Why you shouldn't stop comparing yourself with others

I wasn’t a fan of competition growing up.

The concept of 100 people fighting for a prize, knowing all but one would leave empty-handed, sounded criminal.

Losing wasn’t fun. It made me feel worthless.

And all that emotional pain for what?

A medal? A trophy? Some positive words of affirmation?

Jesus died on the cross for us all, making every life worthy regardless of who won an award. So, what’s the point in wrestling for a prize when we already have the grandest gift: existence?

Since competing with others wasn’t fair, fun, or reasonable, I competed with the one person who made it sensible: myself.

As you might have guessed, I’m a calm dude.

But back then, I was too calm.

You would never see me fight with my words or wrists, even when my peers picked on me. I allowed them to walk over me because the tension wasn’t cool. Instead, I made everyone around me feel good by becoming who they wanted me to be.

But while I made others smile, I felt horrible deep down.

Have you ever had that unsettling sense when something feels off, but you can’t pinpoint why? Yeah, I felt that. I didn’t understand the feeling then, but I do now. 

It was my masculine core crying for salvation. It wanted me to add meaning to my life by uncovering and pursuing my purpose.

But since my father was never around and my stepfather wasn’t built for the role, I didn’t know how to interpret or answer the call. So, I continued my feminine ways of peace, social harmony, and solo competition, feeling like trailer park trash every step of the way.

Well, until five months ago.

Today, I no longer desire peace. I want problems — always!

I want to feel the pain of taking on challenges I don’t believe I can complete daily to push past my limits.

Since adopting this lifestyle, I’ve become wiser, healthier, happier, and wealthier.

And the fuel behind my newfound fire is constantly comparing myself and competing with others.

Some label this “toxic masculinity,” but it’s not. It’s masculinity. Their interpretation alone is toxic.

So today, I’ll show you how to boost your growth by competing with others.

My first 4 months as an online writer were depressing. I didn’t know what to do, and the overwhelm caused by the contradicting “advice“ online didn’t help.

But I ended that year with 50,000+ followers and almost $10,000.

How?

• Clear goals and a path to them

• Understanding the principles of audience growth and monetisation

• And guidance from someone ahead of the game

I recently opened 1:1 coaching slots to guide you to your first 5,000 followers and $5,000 online. If that interests you, click here to work with me.

The Root Of Solo Competition

Most men are weak because they never learned how to be strong.

With the rise in fatherless homes, instant-gratifying technology, porn viewership, and sugar, it’s no wonder 80% of men are betas — physiological men but psychological NPCs.

These betas don’t want to struggle and claw their way to their desires. Instead, they want everything handed to them.

This is a problem — a big, deadly problem — rooted in one of the seven deadly sins: sloth.

Sloth is a silent killer of masculine prowess and progeny.

You feel fulfilled when you push your limits daily for a worthy cause and unfulfilled when you settle for a life of comfort. To be “fulfilled” means being filled with life force. 

Without fulfilment, humans become shells of themselves — think “zombies” — and I’m sure you’ve seen many.

• They hate their life.

• They are close-minded.

• They are perpetually bored.

• They don’t think for themselves.

• They only take and never give back to society.

• They complain about everything and create nothing.

A man who lives an unfulfilling existence feels empty inside because he is. As a lifeless vessel, he cannot contribute to bringing life into this world. For this reason, 60% of men throughout history never reproduced.

You must achieve productivity before re-productivity.

Sloth makes productivity difficult.

And since today’s society preys on our tendency to follow the path of least resistance, it’s almost impossible for most people to feel fulfilled. With fulfilment out of reach, most men pursue the next best thing: happiness, leading them down the hole of instant gratification. 

Instant-gratifying actions (like gaming, smoking, and watching TV) are addictive because they offer a momentary spike in dopamine while numbing the mind’s negative receptors. In short, they make us ecstatic, but our negative receptors resurface afterwards, and we regret it.

Men addicted to instant gratification prime their minds to chase comfort and escape discomfort.

All growth only comes from discomfort, so this is a recipe for perpetual pain.

So when the masses enter a situation where they have to compete with others, they feel an instant, intense rush of discomfort. Threatened, they escape, physically or mentally, by grabbing a bottle, smartphone, controller, or their penis to numb the bad vibes and return to their default state of comfort and misery.

“My only competition is myself,” they say. 

After all, Former US President Theodore Roosevelt once said: “Comparison is a thief of joy. “

But I disagree.

Comparison (the precursor of competition) is only a thief of joy when you judge yourself for not having something the person you’re comparing yourself to has. When you replace judgment with a plan and self-compassion, what you have is a beacon of joy, not a thief.

If you plunge yourself into deep thought, you’ll realise all growth stems from comparison.

The running world declared completing a four-minute mile impossible until Roger Bannister blew past it on May 6th, 1954. Once he proved it was possible, thousands of people immediately followed suit. Why? Because the runners compared themselves to Bannister. They must have said, “If he can, I can too.” A four-minute mile would still be impossible without a literal trailblazer like Bannister.

You wouldn’t have learned how to talk, walk, run, or dance if you didn’t see someone else do it.

Kids learn fast because they constantly compare themselves with others and enjoy the process of progress.

Sadly, every child encounters someone who convinces them to attach their self-worth to their outcomes. They’re told to feel excellent for being exceptional at one thing and awful for being terrible at another. This mind frame forces most kids to grow up sticking to what they’re already good at (which began from not being good at the same thing) while avoiding the unknown. 

As a result, most people today are critical instead of curious and consumers instead of creators.

And that’s how we ended up with today’s “solo-competition” society.

The Problem With Solo Competition

We all know God (or a god, depending on your belief) created us in his image and likeness. But many don’t know we’re all unique.

While we share similar extrinsic features (eyes, ears, legs), we all have unique intrinsic attributes.

• Genes

• Experiences

• Preferences

• Dislikes

• Curiosities

• Capacities

• Kinks

• Fingerprints

• Personality type

• Brain type

• Zodiac signs

• Human Design, etc

The unique combination of these elements makes you who you are. And no one has been or will ever be exactly like you.

So, as cliche as it sounds, you are special.

With this conclusion, it’s sensible to only compete with yourself because you’re a 1/1. But there’s a significant trade-off.

When you only compare your present self with your past and prospecting (future) self, you anchor your growth. You limit your perspective to what you’ve done and want to do, making exponential growth impossible.

Suppose a solo competitor has made $1,000 online and wants to make $100,000. They can do one of two things to hit their goal:

• They can observe all they did to make $1000 and do more of it or better (comparing present self with past self)

• Or they can imagine what they need to do to make $100,000 (comparing present self with prospecting self)

This process is effective because it allows the solo competitor to carve their own path through trial and error, track their progress by comparing their present self to their past self, and keep their motivations high by comparing who they are now to who they’re becoming.

But there are three flaws here.

First, new levels require new skills and beliefs. The actions necessary to become a millionaire differ from those needed to become a billionaire, so repeating $1,000 actions wouldn’t get a solo competitor to $100k.

Second, emotions are a record of the past. Something feels “right” because you’ve been rewarded for doing it in the past — including your past life. But sometimes, what feels right to us is actually wrong. The only way to discover what is objectively correct is via experience, making imagination an unreliable compass.

Third, with nothing to push them other than themselves, their growth is confined to their motivations and willpower alone.

Then, out of the shadows, someone swoops in and scoops all the hot leads from the solo competitors’ market, making their $100,000 goal more difficult.

Fifty thousand years ago, our ancestors lived in a predominantly zero-sum environment — someone had to lose for someone else to win.

But thanks to technology, we live in a predominantly positive-sum ecosystem. Excluding sports and a few fields today, someone’s win doesn’t rub someone else off theirs. Instead, it enhances the other person.

A billionaire can share the lessons they learned to hit ten figures and help others become billionaires quicker while upgrading their status and solidifying their understanding of business.

One win mostly leads to another rather than a loss, which explains the mainstream popularity of collaborations and mergers.

However, positive-sum thinking keeps most men too comfortable, induces sloth, and leaves them unprepared when they come across the minority of zero-sum environments today.

So men live boring existences because they’re ‘taking their time‘, spend most of their days watching those who live on the edge movies, fields, and steel cages, and lose in real-time to hungry, ambitious chads.

At age 7, I wanted life to be fair.

But if life is fair and balanced, there’s nothing to live for anymore — no stake.

If everyone gets the same trophy regardless of performance, there is no reason to act.

If there is no reason to act, no one will feel fulfilled.

If no one feels fulfilled, we will have a zombie apocalypse, and it’s game over.

It’s the imbalanced nature of the world that keeps it going. God made Earth spherical, not flat, for a reason.

This unfairness — this inequality — makes life worth living. It makes the pain of growth valuable and the comfort of sloth valueless.

“Fair” isn’t fun.

Healthy VS Toxic Competition

So far, we’ve established competing with others (which starts by comparing ourselves with others) helps us develop faster, feel fulfilled (aka live long, enjoyable lives), and continue our genetic lineage.

However, competition can hinder your growth if you negatively interpret success and failure.

1. The perception of success

Most people don’t want to be successful.

They want to be free, feel competent, and have a supportive tribe.

However, they pursue success because they think riches, recognition, and respect will make them feel whole.

They won’t.

From someone who’s achieved a fraction of those three, they’ll improve your odds of staying alive (making them still a worthy pursuit) but not your quality of life.

Immaterial needs can’t be solved with material solutions. You can’t buy peace of mind, order confidence, or add fulfilment to a cart. You must create them from within.

We’re all going to die. 

And if we — a part of existence — can end, existence will probably end someday. 

So, what will hold more significance when everything becomes nothing?

The reward or the reps?

The milestones or the mile?

The product or the production?

Both are important and reinforce each other. The goal shapes the path, and the path shapes the goal. But the path is more important since we’ll spend most of our lives hunting for success rather than dwelling on it.

If we’ll all die someday and life will eventually end, the only thing worth enjoying is your existence.

To enjoy your existence, you must meet your superficial and spiritual needs.

To meet your spiritual needs, you need a daily dose of fulfilment.

To become fulfilled, be present, pursue your purpose, do things you enjoy, and build deep bonds with others.

Success isn’t a stage but a state — a continuous state of building the thing more important than your bank account and social status: yourself.

Money and fame will come and go. But you will remain.

This means nothing is a waste. If you spend 12 hours writing a blog post and mistakenly hit “delete,” you didn’t waste 12 hours of your life. You invested 12 hours into honing your articulation skills. Try writing the blog again after giving yourself time to mourn and see how much easier it’ll be to write the same post again.

This also means it’s never too early or too late to succeed.

So, see success for what it is: something you become, not achieve.

It’s a journey, not a destination.

It’s a quest that will never end until you end.

And we wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

2. The perception of failure

Most people think they’re afraid of failing.

But what they’re afraid of is looking stupid because it’s a gateway to their worst fear: death.

Fifty thousand years ago, people determined to be useless by their tribe were kicked out. No maps, civilisations, or refugee camps existed then, so if your tribe “ghosted” you, you would actually become a ghost.

Since our collective psyche hasn’t evolved in 50,000 years, most people still avoid anything that makes us appear “stupid”. They never explore new locations, meet new people, or try new activities. Few achieve their goals because of this fear.

But feeling clueless is the price we must pay for mastery.

To know, we must first not know.

Plus, we’re in the 21st century now. Your family probably won’t throw you out for not knowing how to do something. But if they do, that’s okay. There are 8.1 billion people on this planet. If your biological family doesn’t want you, find another tribe or build your own online.

But understanding how our mind works doesn’t change how it works.

We’ll always feel afraid when doing something we haven’t done before. Bravery isn’t about being fearless. It’s about being fearful but caring less about the fear and more about the goal.

It will probably take another 50,000 years for our collective psyche to realise we’re no longer in danger and evolve. 

Until then, understand feeling clueless and lost isn’t a bad thing. Instead, it’s a sign that we’re exploring the unknown — where growth happens.

You will make mistakes.

Mistakes are your compass to genuine greatness. 

To become certain, you must endure extensive periods of uncertainty. That’s what makes the “aha” moment priceless.

And each time you fail, perceive it as an opportunity to try again instead of “game over”. The game is never over until you are.

You are a unique being. If you’re playing this life thing right, you should have unique goals requiring unique paths. You must experiment to go where no one else has ever gone to get what no one else will ever get. And that means feeling lost and uncertain daily.

The only actual failure is giving up.

So, there you have it.

Competition is toxic when success means chasing an outcome, and failure means game over.

Competition is healthy when success means building the asset that is yourself and when failure means experimenting.

My Competition Philosophy

As I said earlier, the healthy goal of competing is to improve.

Toxic competitors who view success as an outcome compete to defeat others.

This is not a bad thing.

The millions of followers you want, I want.

The millions of dollars you want, I want.

The dream woman you want, I want.

And thousands (if not millions) of men want them too.

So what will you do about it?

Cry? Avoid competing so you don’t grow, starve your masculine core, become impotent, and die as an embarrassment to the 4,000 ancestors who went through famine, plagues, wars, and inflation so your sorry self could live? Or fight?

Of course, you must beat 99% of men to get what the 99% will never have.

But this is a terrible conscious goal.

Losers focus on winners. Winners focus on winning (the momentary stacking of wins, that is).

But since many people want what you want, the most beneficial mental frame is to improve and enjoy life consciously while subconsciously trying to outdo 99% of people.

In short, beat them all without trying to (by beating your past self).

Here’s a step-by-step framework to put you levels above everyone else (including me):

Step 1: Envision your Vision

Without direction, your life will lack meaning.

Without meaning, you’ll no longer function as a human.

(Remember the zombification process I spoke about earlier?)

So, use these prompts to identify goals for all areas of life:

• What change do you want to see in society? (Ultimate goal)

• What is your ideal job, pay, and lifestyle? (Financial goal)

• How would you like to appear and feel? (Physical goal)

• What do you want in your obituary? (Spiritual goal)

• What skills do you want to master? (Mental goal)

These goals will frame your values, actions, perspectives, and quality of life.

Then, create a hierarchy of steps for clarity:

• 1-lifetime goals

• 1-decade goals

• 1-year goals

• 1-quarter goals

• 1-month goals

• 1-week goals

• 1-day goals

• 1-moment goals

Muslims pray five times a day to keep themselves grounded in their religion.

I look at my goals twice a day (before dawn and before bedtime) and think about them constantly during the day to keep myself grounded in my purpose.

If you don’t set your own goals, you will spend your one precious shot at life pursuing the goals society gave you.

Please give at least an hour or two to complete this. You’ll pursue these goals for the rest of your life, so it’s a fair trade.

Step 2: Identify your actions

A dream is just that: a dream.

Winners and losers set goals, but only winners do the work. And it all starts with clarifying their input.

Find the actions you must take by studying those who have what you want.

But you probably already know what you should do. Yet, you don’t do them. It’s not your fault. I don’t blame you. I blame video games and movies for creating unrealistic expectations of what it means to level up.

On the screen, it’s exciting and short-lived. 

But in real life, it’s excruciating and extensive. The pain is substantial, the risk is sometimes irreversible, and uncertainty is a certain part of the experience.

Being exceptional means being an exception. This is what it feels like.

Pain is a part of life. You’re making less progress than you want because you’re resisting rather than moving with the natural flow of the Universe. Accept the pain, be one with it, and co-exist with it because the only thing more painful than pushing your limits is not pushing your limits.

• Set a time to work.

• Pick a task just above your skill level.

• Stop when you’re finished, not when you’re tired, even if you feel like dying. And if you die, what better way to expire than doing what you love? Death is uncontrollable, but you can at least control the terms for your existential exit.

Step 3: Use the concept of competition to propel growth and prevent sloth

Life is fun when you have a circle of people who share your values, make you better (interested in your interests and competent in your incompetencies), and genuinely root for you.

This creates fertile ground for healthy competition, deliberate discussion, and accountability, making growth seamless and sensational.

These people will probably be at or close to your level, making them the perfect sparring partners.

There’s nothing wrong with comparing yourself to Elon Musk’s net worth when you only have $100 to your name, but it can be very demotivating. Even if you make $10M in your first year in business, it will not matter because you’ll still be $20,000 poorer than Mr Musk.

Compare yourself with people way out of your league to expand your perspective and humble your ego.

Compare yourself with people within your league to see immediate areas to work on.

Compare yourself with no one but your past self to see how far you’ve come.

It’s unhealthy to think constantly about competition. Still, it’s essential to keep it at the back of your mind as a repellant for sloth.

“If I don’t do it, they’ll take my stuff, and I’ll die” is a glorious reminder whenever you feel like slacking off.

Step 4: Bless your work with rest

I was a fan of hustle culture until they glorified sacrificing other aspects of their life (mind, body, and spirit) for one (business).

Work hard, but remember to enjoy your life.

And chill.

Rest is an essential part of work because it replenishes us when we hit our limits — yes, the one thing we all have.

But I’m not talking about sleep. Sleep is rest, but rest isn’t sleep. Sleep is a form of rest.

There are seven types of rest:

1. Physical rest: sleep, massages, stretching

2. Mental rest: journaling, planning, meditating

3. Social rest: spending more time with energy givers, spending less time with energy takers, scheduling solitude

4. Emotional rest: expressing your emotions more, seeking therapy

5. Sensory rest: less screen time, turning off notifications, listening to soothing music

6. Spiritual rest: pray, engage in religious practices, donate, pursue your purpose

7. Creative rest: draw, paint, sculpt, walk to new locations, visit museums, etc

Aim for the fine line between working like a deranged dog and resting like a baby.

This is tactical struggle.

I’m a feminist.

No, scratch that

A woman’s life holds slightly more value than a man’s.

Our creation was God’s act of love. The Universe and everything within it exists in a perpetual state of being. ‘Love’ and ‘being’ are feminine virtues, which is why countries, places, and objects have feminine pronouns.

For this reason, men of all generations gave up their lives to protect their wives.

We don’t treat women gently because they’re weak but because we acknowledge their preciousness and understand we were built bigger and stronger to keep them from external harm while they keep us from internal harm.

We need them.

And they need us, too.

We need more masculine men in society, so women can do what they genuinely want and excel at — loving — and avoid what they don’t like and suck at (compared to men) — achieving.

Healthy external competition is one foundation of masculinity.

So. Don’t. Stop. Competing. Player.

Your future wife, kids, and self will be glad you did.

— Francis

PS: If you want to build an audience online and get paid to practically play, work with me 1:1.