When someone asks you how you rank up to your competition, your true and simple response should be, "I actually don’t have any competition."

You see, when we were children, we grew up in a place where competition was so evident and emerged with regularity and little or no resistance that it quickly became a natural part of our lives. Whether we were battling to be the one to receive a certain school award, to place 1st in a music competition, or to simply become better than others around us, the "competition" aspect in our lives grew to be such a widely accepted part of all of us that we simply took it for what it was and moved on.

We either gave everything our best shot to try to be "#1," or our hope was depleted from the start, and we began living lives rich with failure, which included instances where we wouldn’t even try to accomplish certain things simply because we knew that we wouldn’t be able to be or do better than our competition.

To start off with, let’s analyze the significant negative aspects of having competition:

(1) You’re comparing your results to others, and while this may inspire you to become better, if you and your competition improve at the same pace over time, you may get discouraged to improve any more simply because it appears that you’re always one step behind where they are. (You’d be fighting a losing battle.)

(2) Your perception of your results is influenced by the results of others, and this is not a good way to go about assessing things because you only have full control of your life just like everyone else has full control of theirs (and their results, too); you can’t control how well other people do.

(3) You’re always trying to "level up" to someone else’s standards, which really may not be the most favorable position for you if you can be aiming for the stars and improving your life and results at a much more substantial rate.

While having competition may be healthy in some instances and make you inspired and motivated to improve your results significantly, you still should not compare your results to others. Instead of having competition, I want to suggest that you create these people into close connections of yours. In this process, you’d be eliminating competition from your life altogether and subsequently be abolishing the negative aspects that come along with having competition.

When you view everyone in your life as a positive connection and not as someone who is your competition, suddenly you’re all able to work in harmony together in an attempt to improve all your lives at the same time.

Together, you may brainstorm new creative ideas; you may provide assistance to each other when in need; you may have knowledge and experience that can be of help to them and they may be able to do the same for you to help you achieve the success that you desire.

Ultimately, having people as your "competition" is unhealthy. Instead, develop these people into close connections where you can advance together and help each other achieve massive success. Competition often depletes your ability to really thrive successfully as an individual. You only have control of your results – no one else’s – so find something that will motivate and inspire you to achieve a certain goal, and then look for help from your connections to make your dreams and goals a reality!