It’s the start of a new week. One that transitions into the next month of the new year, for that matter.  Hopefully you’re getting excited for what is in store for you and all this week has to offer. I wanted to share some perspective from a video I watched today. It was a compilation of talks outlining  Simon Sinek’s 10 Rules for Success.

In my opinion, the best part was where he talked about how the goal is not to outdo anyone (i.e. getting more followers, more likes etc.) but rather, how to outdo yourself.

“It’s about how to make sure the work you’re producing is better than the work you produced before.
You are your competition.”

I thought that was an incredible reminder of what is really important.  How many times do we keep ourselves from starting something because we compare ourselves to someone else who is doing what we want to do? We look at the number of followers someone has on Instagram and think, “wow. I could never get 11.5K followers…” (they might be fake! But that’s another story). We psyche ourselves out because we compare ourselves to others but what we really should be doing is playing against ourselves.

Sinek goes on to say, “Finite players play to beat the people around them. Infinite players play to be better than themselves.” And this works on both a professional, “how can we produce a product that was better than it was last week?” and personal level, “how can I become a better version of myself today than I was yesterday?”

Because once you realize that finding joy in what you’re doing comes from the moments when you recognize that you’ve accomplished something, that you’ve made progress, that’s the long-term view that will keep you in the game.

“Joy comes not from comparison but from advancement (of yourself).”

There’s one more piece to add onto this. Making any shift or change in your own perspective requires one key ingredient. The real secret is having your own internal motivation to do so. Your own ‘why’ in terms of why you’re doing X.

When you have that piece of the puzzle, you’ll actually do it. That’s the real secret to sustainable motivation in work and in life.