One of the best pieces of advice I have ever heard was this:
compare yourself to who you were yesterday.
Instead of looking up to your inspirational figures and seeing all the space between you and them, look back.
What did you like about what you did yesterday?
What didn’t sit right?
What can you do differently today?
Then look ahead, but not at the rockstars that inspire you to take your next steps (calling myself out here). Look at the best version of you that you can realistically imagine.
Who are you becoming?
What do you need to start doing to reach that version of yourself?
What do you need to let go of?
What does yesterday tell you about your progress?
Because if you’re honest, it’s telling you something.
Our society has this quiet, constant habit of comparison.
We look at models, at successful actors, at Olympic athletes, and then we look at ourselves with a kind of frustration; sometimes even contempt, because we can’t seem to get there.
But here’s the truth we don’t sit with long enough:
Those people do not have your story.
They do not carry your exact struggles.
They may have fought their way to where they are, but they are not navigating your life, your responsibilities, your healing, your starting point.
Your combination of “life lifing” is entirely your own.
So the comparison falls apart before it even begins.
The only reliable metric you have is you.
Not the gold medalist who can swim a mile in twelve seconds flat (I still know nothing about sports), when you can’t even stand being in the water.
You.
Yesterday you.
Today you.
And the version of you you’re quietly building.
I’ve written before about making simple decisions to reinvent yourself when you stop knowing who you are, about choosing your values and creating a kind of personal mission statement to ground you in the person you’re becoming.
So come back to that.
Draw on those values.
What does someone who lives by them look like twenty years from now?
What are they doing?
How do they move through their days, daily, weekly, and monthly?
Now bring it back.
Compare that vision to yesterday.
And use today, not to overhaul your life, but to make one or two small adjustments that move you closer.
That’s it.
That’s the work.
Not becoming someone else overnight.
Not catching up to people who were never running your race.
Just becoming a little more aligned than you were yesterday.
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