Run your own race

Few months back, we (My husband and self) went to Rohit’ s school for his Sports day. Rohit is little above average in sports (My husband was an athlete). By God’s grace, Rohit has picked up some good things from his dad J, otherwise he is just like me (my MIL says that he is a Xerox copy of me)

In the hot sun, we were sitting under a shamiyana and watching the running race which was conducted for various age groups. We noticed that in one of the senior student race, a boy who was running first with a very good lead, but kept turning his head to see where his competitors are. It was so visible that he is concerned more about others than focusing on his race. That moment Rohit came to us for drinking some water and his race was the next one to happen. My husband told Rohit about what he saw in the senior student race, and asked him to just focus on his race and not to worry about others position.

I didn’t realize that it is applicable for our life also, not only for a running race, until I happened to listen to this Podcast recently “Run your own race” (http://www.robinsharma.com/blog/robin-sharma-podcasts/). Those words were very strong and had so much of depth.

When I introspected, I realized how much I have been focusing on knowing where others are, whereas I could have focused that time and energy for my own growth. I liked this proverb “There is nothing noble in being superior to another person, true nobility lies in being superior to your former self”.

On a lighter note, we can let our managers worry about relative performance of ours Vs our peers, as an individual, we should only worry about our own performance and keep competing with our former self.