When you’re a professional athlete, it’s easy to get caught in measuring your own growth and progress against the achievements of those around you. Especially as you escalate and find yourself in more elite company. And doing so makes you forget the progress you’ve made, and still may be making, while you’re consistently finding yourself in new groups, with new peers, always filled with people who have done more, won more, or made more, in their careers.

Therefore, if you don’t recognize this hazardous pattern, the bar you set for yourself to be the point of success you need to be happy or content, will only continue to get pushed further and further.

When I was in college, my lifelong dream had been to play in the pros. That was the bar I set when I started. If I could just make it, then I’ll be happy. All those years invested into the process wouldn’t have been a waste and I’ll have proved everyone who doubted me wrong. Then, when I was on the bench my first two seasons as a collegiate athlete, entering my junior season as an unrecognized nobody, my chances of turning my career around, especially to get it to the level where I could get drafted as a top ten pick were slim to none. And that was the start of the problem. I had to convince everyone else (coaches, MLS front offices, scouts, agents) that I was “good enough” to be a pro. That’s where my constant need for external validation initiated.

Somehow though, through all the disciplines and sacrifices that external success mandates, I was able to turn it around and have two historical seasons. As a result, I was drafted and signed my first professional deal in the MLS. Mission accomplished. But the bar I set at the commencement of my expedition (becoming a pro) to feeling like I was, or had done, “enough,” wasn’t satisfying enough for me to feel sustainably happy and proud of myself. Consequently, that bar got pushed to the next thing.

And how could it not? Don’t we, as human beings, always want to grow, progress, and advance our missions to bigger and better things? I’d say so. But using societies measuring sticks will put your feelings of internal worthiness and happiness into the external markers that ensure a catastrophic recipe for emptiness and confusion.

Although external success may be a byproduct of elevating yourself internally and personally growing for reasons you desire, they shouldn’t be the end all, be all.

Because after I’d stepped into that professional locker room, I then thought: Now I must work to actually play. I need to fight for my spot on the team. If I’m consistently playing, then I’ll be happy →Then I had to score my first goal → Then I had to score ten goals →Then I wanted to play for the US Men’s National Team → Then I had to go play in Europe → Then I wanted to sign a big contract and make more money…

Tick, tick, tick.

One by one they’d all been checked off my list and still, I didn’t feel like I was “there.” Because I was constantly surrounded by and reminded of the colossal success of others (amplified by social media). What I had done could never feel like it was “enough” compared to those around me. And it wasn’t until I came back from Europe when I’d started to put this idea under the microscope. Because I knew the path I was on, the one of needing to get to the next big thing, wasn’t one I’d wanted to continue to follow, given its inability to fulfill my most innate desires to feel like I was enough or worthy of love and sustained happiness.

It was time for me to unlearn everything I learned about what I thought it was going to take for me to feel happy.

It took deep self-examination and a multitude of internal probing for me to unstitch those unreliable beliefs and begin to alter them in order to aid my daily experience. I had to rewire my thinking. I began to wonder if there were ways I could progress and improve myself that were completely reliant on what I was doing and how I chose to operate? Were there reliable ways I could elevate myself and satisfy my longing to improve while heading in my desired direction that had nothing to do with what I accomplished or what others thought of me? Were there ways I could advance along my journey that were completely within the locus of my control?

“If you run races where winning is up to you, you’ll always win” – Epitecus

At the end of the day, what I had the power to decide who I and how I compared myself with. What I couldn’t decide, regardless of what I accomplished, was how others perceived me. I may never be “worthy” in society’s eyes. That’s where I wanted to put my emphasis and attention moving forward. I wanted to focus on, instead of markers that society reckoned were quantifiable for success, the immeasurable ways I had grown along my pursuit of that very success. In other words, the climb instead of the destination.

These included but weren’t limited to, markers such as how I’d become a better handler of adversity, how I’d learned to be less reactive on the field which has consequently helped me be less reactive with my wife and daughter, how I’d learned to be more patient with things which weren’t in my control, and how to ride happily along the roller coaster of highs and lows that life inevitably brings.

What the pursuit of that which is meaningful and significant to you is all about is not the praise and prize that compliments lofty feats, but about who you become through the fiery trials of personal advancement and how you craft your character against the weight of deafening fears, doubts, and disappointments.

Again, the climb over the destination. Who you become is more important than where you end up.

If you look back on your life, you’ll find that you’ve made much more progress than you’re currently giving yourself credit for. Chasing measurable assets, possessions or properties under the false impression that those contain the ripest fruits of fulfillment is simply an illusion. The only kind of growth that can internally satiate your deep, centered hunger to feel content and proud of what you’ve done and who you are, is growth that is personal and unique to you.

So, take the measuring stick back into your own hands and only compare yourself to who you were yesterday. Reflecting constantly on the progress you’re making, day in and day out. Contemplating back on the days you’ve gone through, analyzing your wins and losses → Where could you have been better? What did you do well? How did you interact with every person you came across and how did you treat them? Did you face your difficulties with bravery, or did you shy away from the daily tribulations you encountered sheepishly? Can you improve that process and produce better results tomorrow because of it? Did you operate today with a sense of gratitude at the base, or did you go through your routines with a feeling of “not enough” polluting your daily experience?

Against the norm of society, one that’s begging you to be someone you aren’t and/or chase things you don’t really want or need (things surely won’t fulfill you on the levels they promise you they will), disregard those measurables. Because all the external rewards offered in this world, when attained for the wrong reasons, are only masks that hide away the true growth that lies beneath the carvings of a brave soul. One willing to go to the depths of themselves to grow, improve, and become the person they know they could be.

That’s the only perspective that can sustain the feelings of happiness and contentment you crave and it’s the only growth that can support the tremendous elevation you seek. You vs. You. Comparing you to you. Yourself today vs. yourself yesterday.

Don’t get lost incessantly and anxiously comparing yourself to those around you. Don’t compare someone else’s end point with your middle. Those measurable markers of success are deceivers, fable tellers, and liars. You should be far more concerned with the immeasurable ways your progressing, improving, and advancing yourself in your desired direction.

Remember, it’s all about the climb.

Disregard the measurables.