The average time for a woman to complete a marathon is 4 hours and 54 minutes. My goal is to finish in 4 hours 26 minutes or less. I am finding that more and more I am getting into the competitive spirit with myself. The goals that I set for myself are in a sense a competition. It is with a strange sense of irony that I have become competitive. If you would have known me just a short time ago, I would have been the person that wanted "everyone to win- no one to lose" .
This idea goes back a long time to my childhood. I wanted everyone to feel good about themselves and losing feels bad. As a mom and teacher it was important to me to nurture a child's sense of esteem. If you believe in yourself then your life won't be plagued with self doubt. I am the first to admit that this is naive and unrealistic thinking. My sons were the first lesson that taught me this. Twin sons came out of my womb already competing for life, health and attention. They competed with each other and much to my horror, I could not stop it. Their egos were not permanently destroyed when one lost and the other won. My daughter was next to teach me lessons about competing. She wanted to compete- both with her brothers and with perfect strangers. It felt so good to win at something. She was talented in so many ways. Losing was ok- another chance to get better or learn something. What I figured out was that there will always be people that are better at something than you are. That is ok. There will always be more that you can learn, more that you can do, and honestly, the competition is with yourself.
