Compete with yourself – and achieve more success than you thought possible

“She has a bigger house, in a better neighborhood;
her business is much more successful than mine.”

Those were my words, about three years after starting my business.
I was comparing myself with another business woman.

Why was I so bent on comparing myself with her?
She was born in the same Eastern European country as I was.
And she came to the States approximately at the same time as I did.
Yet she was so far ahead of me… so I felt miserable.

Not exactly how you measure success
Luckily I had a good friend that had a lot more smarts than I did.
My friend kindly told me,
“You need to look at this in a different way.
How many things you can acquire it’s not exactly the best way of measuring success.
As for her business being more successful: she has a lot more business experience than you do.

You are comparing yourself with someone that left the home country while you were in the elementary school.
Someone that operated several businesses in another country before moving to the States.
Someone that is 30 years older than you are. “

My friend was right, of course.
My “nemesis” and I had few things in common: the birth place and that we moved to the States in the same year.
Yet, we were so different in many aspects, including business experience.

A good life lesson to learn
Measure success by what’s truly important to you.
Your life journey is unique, don’t compare yourself to others.

Yes, friendly competition is a good thing.
It can bring out the best in all involved.
In the long run, however, competing with yourself will get you far more benefits.

Compete with yourself not with others.
Discover what’s important to you and stay true to it.
Everyday challenge yourself to be and do better than the day before.

That’s how you can achieve more success then you ever dreamed.

What about you?
Do you compete with yourself or others?

Mariana Fieraru

Mariana Fieraru, an Eastern European transplant, fell in love with her new home shortly after landing in New York. She "discovered" pizza! Years later she still loves pizza. And so do her two feathered-kids, Sunny and Flipper

Mariana worked on both, the east and the west coast.
Big or small, each project she worked on helped define the importance of gaining and sustaining a competitive edge in an increasingly complex business environment.

Business know-how, love of teaching and writing – all combined in 2006 to form OBI.
Its mission: to make learning fun! And easy.

Through its training, consulting, and publications OBI builds bridges of knowledge to take you from where you are to
where you want to go. Using a mix of serious, informal, analytical, and optimistic approach, OBI truly makes learning fun.

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