Winning against your Real Competitor – YOU!

I use Convertkit to send these newsletters out. Convertkit has excellent automation features that helps me keep the process of publishing these newsletters simple and fun.

If you want to simplify your process, then I would recommend checking out Convertkit. You can check it out here!

There is a Black Friday sale going on and you could get it at a discounted price today!

1% better every day!

“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Who is your real competitor?

Let’s be honest: Most of us are hardwired to look outside ourselves for competition.

We size up others – colleagues, creators, or influencers in our niche – and let their success dictate how we measure our own.

But what if I told you that your competition isn’t “them”?

It’s not the creator with a bigger audience.

It’s not the influencer landing brand deals.

It’s not even the colleague who seems to have it all figured out.

Your real competition?

• The you who’d rather binge Netflix than work on your goals.
• The you who hits snooze instead of starting the day with intention.
• The you who chooses comfort over growth.

Winning this battle doesn’t mean comparing yourself to others – it means consistently striving to outperform the version of yourself from yesterday.

And that’s where real, lasting growth happens.

Why It’s You vs. You – The Real Competitor

This isn’t as obvious as it is.

Because we have always been used to that external competition.

That’s how we have always been trained to look at competition.

• Get better marks than that other student in your class
• Get a promotion faster than your colleague
• Get a better hike in comparison to your co-worker

We never competed with ourself.

We never tried to outperform ourselves –

• get better marks that what we got the last exam.
• get better hike that what we got the last year (though I know it is not completely in your control.. lol)

And this is where growth got compromised.

In one of my early jobs as an outbound sales person, I struggled with sales to an extent that I was at a risk of losing my job.

And there was this guy in my team who will achieve his sales targets in about 4 hours of logging in.

My company had a policy of logging out as soon as your targets are achieved. So this guy will almost always log out early.

All of my focus was on this guy.

He was the competitor that I wanted to beat.

And here I was struggling to get sales, let alone beating him.

When it came to a situation that I will lose my job, I had to approach a mentor, who could help me with fixing things.

A few sessions and I knew where I was going wrong. Some bit of practice, some polish and I was on..

I was so focused on improving, that I forgot my competition. I barely had the time to look at him.

When the campaign ended 4 months later, something really surprising happened.

I was number 2 of the leaderboard with my competitor on number 1.

This was in spite of me being miles behind him at the end of the first month.

I learnt a very important lesson that day.

The biggest roadblocks in your journey aren’t external.

But they’re internal:

• Procrastination.
• Self-doubt.
• Fear of failure.

These challenges don’t shout for your attention like a competitor in a race.

Instead, they show up as small, quiet temptations:

• The pull to scroll through social media instead of learning something new.
• The whisper of “It’s fine” when you know you could do better.
• The comfort of sticking to old habits when growth feels uncomfortable.

Beating this competition isn’t glamorous. It’s not about dramatic breakthroughs or overnight success.

It’s about small, consistent wins.

It’s about showing up daily—even when it’s hard—and deciding to do better than you did the day before.

How to Outperform Yourself

When your competitor is invisible, it becomes even more difficult to compete with it.

More so, because you are not able to see and compare yourself with the competitor.

It is hence that winning this inner competition requires strategy – a well thought out strategy!

Here are a few actionable steps to help you beat yesterday’s version of yourself:

Define Your Daily Win

Start each day by answering one question:

What’s one thing I can do today to make progress?

Keep it specific and achievable. Instead of saying, “I want to be productive,” try:

• “I will write 500 words for my blog.”
• “I will spend 15 minutes learning a new skill.”
• “I will send follow-up emails to three contacts.”

When your goal is clear, your day has direction.

I would recommend incorporating this into your daily journaling. And if you haven’t yet started journaling, then this is the best time to do that.

I have that as part of my journaling practice and also as a part of my weekly review process.

Beat the Snooze Button

How you start your day sets the tone.

If mornings are a struggle, then you might want to try this:

• Place your alarm clock across the room. Make getting out of bed a physical decision.
• Have something to look forward to—like a favorite podcast or a delicious cup of coffee.
• Commit to a simple morning routine: make your bed, stretch for five minutes, or jot down three things you’re grateful for.

These small actions create momentum, making it easier to tackle bigger tasks later.

But the most important part of this is, having a good night’s sleep.

If you don’t sleep well, you won’t wake well and everything else will be a domino effect.

When I started, I would keep my phone on my table and set the alarm in it. This made it impossible for me to not get out of bed.

And once you are out of bed, your action gets started.

Swap Distractions for Micro-Wins

Distractions are sneaky.

They feel harmless—just five minutes on Instagram, right?

But those minutes add up.

Try these tactics:

• Use the “two-minute rule”: If a task will take two minutes or less (e.g., responding to an email), do it immediately.
• Schedule social media breaks instead of scrolling aimlessly.
• Replace downtime with small, productive habits:
  • Listen to an audiobook while commuting.
  • Write down three ideas for your next project while waiting in line.
  • Journal your thoughts for clarity before starting your workday.

I reduced my phone usage by more than 90% in the last one year alone.

Now I use my phone only for making and receiving phone calls. In fact, I have connected it to my computer, so most of the times, even those calls happen on my computer.

And I use a distraction blocker on my computer.

These two changes has helped me reduce distractions to negligible.

Be friend with Discomfort

Growth doesn’t happen in your comfort zone.

Some of the best success stories from the world all have one thing in common – they all came from extreme discomforts.

And it is those discomforts that became the reason for their successes.

The next time you’re faced with a challenging task, remind yourself:

Discomfort is proof that you’re growing.

• Start small. If the task feels overwhelming, break it into bite-sized steps.
• Set a timer for 25 minutes (hello, Pomodoro technique!) and focus solely on the task. When the timer goes off, you’ll often feel motivated to keep going.

Track Your Progress

The easiest way to beat your past self is to measure your wins.

And this is where most of the momentum is lost.

You either ignore it because you feel it is too trivial to measure or, you don’t just know what to measure and how.

• At the end of each day, write down one thing you did better than yesterday.
• Celebrate small victories—whether it’s drinking more water, finishing a workout, or hitting a work milestone.
• Reflect weekly: Where did you improve? What could you do better?

Progress isn’t always dramatic, but when you track it, you’ll see how far you’ve come.

This will need a lot of conscious effort on your part because it is not going to be easy.

I would recommend that you put a process of a weekly review in place. This is the best way to put a cadence to the process.

The Power of Choice

Every day, you face the same decision:

Will you let yesterday’s habits win?

Or will you take a small step forward, no matter how uncomfortable it feels?

You don’t need to be perfect. You just need to be better than you were yesterday.

As James Clear said in Atomic Habits: “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”

Start building systems today that help you compete against the only person who truly matters: yourself.

Your Turn Now!

How will you outdo yourself today?

Maybe it’s tackling that one thing you’ve been putting off.

Maybe it’s saying “no” to a distraction.

Maybe it’s simply choosing to try again after yesterday didn’t go as planned.

Whatever it is, make it count.

Because when you win against yesterday’s version of you, you’re already ahead.

So, what’s your next move?

Hit reply and let me know one way you’re planning to outdo yourself today—I’d love to hear and cheer you on!

Here’s to showing up, doing the work, and winning the battle that truly matters..

Recommended Newsletters

Here are few newsletters that I would recommend that you sign up to if you are interested in learning the art of running a side-hustle:

• Write, Build, Scale – https://sparklp.co/p/40cf6480e8
• Why we buy – https://sparklp.co/p/6d27bbcf8b
• The Book Bub – https://sparklp.co/p/3bcef5f1d4
• The Stacked Marketer – https://sparklp.co/p/5c2039bc2c

Sign up to these and follow them. You will get a lot of information and content for your blog posts, podcasts and even social media posts.

I will share more such ideas in my future newsletters.

I put in about 18 hours every month to create this newsletter, starting from researching to writing and editing it.

So, If you enjoyed reading this Newsletter, I would sincerely appreciate it if you could recommend it to others. You can send them to https://theloudspeakeronline.com to subscribe to it for FREE!

What am I reading?

I absolutely love books and I read a lot.

In fact, I don’t just read a lot, but I also take notes on every book that I read.

I have pages and pages on information in my Notion Second Brain, so that I can find them and use them when ever I need.

Want to know more about the books I read. You can check it out here!

That’s it for this week!

Do let me know your thoughts, feedback, and opinions about this newsletter.

If you have a question or, simply enjoy reading this, I would sincerely appreciate it if you could write a recommendation for me on LinkedIn. You can use this link to do that.

If you are comfortable writing a review for the newsletter, you can do that here. Your support would be sincerely appreciated.