Is 0.09% better important to you?

Most of us have heard about Lance Armstrong, the 7 times tour de France winner. The last time he won the tour before he retired was in 2005 at a time of 86 hours 15 minutes two seconds, over a course of 21 stages. Now, do anyone know who is the runner up and by how much time did Lance win the race? The answer is Ivan Basso from Italy, and Lance won the race by a mere 4 minutes and 40 seconds, that is 0.09% ahead of Ivan. 0.09%, that is the difference between the best and the 2nd best. And in every case, in any competition, nobody will remember who came in second, but everyone know who is the first.

In most cases, the margin of winning is very small, is just like the case of 2005 tour de France. And the first win it all. In the world of competitive racing, a mere 0.09% make a great difference between success and failure. It is important for a person in a competitive race to do the very best and win it all.

However, in the private world of personal growth and goal achieving, that is not the case. Who came in first and how much faster the other person achieved his plan, has nothing to do with your own plan of personal growth or person goal. The whole point of goal setting is not to realize your goal ahead of anyone or to beat anyone in term of the size of the goal. Instead, the best way to measure the success of your plan is not by whether you are beating the mass but by whether you have put in place a sound plan and a behavioral discipline that are likely to get you where you want to go. In the end, what matters isn't crossing the finish line before anybody else but just making sure you do cross it.