Your Authentic Self Has No Competition, It’s Only A Struggle When You’re Trying To Be Someone Else

I know it’s easy to feel like it’s you against the world.

I know it’s almost instinctive to think that the competition is outside of you, that there is only so much space to take up in the world. I know that you assume one person’s beauty distracts from your own, one person’s light dims your shine, one person’s success diminishes all you’ve done.

Except it doesn’t, and the longer you think that way, the more you’re going to continue to hold yourself back.

The truth is that you’ll only be in competition with other people when you’re trying to be them, or adopt elements of who they are.

Your authentic self has no competition because there is nobody who is here to do exactly what you do, in exactly the way you do it.

Your authentic self has no competition because there is nobody precisely like you, and the sooner you lean into who you really are, the more you’ll lean out of trying to fight for your identity, because it’s nothing you have to compete over in the first place.

Your authentic self has no competition. It only becomes one when you’re competing for an identity that is not your own.

When you are standing in your full and true power, you realize that the feeling of competitiveness toward those around you dissolves. You no longer envy what they have, you no longer desire what they’ve done. That’s because you’re no longer trying to build a life that’s not your own.

The problem isn’t that you think someone else is more attractive than you.

The problem isn’t that you think someone else has accomplished more than you.

The problem isn’t that you think someone else is doing so much better than you, or is so much far ahead than you.

The problem isn’t that you think someone else has the relationship you so deeply desire.

The problem is that you have not found your own inimitable beauty because you are too busy trying to build yourself into something you’re not instead of enhancing what you already are.

The problem is that you have not yet found the unique work that you are meant to offer the world because you are too busy trying to re-create the work that others have impacted humanity with.

The problem is that you have not made the progress that you so deeply desire, and instead of remedying that, you’re just begrudging others who have.

The problem is that you have not accepted that life does not begin and end with a partner, and the envy you feel towards others who have that is probably more of a worth measurement than it is actual envy over a specific person they’re dating or engaged to.

The problem is that you’re so busy standing in other people’s shadows, you have forgotten about your own light.

The problem is that while you’ve spent so much time upholding other people’s lives as the ideal, you’ve forgotten to care about your own.

The problem is that if you always consider yourself one step behind, one problem away and one quirk beneath everyone around you, you remain there, until you decide you’re going to rise.

You rise by lifting yourself.

You rise by caring enough about your future to invest in right now. You rise by making yourself the best you can possibly be, instead of a half-assed version of someone else you think is better than you.

You’re never going to arrive at “good enough” when you’re trying to be who you’re not.

The only way through is to truly lean into everything you have to offer, give it your all, and show up completely. When you stop fighting to leave your identity behind, you find that all of the dreams you’ve ever had were only accomplishable when you turned completely inward, and embraced exactly who you are.

Other people are not the competition.

You are.