We were chatting after meditation as we do every night. We got speaking about competition and competitive energy. I giggled uncomfortably as I looked at a past part of me that I didn’t love. 

“I hate to admit this.” I said.

“Oh yeah, what do you have?” he asked.

“Well, ummmm” then another laugh. “I used to compete with everyone, all of the time. I hate admitting it but it is true and I need to own that. It wasn’t that I wanted to be better than someone, it was just that it drove me to compete with others. I would compete with myself too but when given a chance, I would compete with others. It didn’t come from a place of wanting to make them somehow lesser, it came from a place of wanting to make myself better. Having said that, I still don’t like it about myself.”

I went on to give multiple examples of ways that I would compete with others. 

“Is it different now?” he asked.

“It really is” I said back. I went on to explain that currently, I am only competing with myself and that I am learning from others but have no interest in competing with them anymore. When I get to the end of this human experience, they won’t be there, it will only be me and I will only have to look at myself so why not start that now. 

We went on to explore when and how this shift happened for me. The answer was a lot of deep introspective work done in multiple ways. It took me landing in  a place of knowing that there is only me and simultaneously we are all one and in that space, there is no need to compete with anyone.