Competing Against Ourselves

“Our business in life is not to get ahead of others but to get ahead of ourselves. To break our own record, to outstrip our yesterdays by today, to bear our trials more beautifully than we ever dreamed we could, to give as we never have given, to do our work with more force and a finer finish than ever—this is the true objective” (Thomas S. Monson). There are so many reasons why competing with others is a fool's errand. So many factors that differentiate us from others are outside of our control and perhaps outside our ability to alter or mitigate. The families we were born into, our natural talents and abilities, the education and mentors that developed us, sheer random luck. But when we are competing against our past selves, we share all the same talents and privileges and education, except that our current selves have the advantage of learning from the mistakes of our past selves. If we truly seek to be better than we have ever been, God will honor our righteous desire and help us to achieve it. There's a line from a Jason Mraz song that says, "May the best of your todays be the worst of your tomorrows." I know that the best way to honor the efforts of our past selves is to try our hardest to outdo them. It is a long road to perfection and if we're not getting better every single day, we're not advancing on that road.