Today I had an entirely different post, but ever since my epic fail (ok that’s a little dramatic huh?) at my last 10k race I’ve been having these thoughts about failure, reaching your goals, and being your best self. So I just want to put them on writing so that I can refer to this whenever I feel down, and most importantly inspire you to keep working for your goals and never allow anything, not even a bad day that you’d consider as an epic fail (wink wink), or anyone, let you down.
Often times when I run a race, the first thing people ask me is “what place did you make it in?, a question that sometimes I feel doesn’t necessarily apply to why I’m running for (though you may remember that back in The Island I was running for overall placement, but those were different races). Why do I bring this up? Well, I believe that you shouldn’t try to be better than someone else, first and foremost, you should always try to be better than you. What do we gain from being better than somebody else? Right now I can tell you that I’m a better runner than those who finish a 10k race over 50 min, but why should I compare myself to those people? If I settle for that, then I’ll never get to know my full potential, and if we all settle for that then we will never achieve our better selves.
You should always be your number one competitor, and this applies to every single aspect in your life, it’s not necessarily limited to running, or exercising for that matter. Our goal should always be to be our best self. And we should understand that failing can be part of the process of being better. Don’t measure your success by the times you have failed, but by the times you get up and push yourself to improve. Anyone can have a bad day (like I did 10 days ago on that race), but you should never let a bad day get in the way of achieving your goal, whatever that is. Learn from the experience and move on. And if you feel like there’s nothing to learn other than the simple fact that there are inexplicable reasons that get in our way, just put in behind you and keep moving towards your goal. The satisfaction from pushing your limits, and slowly getting better beats any bad day. Think about it, if you have taken 100 steps on going forward, why are you going back to zero for taking 1 step backwards? I don’t think it adds up.
Just remember, is not about racing against others and being better than others, let others reach their goals whatever they are (and if you can, why not help them in the way?), is about racing against yourself and being your best version. You are your best competitor and motivator, you are your best chance at getting better. You will always be better than someone, but is that enough for you? Not for me, I want to be my better self, not a better than somebody else.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading, I really hope you got something positive from this post. I rarely write this much because I’m very visual and I assume you all are, but maybe I’ll start doing so more often 😉