Compare Yourself To Who You Were Yesterday

One of the chapters in Jordan Peterson’s book, 12 Rules For Life, talks about how you shouldn’t compare yourself to others.

Rule 4: Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.

How many times throughout the day do you compare yourself to the people around you?

Do you envy their possessions? Do you envy their jobs? Do you envy how talented they are?

I have a couple friends who currently hold prestigious positions in well known companies. They are highly regarded by everyone around them and have reached the pinnacle of success that one can hope to achieve at their age.

At first I was happy for their success. I knew they were smart individuals and I knew they deserved what they achieved because they had worked hard to get the jobs.

But somewhere along the way, I grew insecure and started to hate their success. As I watched them flourish and surpass me in knowledge and got to experience many different things in their lives, I grew jealous. I could not see them as my friends anymore. I saw them as my competition, and distanced myself from them.

The little luxuries they indulged in that I couldn’t have; this fact was destroying me. Every favor that they offered to me, I rejected.

Instead, I found myself trying to do them favors, to show that I wasn’t insecure at all, that I was on par with them. I’d buy them food to show that I had money, instead of a friendly gesture that a friend does for another friend.

Everything became a battle, a zero-sum game. If you win, I lose. Therefore, I must win.

But it was too late. My past behaviors caught up to me. I didn’t care about school and grades in the past, and they affected my chances in getting a prestigious job like my friends.

I started to blame the world. The structure of reality and society was at fault, while I was the ultimate victim. I stopped blaming myself for the decisions I had made in the past, and directed my anger at everywhere and everyone but myself.

Why couldn’t they notice my brilliance? That I had potential, that I was just as smart as my friends if only given the chance to prove myself? I grew more arrogant and bitter everyday. Such are the thoughts of many young, entitled, and angry young people.

Were the cards really stacked against me? Was everyone else conspiring for my failure, or was I putting a curtain over my eyes and ignoring the real problem — me?

One day I finally broke down . I came home after finding out more of my friends got jobs and my growing insecurity destroyed me. I laid in my bed and wanted to stay there forever. I had no more excuses.

Everywhere I turned it seemed like people were looking down on me. I wanted to give up, and wanted to get away from everyone, so that I wouldn’t feel this way anymore.

But the next day I looked at myself. I talked to myself for the first time in a long time. I was honest with myself. I asked myself to not look at what others want, but what I actually want.

Did I really want a job that paid me six figures, but required me to work long hours on things I didn’t care about? Did I really want all these expensive shoes, watches and clothes? Did I really want to eat at all the expensive restaurants?

When did it all become about money and prestige? When did I start only caring about what other people think about me?

Once I realized that I was chasing things I never cared about, my insecurity slowly faded. I started being more confident in my own abilities and my own interests. I focused on developing myself to become the best version of myself.

I found I was no longer comparing myself to those around me, and when my friends came to me with good news, I celebrated with a happy heart. The pangs of jealousy and anger were no longer there, and I could finally be genuinely happy for them.

Your Ultimate Enemy and Friend: Yesterday-You

Comparing yourself to your peers actually doesn’t make any sense. They come from completely different backgrounds. Nothing could be the same for you two. Your parents are different. Your relationships and friendships are different. Your values, interests and life goals are different. Your brains are wired differently and your bodies are built differently.

Everything about you two is different, yet you still try to put yourselves on the same playing field. Just because your age and current social position as a student are the same. If you valued yourself as a rational being, you’d immediately see the flaw in this logic.

Sure you might be the same age as Kylie Jenner or whoever you think is hugely successful at their age, but you’re not giving yourself a fair chance. They are gifted physically or have parents who allow them to have advantages over you. Comparing yourself to them is automatically asking yourself to feel bad about your achievements and life.

The only person who you can compare yourself and have a good chance of beating them is the person you were yesterday. They lived the same exact life as you. They had the same advantages as you. You both started life at the same line, and you can get ahead of them by improving yourself today.

The person you were yesterday is your permanent competitor. Your arch-nemesis and close friend.

It’s pretty easy to beat them too. You set standards to improve yourself little by little, and if you do one more push-up than the “yesterday-you”, you win. You’re automatically better than them.

Even though “yesterday-you” is your competitor, they’re still on your side. They won’t run away to beat you when you fail to beat them one day. One day you’ll fall and feel like you can’t get up. They’ll stay right where they are, one step ahead, and beckon to you, waiting for you to get up. They’ll wait months and years if they have to, but their goal is to run the race together.

They’ll never look down on you and will cheer you on. They want to improve too. They WANT you to beat them. But they can’t move on if you choose not to.

So if you can’t do it for yourself and you feel like you can’t go on, know that you have someone always counting on you to move forward — yourself, from yesterday.

Start the race with the you from yesterday. Set standards for yourself and try to beat yourself everyday. You’ll move forward and never look back.

Do one more push-up than you did yesterday. Run one more minute than you did yesterday. Eat just a bit healthier than you did yesterday.

In a year you won’t even recognize yourself. But you won’t have time to admire who you were yesterday because you’re too busy beating them.

Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.