I am sure you many of you keen runners will testify that there’s’ something about when you start, everything else fades away, leaving only yourself. Thing is, even in this situation there lurks opportunity to lose focus, go inside your head thinking “…am I up to speed?… Is this the right pace?” Or comparing yourself to whoever is near.
How often do you find this happening in life, sport and career when you find yourself comparing with others? At board meetings, on a training course, starting a new job, at the gym or competing in your chosen sport? Now that your attention is on them, your focus lost, where are you?
Know that feeling of going backwards with no control?
What Gets In The Way When Comparing?
Running in your own lane is about so much more. This is about your self-belief, energy and focus travelling in the one, same direction. For when that happens, your resources become aligned, united within as you realise your personal power and achieve with ease. So, what is in the way? What’s really in the way, blocking us, is (drum roll) ourselves! This happens in every area of life.
In the ever more complex, fast paced world we live in, it is far too easy to compare. Social media plays a huge part (doom scrolling), so running in your own lane, can seem like running through treacle, requiring huge amounts of effort and energy. Listen to your self-talk, what is your inner voice saying? What themes are emerging?
It’s all about you, it may be at work, in relationships, in personal growth or sport. When you get out of your own way and focus on being the best possible version of yourself, you progress and move forward. Your decisions improve, behaviour becomes congruent and ultimately, it feels great because you are at one with yourself.
Focusing upon excellence in yourself pays immense dividends in your personal growth which in turn ripples into the main areas of life. If you are a coach, this will translate into your coaching and experienced by your clients. If you are a manager or leader, it will translate into making a difference in many areas. Such as your motivation, determination, performance and relationships with your team and colleagues. In sport, it will translate into achieving results and success you may have previously thought not possible.
As the only person holding us back is ourselves. Are you ready to get out of your own way and surprise yourself?
How To Stay In Your Lane?
Start with self-awareness. Start to notice everything about you, get to know yourself on the inside and what is on the outside. Notice when you are totally focused and present as well as when you have lost your focus. One of the many benefits from our NLP training is that graduates find their levels of self-awareness increase significantly as well as their ability to bring the focus back.
Notice that when your attention changes direction, you will experience a reduction of energy, a loss of focus as you divert away from where you wish to be. Your head starts to fill with unwanted seemingly relevant, irrelevance. Before you know it, your attention has moved in another direction and it can take a while before you realise. The popular saying “…where attention goes, energy flows” comes to mind. Use your self-awareness to notice when you’re looking sideways, comparing, or feeling the need to prove something. If this happens, ask yourself “…for what purpose am I choosing to do this?” Take a moment to refocus and get back on track.
What Else Can We Do?
Check on the relationship with yourself, trust your instincts; you know yourself well enough to know when you are putting the effort in as well as the opposite. The challenges or relying upon others for approval and validation will put you at effect, meaning avoiding taking responsibility and giving away personal power (back to treading water). We want to take back personal power and empower ourselves, that starts with taking responsibility. Others will succeed, it happens. You can always choose how you respond, one way is reframe such as everyone has their own direction to travel another is to interpret it as a sign to focus even more.
Spend some time on defining what success means to you (not anyone else), get really specific about what it is (we call it meta model in NLP). The more vague and generic one is, the less there is to work with which will impact progress and direction. Ask yourself what indicators need to be present to determine success? Without the specifics you will not know if you have actually achieved what you want. With running it could be completing a distance by a certain time. In life defining and refining what you specifically want, where you want it, who you may want it with, how you will feel when you have it and how you will know when you have achieved it.
Recognise Progress. What learnings do you have from your journey to date. When you go through a life experience or change, in all the excitement there can be a tendency to focus on what is next without regard to understanding where we have come from, this is valuable information. Remember the version of you then, will be different from who you are now. Every change in life offers a window and a glimpse into yourself, the worst thing we can do is ignore the view and walk past.
Mastery Is The Focus
We know that many successful people are rarely focused on winning the race, if so they would just stop rather than continue with the next. They are focused upon refining, enjoying and ultimately furthering their mastery of what they do. Whether it’s in work, life, coaching, personal growth, sport and relationships. What technique(s) do you value and are keen to master? On our NLP Training students learn to model what others are exceptional at. This is called modelling and focuses on eliciting the thinking and mindset which is turned into a process for us to install in ourselves and follow to get results.
Adapt To The Challenge
Progress is continuous and there will be challenges along the way. One day you feel on top of the world and strong, another day may be different. Rather than focus on what did not turn out as expected, accept you are doing the best that you can with all that you have right now and move forward. Train your mindset to adapt to every challenge that presents itself, take the learnings and reframe as opportunities for growth.
In Summary
Whenever you find yourself comparing or focus drifting treat it as a sign to take action. Stop, look and listen to what is going on, refocus and reset to move forward.
Take the following steps:
Check, what is your purpose for choosing your goal or outcome.
Check, what is your goal and where am you in relation to it right now.
Ask yourself what actions you need to take to get back on track.
Remember it’s your journey and how you travel to reach success. Equip yourself with the thinking and skills necessary to overcome challenges which get in the way with confidence. Check out our latest training courses or contact for a chat.
