Compare yourself to who you were yesterday not to…
Page 111. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday not to who someone else is today
— from Who Is Flying (Self, Nature & Nurture)
In the book
As a child you looked outside yourself to learn what to value; as an adult, the work is to decide for yourself. Stop comparing outward; compete only with yesterday. Quit the race against everyone else entirely; the only worthy contest is against the person you were yesterday, competing with yourself to become a little better than you were. And mind your company, because you slowly become the average of the five people you spend the most time with — choose those five as carefully as a crew. […] Learn to sit quietly with yourself, since Pascal was right that half our miseries come from the simple inability to be alone in a room. And measure your whole life not against your brother, your neighbor, or the strangers who look so finished from the outside, but only against the person you were yesterday. That is the one race worth running, and one you can win every single day. — Who Is Flying (Self, Nature & Nurture)