You be you. I'll be me. No need to compare.

Some people use competition to drive them forward to improve. It's motivating to want to achieve more and obtain goals that we see other people reaching. But more often, competition and comparing yourself to others leads to a feeling of jealousy - and rather than being a celebration of the strength of another person (or even better, yourself!) it ends up with you having a diminished sense of who you are.

Everyone compares themselves to others. I can't think of anyone who doesn't fall victim to it every once in a while. But for some people, this constant comparison makes them feel as though they never match up; that they're never quite good enough. It doesn't matter what we're comparing - jobs, spouses, money, the 'perfect' body - it all comes from the same place - you not feeling good enough about yourself. (read a great article about this here).

Sure the odd time we come out 'on top' - we have a triumph over our self-created competition, but undoubtedly we will fall short again, whether with that person or a new target in the future and the cycle repeats itself.

Now I'm not going to try and say that it is easy to stop comparing yourself to others, but imagine how much happier you could feel if you weren't constantly convincing yourself that you fall short of those around you. Think of how much time you spend wishing you could be more like 'that other person' and how much further along in your own goals you'd be if you used that time improving your own situation.

What does self-created competition look like? Is it biased? yes. Is it reality? Often, no.

Frequently, when we compare ourselves to others, we compare people who are strong in an attribute in which we are weak or struggling with. Quite often we take the strengths of others and pitt them against our weakest points. This is not only unfair to us - but it's like comparing apples to oranges - it doesn't even really make sense. Would you compare a marathon runner to someone in a learn-to-run program? Likely not. If I feel awkward at a big social gathering, what benefit does it serve me to look at the most extroverted girl in the room and just wish I was more like her? None. I'm still awkward.

How you look at others is often not reality: I have a client who thinks that everyone other than her has 'the perfect' life. One of the things we work on, on a regular basis is seeing people in a more realistic light. It sometimes helps to think about what others would see when they look at your life. There is a good chance that someone would peg you as having the 'perfect' life or at least pretty close - but do you have tough spots? Do you face challenges? If you do, they likely do too.

Overgeneralizing one strength into a life of perfection: There is that girl who you see on the subway every morning who always looks so put together and beautiful. Well, you think, she must also have a perfect house, and husband and obedient dog. She's got to be funny, and smart and she probably donates her time on the weekends to helping the homeless at the local shelter. If she has kids, they are well behaved, funny and probably the top atheletes and on the honour roll at school. She must be joyously happy every single day. Right? How many times do we do this? Take someone who has one attribute that we admire and maybe wish we had, and extrapolate it to the rest of their lives?

Sometimes these ideas we get in our heads aren't even taking place in the physical world. Think about how we look at facebook pics and see the brightest highlights of everyone's lives. Seeing only the lovely moments in a person's life paints a very uneven picture. I read a great article on 'blogging jealousy' that talked about the blogging community and how, even there, people are jealous because other bloggers have more comments on their pages, facebook pages have more 'likes', a blog has more followers. Then by that comparison, that blog is better, that blogger is better, more successful than I - why should I even bother if they will always be better than me? WOW it's easy to get carried away, but I bet more of us are guilty of it than we care to admit. In reality, you don't know if any of those assumptions are correct. Just because someone has more 'likes' or comments or facebook friends than you it says nothing about the actual quality of the person - and it especially says nothing about the quality of YOU!

We are only in control of one person in this world. Ourselves. We can't control the subway girl, the blogger or even our 'perfect' friends. So what can we do?

The biggest key to avoiding comparison with others, is to notice what you are doing. Sometimes we don't even notice that we're doing it and all of a sudden we feel crappy about ourselves and feel like we'll never measure up. Look back - what was your trigger? Why do you feel this way? Is it because you were comparing yourself to someone who you think you don't match up to? Rather than continuing to do that over and over again, why don't you try to change your thinking and spend more time focusing on yourself than everyone around you.

Here are some tips to help you do that:

When you notice that you are comparing yourself to others, take a minute and try to look at yourself instead. Compare the current you, to the you of the past. Where have you come from? What route are you on? The only journey that you can be sure of, is yours. Eliminate the time spent on comparing yourself against other people, and your goals will become reality so much faster than if you constantly are having to pick yourself up after comparing yourself to someone who is on a different journey than you. You don't know where they've come from or what they are struggling with. Focus on you, and drive ahead.

Give credit where credit is due and it will come back to you: when you see that someone has more blog followers than you, look at why people are reading. Does the author use great wording? Is her layout easy to follow? Does she include humour or artwork to add interest to her work? What about that girl at the gym with the awesome arms? Rather than sitting there looking disdainfully down at your arms while she works out in the mirror behind you, look at what she's doing. Maybe even ask her what she does - does she have a trainer? a program she follows? When did she start training? Rather than just assuming the person is 'better' than you, look for and recognize the strengths that they offer - congratulate them on their success and then work to add more to what you're doing to make yourself stronger. Who knows? By congratulating someone who is very successful in something important to you, maybe they will help you to succeed as well.

At the end of the day, you are the only true competition for yourself. You are the one who you have to look at everyday and be proud of. Not the girl on the subway or the nice arms at the gym. Be your best self. You are the only one living your life and you have to push forward for you. Don't let the comparison of yourself with others slow you down! Let the other people worry about themselves. Keep plugging forward and become the person that you admire. Run your own race.