Run your own race

A mantra I’ve found helps drive success in life (personally and professionally) is “run your own race.” This phrase means several things to me: 

• Stay focused on your work instead of the work of others
• Compare your work and achievements to your previous work and achievements instead of to others’
• Pursue your goals and interests (rather than the goals of others or societal expectations)
• Manage your self-talk

In any relationship whether it’s work, volunteering, family or friendships, it’s easy to fall into a comparison trap: who’s doing more, who’s giving more, who’s achieving more…. If you find yourself moving along this path – let it go! Keeping score is a terrible way to go through life. As Theodore Roosevelt said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” 

One of the challenges of social comparison is we often make comparisons at differing points in a journey. Author Jon Acuff points this out well when he says, “Don’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle, or your middle to someone else’s end. Don’t compare the start of your second quarter of life to someone else’s third quarter.”

This reminds me of a time a coworker stopped in my office. She was a mid-level manager who was experiencing a bittersweet joy of hearing that someone she hired long ago had recently been named to a high-level senior position. While she was happy for her former colleague, she was questioning her own career and why she had not yet made it to bigger roles. We talked about her goals and various career moves she made to prioritize work-life balance to spend more time with her children. By the end of the conversation, she realized that she was pursuing her goals and interests on her timeline – which was very different from her previous coworker’s. She was not pursuing senior-level roles because she didn’t want the time commitment it would require at that point in her life. Several years later when she felt the time was right for her, she applied for and landed a senior-level position.

Be yourself. You’ll never be happy being someone else.

Failing to live a life authentic to you instead of what is expected of you is one of the top 5 regrets of the dying, according to author Bronnie Ware who spent years as a palliative caregiver.

Running your own race often requires focusing on your self-talk. Self-talk is your inner voice or endless stream of thoughts that run through your head. Even though we may be unaware of our self-talk, it can be positive or negative. Unsurprisingly, positive thinking is linked to many health benefits including increased life span and reduced risk of death from several diseases.

Can self-talk really make a difference? I believe so based on another story from my working years. Due to a downturn in business, sadly some colleagues had been downsized. After her exit, one young lady named Emily kept in touch with me throughout her job search. This had been her first job out of college, and she’d been in it less than two years. One day, she called me very excited.

This is her story: Emily applied for a job she really wanted at a very prestigious firm. As she was sitting in the lobby waiting to be called for her interview, she saw another young woman exiting. But this wasn’t just another random candidate for the same job. Emily’s heart sank, she knew this other candidate from college – and her competition was a woman who seemed to always outperform everyone in everything she did: always got the top grade in classes, had landed the plum internship, won the academic competitions, etc.

Emily said her first thought was, “Oh well, I guess I’m not getting this job.” Then she said my words “run your own race!” popped into her head. She stopped her negative thoughts immediately and for the next 5 to 10 minutes until she was called into her interview, she managed her self-talk. She would not compare herself to anyone else – and especially not to the young woman she knew from college. Emily mentally reviewed all of the experience she’d gained in the two years since she graduated. She reflected on her accomplishments and how her experience aligned with the job description and requirements. She made up her mind to go into this interview and give it her best. 

Emily blurted out, “Your advice worked! I ran my own race! I went in there focused on getting this job based on the value I knew I would bring to their organization.” 

She landed the job – her dream job.

Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right.”

Henry Ford