Everyone seems to be doing better than you, and that's okay. As the year wraps up, we’re bombarded with everyone’s highlights and “year in review” posts that can make us feel like our own year was lackluster. I’ll probably do it to you too with my Spotify Wrapped, making it seem like my music taste is superior, and thanks to social media’s clever algorithms, you’ll inevitably feel a bit off about it.

For a long time, I struggled to feel content with my own journey. I spent so much energy worrying about being left behind that it often left me unmotivated and stuck. It took a lot of time and mental conditioning, but eventually, it clicked—I woke up one day and realized that the only race I was running was against myself, not anyone else.

I’ve seen this struggle even in some of the smartest people I know—they compare themselves to those around them, overthink, overanalyze, and ironically end up becoming exactly what they feared: stuck in mediocrity.

I wish I could offer a straightforward guide on how to avoid falling into this trap, but it’s a journey each of us has to navigate on our own. It takes a great deal of self-awareness, and that’s the key: your only competition is who you were yesterday. Some of the most successful people I’ve met are driven by an internal desire to succeed, independent of what others around them are doing.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be inspired by others; just don’t measure yourself against them. I’ll leave you with the iconic line from Kanu’s old Peak Milk campaign: “You need to believe in yourself! It’s in you!”