is competition with yourself. If you got a 45% in your last test, you can compete with yourself and get a 65% on your next test. By competing with yourself, you have improved your performance, and you are not affected by other people’s scores. You set your own goals, comparing your progress over time, not other people’s performance. You create a challenge for yourself, and achieving this challenge is a success. Such a challenge could be moving from a 25% to a 35%. You have succeeded if you move from a 25% to a 35%! But if you are comparing yourself with others, your only success comes from others failures and your superiority, which makes you dependant on others. One should not depend on others to succeed. By competing with yourself, you could end up improving compared to others, but that should not be your focus. Your focus is to do better than what you did the last time. This focus becomes constant improvement!
If you compare yourself with others, you are setting boundaries for yourself. If you are number one in your class, then there is no more motivation and you remain stagnant. In one school I was the best in Maths, and I was very comfortable in that position. Many times I did the bare minimum, and still stayed first. Trouble came when I changed school and I was no more first! Because in my previous school, I was competing with others, and because I did better than them I thought I was really good in Maths, soon to find out that there was a lot to work on. So I struggled in my new school to keep up with the demanding work. If I had competed with myself though, I wouldn’t have been comfortable on that position and would have continued to improve.
If you are last in your class, then going on top of the rank could seem an impossible task, and it would just make you not want to try. Following others makes you a sheep with no focus and you just go where the crowd goes. But making your own path helps you improve constantly and avoid stagnancy.
Competing with others simply gives you a distorted meaning of success. Academic success is when a student achieves to the maximum of his/her ability; your ability, not someone else’s. Competing with yourself, you can keep yourself on a ladder, continuously improving. It helps you motivate yourself where no one else is motivated, helps you be creative, and respect others as well. By competing with yourself, you are no longer dictated by the environment but it gives you the power to create your own sphere of success and gives you the authority over your own path.