“On the line!”
No exclamation has ever brought me a more distinct mix of great joy and crippling anxiety.
These were the words my hall of fame high school football coach, Paul Kopko, would shout to the team at the end of practice. Well, almost the end.
What followed was the last conditioning drill of the day — the dreaded “gassers” — timed sprints across the width of the practice field and back. If everyone finished on time, the rep counted. If not, everyone had to run another gasser.
I was neither the fastest nor the slowest player on the team, and I was rarely at risk of missing the time cutoff. What I found myself wrestling with during these sprints was a simple question: Am I going to run as fast as I can and push myself to the limits of my ability, or am I going to run just fast enough not to finish last?
To what would I anchor myself — the comparison to those around me, or to the limits of my abilities?
Don’t we face this same question every day? In the digital age, we are constantly subjected to others’ highlight reels, showing only what they want us to see. This environment makes it increasingly easy to fall into what’s often called the “comparison trap.” In a world of likes and shares, opportunities to seek external validation are everywhere.
Relying solely on external validation — particularly against a curated and subjective standard — is a losing, never-ending game. Such reliance relinquishes control of one’s fulfillment and replaces it with envy, disappointment, and/or self-doubt.
We have the agency to decide for ourselves where to anchor — for instance, to our values, to an objective standard, to our level of effort, or to our consistency. Each individual has a unique journey shaped by his/her talents, personal experiences, challenges, and timing. So when you ground yourself in someone else’s perceived achievement, you’re ignoring the different contexts that shape your specific life. Celebrate your own progress and milestones, no matter how small they may seem in comparison.
There is, of course, a time and place for external feedback. We don’t lead just for the sake of leading: Leaders have an obligation to achieve results. How we pursue those results, however, remains within our control.
Anchoring ourselves to our values and having the self-awareness to understand and trust our strengths is actually the path to the best results. Focusing more on why and how we do things should outweigh our focus on what we do and what results we achieve. We can languish in the pool of comparison, or we can maximize our talents with joy and passion to create our own success.
As much as I dreaded those gassers, they taught me that not having the natural ability to finish first didn’t matter. They taught me that winning the long game meant always giving everything I had to my team. Winning meant bringing everything I had every day, being a good teammate, always seeking improvement, and finding joy in the journey.
Still, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I lit up every time Coach would yell, “Bring it in!”
Running Your Own Race: Letting Go of the Comparison Trap was originally published in Horizon Performance on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
