It’s easy to judge yourself by an external standard. The entire world seems to do it. They keep score just for this reason. You’ve got to know who wins and who loses.

But what if the scoreboard didn’t matter? What if that lesson our elders tried to pass on turns out to right after all? It’s not the score that counts, but how hard you play the game.

Well they were right. The score isn’t how you define winning and losing. Your personal effort determines if you win or lose. If you give anything less than your absolute best effort, you lose no matter what the scoreboard says. The converse is true as well. Your effort is all that matters.

You determine to define success by things you control; by how hard you train, practice, and perform. No one else can determine this for you. It must come from within. You have to daily decide to establish your definition for success and refuse to accept that of other people.

You feel pretty good about your performance, until you start playing the comparison game. That’s the way it goes.

Comparison brings disappointment every time. It turns joy into morning with remarkable hast. The maddening thing is that it shouldn’t rattle you. You define success by things within your control; things like effort.

If something received your best effort and you gave it all you had that day. How you stack up with others does not matter.

Remember this: You define success by what you can control. Focus on this every day. Remind yourself often. The scoreboard does not define your performance. Effort does.