As a kid, I was always running, hiking, or riding a bike. I loved being in motion, going places, and staying active. In elementary school, I competed in impromptu sprint races with my classmates. Along with some of the kids in my neighborhood, we cut trails in the woods that surrounded our subdivision so we could do trail riding and cross-country running.
When I got into Junior High, I tried out for the track team. My coach wanted to use me as a utility player, so I trained in multiple disciplines. At one meet, I’d run sprints and long jump. At another, I might run relay races or mid-distance sprints. At another, I might find myself running longer distances, including the mile and the two-mile run.
One day, my coach told me he wanted me to learn to run hurdles. He spent time with me, helping me develop the proper form to step over the hurdle, not jump it, without breaking my stride as I sprinted down the track. It’s important to time your steps from the starting blocks to the first hurdle, so you can lead with the correct foot, step over the hurdle, and get into a running rhythm.
Once you clear the first hurdle, it’s three strides, step over the next hurdle. Three strides, another hurdle. You repeat the process until you clear all ten hurdles, then sprint to the finish. It’s a combination of speed, stamina, and technique. The faster you can get to the first hurdle, and the faster you are in each of the three strides, the better your time.
Staying low, leaning forward, and stepping over the hurdle with your lead leg, then pulling your trail leg up, so it is parallel to the ground as you clear the hurdle, allows you to step back into your sprint without breaking stride. Once you get the rhythm down, it’s a matter of getting better, faster, and more efficient with each sprint down the track.
One of my coach’s pet peeves was drifting. This happens when you take your eyes off the finish line and look to the right or left at your competitors on the track. It not only slows you down, it also extends the distance you have to run. Don’t forget the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. When you’re drifting, you’re not moving straight ahead.
When the difference between winning and losing is often less than a 1/10th of a second, drifting can be the difference between first and second, or not even making the top three.
My coach’s instructions were simple: Stay in your lane and run your own race. Keep your eyes on the finish line. That is your mission. That is your goal. Stay in your lane, run your race.
As we neared the end of the spring season, I qualified to compete in the Regional Finals in several categories, including hurdles. The top three competitors would represent their school at the State Finals. I made it through the preliminary heats and prepared for the finals. I was in lane four, right next to the top-seeded hurdler in our region, who was in lane three.
I had one of the best times of the year in the prelims, making me a likely candidate to compete at the State Finals. It all came down to the final 8 competitors on the track.
The gun fired, and we both sprinted down the track. Through the first five hurdles, we were evenly matched. By the sixth hurdle, I began to slowly pull ahead. By the ninth hurdle, my lead had increased. It was then that I took my eyes off the finish line and looked to my left to see exactly where my competition was. I drifted slightly, losing my rhythm in the balance.
My trailing leg struck the hurdle, and I stumbled. I fell to the track, skidding on my left shoulder. I rolled forward, jumped to my feet, and sprinted to the finish line, only to cross in fourth place. What should have been a trip to the State Finals ended in disaster.
Rather than going to the State Finals, I ended up in the Doctor’s office having pieces of the rubber and polyurethane cut out of my shoulder that had been embedded during my fall. Rather than wearing a medal, I was wearing a bandage on my shoulder.
What happened?
Rather than staying in my lane and focusing on running my own race, I turned my eyes (and my attention) toward my competition and away from my goal.
In life, we learn about competition at an early age. We compare ourselves to the other kids in the neighborhood or in school. We compare ourselves to our siblings. Perhaps you were among the millions of children who were compared to their siblings. Did your parents ever ask you a question like this, “Why can’t you be like your brother or your sister?”
We compared ourselves to others. Others compared us to others. So we experienced the comparison conundrum both internally and externally, often in the early, formative years of our lives. It’s no wonder we grew up struggling with self-confidence and self-esteem issues.
Things only worsened when we entered public education. Our grades in school are posted, so everyone can see how we rank in comparison to other students. Who’s the most popular? The smartest? The most athletic? The most musically talented? The most likely to succeed? Everything around us emphasizes comparison and contrast.
Now, with the advent of social media, we can compare ourselves with the rest of the world. Even if we’re not comparing ourselves, others are comparing themselves to us. And the world can be vicious in this regard. It’s easy to hide behind a nameless, faceless screen and compare, contrast, criticize, ridicule, and humiliate others.
However, we’ve been taught it is important to fit in (often at all costs), be a part, feel like we belong, or see where we stand in the pecking order of things.
But in doing so, we fall into the comparison conundrum.
We end up drifting outside our assigned lane in life, taking our eyes off the finish line, and we stop running our own race.
We want to be compared to everyone else, but we’re different from everyone else.
This is the comparison conundrum.
One of my friends, Shane Borza, got married a few years back. Nothing unusual about that, right? Not if you know the venue for the wedding. Shane and his bride did something no one else to that point had ever done; they were married on a ledge on the face of El Capitan, a 3,000-foot vertical granite monolith in Yosemite National Park, California. It’s the same place where Alex Honnold completed the first solo ascent of El Cap.
To “train for the wedding” required that the entire wedding party learn how to safely scale the side of El Cap to position themselves for a unique, one-of-a-kind wedding experience.
While the bride and groom were excited about their union, the entire wedding party, along with the film crew, had to focus their attention on the mountain to ensure everyone got up and down the sheer cliff face safely. Each member of the wedding party had to “stay in their own lane and run their own race” as they scaled to a ledge on El Cap where the actual ceremony took place, and then make their way back down the unforgiving mountain.
You can find Shane’s story by searching for “El Cap Wedding.” It’s available on several streaming services, including YouTube, Fawsome, Tubi, and Amazon.
When you’re climbing a mountain, you can’t allow yourself to get distracted. Summiting the mountain requires that you keep your eyes on the rock, remain present in the moment, and stay in your own lane. You’ve got to run your own race, climb at your own pace, and not allow what else may be happening around you to draw your attention away from what really matters, staying on the mountain.
Today, the world around us fosters a climate of comparison. It beckons you to be like someone else, to want what others have, to measure your success against the accomplishments of others. This also fosters a climate of contract, as it points out what is missing, lacking, or just outside your reach. Is it any wonder that comparison and contrast cultivate and nurture feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, ineptitude, depression, and anxiety?
Social media adds fuel to the fire, driving discontentment. This “polished” view of the world in carefully curated clips leads to continual comparison and contrast, amplifying the angst of feeling “less than” others. In doing so, it breeds dissatisfaction with your own journey, resentment in your relationships, fosters jealousy on the job, and causes you to lose sight of your personal goals, dreams, and ambitions.
What are you doing?
You’re drifting out of your own lane, making the race you were called to run longer. If you drift too far, you find yourself in a lane you weren’t assigned to run in, and potentially interfering not only with running your own race, but also impeding someone else in the process.
If you’ve followed me for any period of time, you know that I often say that “you were put on this earth ON purpose, FOR a purpose.” You were put on this earth to accomplish something that only you can do. It was for this reason that you were put on this earth at this time in the course of human history.
No one else can do what you were put on this earth to do. It’s a race only you can run, one you’re uniquely equipped to run, so why not just stay in your own lane and run your own race?
Science backs this up. The number of potential DNA combinations is nearly infinite. With 3 billion base pairs in a haploid genome, even considering biological constraints, the possibilities far exceed the number of humans who have ever lived, or will ever live in the future. That means you’re unique, one-of-a-kind.
Think about that for a moment. If you trace humanity back to its origins, no one who has ever lived to this point has had the exact same genetic makeup as you, unless you’re an identical twin. If you fast-forward into the future, you’ll not find a single person who has the same genetic makeup as you.
How can you then compare yourself to others, or allow others to compare themselves to you, when you’re unique, one-of-a-kind?
That also means that other people’s opinions of you don’t really matter that much, especially when you’re doing what you’ve uniquely been put on this earth to accomplish. I heard someone say the other day that comparing yourself to others was being a participant in a game you weren’t invited to play in the first place.
In track and field, you wear the lightest-weight clothing you can, as you don’t want to carry additional weight as you sprint, jump, or run. Living in the world of comparison is like running a race with a parachute attached to your back or wearing a weighted vest. Both are unnecessary impediments that only serve to slow you down.
You can’t win when you’re impeded.
When you compare yourself to others, you’re comparing your race to that of someone else whose race you were never created to run. You’re drifting, extending the length of your race in the process, taking your eyes off your mission and calling, and you may find yourself, like me, stumbling over a hurdle in the process.
How do you avoid the comparison conundrum?
It’s simple. Just be you.
Stay in your own lane. Run your own race. Keep your attention focused on what matters.
Even when I ran as part of a relay team, I had to run my own leg of the journey. Willie, Paul, or Kenny couldn’t run my leg of the race for me. I wasn’t responsible for how well the other team members ran their leg. I was responsible for how well I ran mine. If we all ran well, we finished well. But it required that each of us stay in our own lane and run our own race.
Irish playwright Oscar Wilde famously said, “Be yourself; everyone else is taken.” The world needs original, unique, authentic people to do what they have been uniquely put on this earth to accomplish. You can’t do that when you’re constantly comparing and contrasting yourself with others who weren’t called to do what you do.
Stop comparing yourself to others. Stop trying to run someone else’s race. Get in the blocks, set your intentions, and look down the track at the finish line that awaits. When the starter’s gun goes off, explode out of the blocks, get into the rhythm of the race, and don’t take your eyes off the prize at the end of the track. Step over the hurdles, spring three more steps, and step over the next one. Once you clear the last hurdle, sprint to the finish and break the tape.
Here’s what you’re going to discover.
The race wasn’t about competing against the other competitors on the track. The race was about you competing with yesterday’s version of yourself. It’s about performing a little bit better than the last time you ran, honing your talent and skill with each journey down the track. Run a little bit faster. Jump a little bit farther.
Everyone else is focused on running their race. Why should you do anything less?
When I was competing in martial arts, every time I showed up at a tournament, I had two choices. I could fight my own fight or fight someone else’s. When I fought my own fight, I won. When I fought someone else’s, I lost. So, guess whose fight I fought when I showed up every Saturday to compete?
In life, you face the same two choices. You can either live the life you were created to live, or you can attempt to live someone else’s. When you live your life, you win. When you don’t, you don’t.
In my book, “Black Belt Secrets of Success,” I ask the reader: How much success do you want to experience in life? I answer that question with the #1 success principle from the book, “Successful people do daily what unsuccessful people do sometimes, or not at all.”
What do successful people do? They run their own race, they fight their own fight, and they live their own life. That’s what Black Belt Leaders do.
How do you avoid the comparison conundrum?
It’s simple. Just be you.
Stay in your own lane. Run your own race. Keep your attention focused on what matters.
Your future success awaits.
