I can empathise. It always used to be “faster”, “further”, “knarlier” etc. Then suddenly the penny dropped. I was doing yet another “non competitive”* sportive when the thought hit me that I had been belting along coughing up lungs through beautiful countryside and all I had been looking at was another blokes lycra covered @rse. I sat up, dropped off the pack and looked around me. Eventually finished, but with a big smile from the pure joy of riding a bike. Now I race occasionally, but chat with the marshals whilst riding and just enjoy the buzz.

Eventually the penny will drop, but you may, as said above need some help with it before it drags you down to a point it’s hard to get back from. Talking therapy can be very worthwhile if you get the right person.

*No such thing

I would **** love to be finishing in the middle of the pack

See instead of going for what you think are the fastest lines maybe try riding a different line every time. Because one thing’s sure as hell when you’re racing – the fastest line wont always be the best line.

For some people, the more they love something, the more it can loathe them.

I love riding bikes, but the sheer simple pleasure of self guided motion can soon be lost as I think I should be pushing harder, getting dfitter, being stronger.

The deeper I allow myself to go in, the darker it gets: self generated pressure and a feeling that the riding here and now is just a chore for some future benefit.

For me, it took a massive health scare this year (and one which may still get me) to refocus. Now, I accept that dawdling through the lanes for 90 mins on the road bike is as good as it’s going to be for a while. The greatest pleasure is peeking over the hedgerows into fields and gardens.

The more you want to control it, the more it will control you. To be happy at it, you have to look the other way when the dark side starts goading you on.

Most of all, go and speak to a CBT therapist to try to unlock what it is about you that makes you feel that pleasure = success = self destruction.

Good luck.

i’m still up for a bit of a race but after a year of near constant injuries and illnesses this year was back about getting back into it. but, and altho i’m not back to proper fitness, i found myself strangely unbothered. there’s going to be more of these young guys quicker than me just because i’m getting old!

what i have got this year which i’d kind of lost before all the shenanigans is a real feel for being out on the bike and where it is i am. rarely now, i’ll travel any distant to go out on the bike. i muich prefer to go from the door. i stop. i take notice of the wildlife, look at the environment. i’ve taken a picture or two. i record soundfiles. i’ve got a really good ‘training’ diary.

i have, more or less, taken the advice of those training manuals for cyclists past their sell by date and learned it’s good to rest. even better when the weather’s crap and ms swiss asks me what i’m about i’m quite happy to say that i’m just off for a burl to keep the legs turning.

last week i stopped at a really interesting wee piece of archaeology that i must’ve cycled by countless times when i’ve had my head down. met a guy who was doing a bit of work around it and had a splendid wee blether.

coincidentally i’m doing loads more miles so you never know maybe next year i’ll do a race or two. but only if it fits around everything else!

st colin – Nothing wrong in wanting to be the fastest you can be, or in having goals for next year. Or in wanting to prove yourself (to yourself). You need a plan, a proper plan that’s going to get you as close as possible to those goals.

Specific attainable goals as part of a structured plan.

I think you need a coach to work with.

SB

On depression, one of my family members is/was a sufferer of very severe depression with suicidal tendencies. Her life was basically a misery, for herself and those around her until she got her medication sorted. Since then she’s had 15 or so years of happy and normal living, unlike the decades of misery she had before that.

Now, perhaps you don’t need anti-depressants, perhaps you do, but you really should speak to a your gp and make some steps to getting sorted. i think if we dwell on negatives we can all be prone to dark thoughts and negativity. You obviously love biking, so you have something in your life that you enjoy and that gets you outside and socialising, that’s more than most “ordinary” folk.

On racing and riding, firstly, do you actually enjoy racing? If not then forget it for now. You can come back to it at any stage. If you really love racing, if that’s your thing and you really love that, but are frustrated with your results, well ask yourself have you actually prepared to the best of your abilities to win? Be honest with yourself. Very few people win in any mountainbiking disciplines on shear talent, and yet everyone downplays how much they train and how hard they try, but the truth is the guys who win are training flat out and probably staying pretty quite about it to lull the opposition into a false sense of security.

Try and remember what you love about biking and get back to that – if that’s racing and winning, then set some goals, get some training, join a club etc etc but be realistic. If you fail to prepare, prepare to fail.

If that’s not racing, just riding for fun, then do that. Crap time of the year but hey, there’s still fun to be had. I’m a firm believer in the remedial and calming effect of riding yer bike so get out there and do it. Go somewhere new, or somewhere you haven’t been in a long time. No tape, no clocks, no strava. The other good thing is there are always plenty of decent folk wanting to get out for a ride so you can always find groups of like minded folk….maybe you just haven’t found a group of riders you’ve really clicked with. Hang in there man…the tools to alleviate your depressiona and improve your riding are right between your hands (hint, it’s your handle bars).

I can relate. I am also very goal oriented. I also suffer from depression. The two are quite closely related (though I also have other stuff going on, which is what I think kicked mine off).

My recommendation? Get a unicycle. Has a huge number of challenges to achieve – the first and the hardest being to actually ride the thing at all. However once you can ride it there are all sort of other things – learn to jump, get a muni (mountain unicycle) and learn to ride off road, etc. The advantage of the things you can achieve with a unicycle is that you will just carry on getting better, and if you keep at it, most days you can chalk off some little achievement – it’s not like bike fitness type stuff where it’s easy to go backwards. It’s also non-competitive – not about whether you can ride better than your mates, just about whether you can ride better than you could yesterday. You might think this a completely off-the-wall suggestion and maybe not for everybody, but I’m convinced unicycling kept me from disappearing into a deep dark hole – it sounds like you have a similar mindset to me, so it might help you too.

BTW I do still race, and still actually do better than most people (by picking the right niches to compete in I can still win stuff despite being nowhere near as fit as I once was). However I’ve backed off a lot, and happier for it – though I do still have the yearning for what I could once do. TBH by the time I semi-retired, despite still getting top results in some big events, I was enjoying it a lot less due to all the stress involved, which was at least partly down to feeling the need to maintain my position near the top of the results sheet. It felt great when I won, but more often than not when I didn’t I felt rotten (I have a bit of that tonight, having come back from an event I could have and should have won, but made a silly mistake and didn’t – I wonder if the feeling of winning as I did last time out makes up for feeling like I do now, though I know that actually I can’t just stop).

I have been reading the posts and started to wonder if the anxiety of whether a racer will podium or not leading up to a race is healthy for the ones that are depressive. I just remember the anxiety leading up to it along with adrenalin kicking in but once the gun goes at the start of the race,it lift’s instantly. I loved that feeling. Just to finally be in the race and not worrying about it like I had been minutes before. I may be wrong. I really don’t know if this is good for the mind in a depressive state. Someone set me straight on that one!

But to always have it in the back of your mind (leading up to and during the race) that you will NOT be on the podium,surely can’t help these issues.

I haven’t won much but the races that I have one, leading up to them I knew without a shadow of a (excuse the language) f*c&*! doubt, that I’d win. It was only a few but I knew (and pictured one race) as impossible for anyone to beat me. The speed I had and the mental positivity in my head telling me that there was no way that anyone turning up for that race would be able to go faster down the first straight into the first corner made it happen. I visited the course a week before the race as I had no idea what it was like and the feeling and adrenalin was a bit too much once I visualized myself riding it start to finish. My heart rate just standing there on the track visualizing it must have been around 130!

If someone got all worked up over this and a week later they performed bad at the race I can only imagine this would hit home in a bad way and put them on a downward spiral even more.

You say your goals are nearly embarrassing to talk about. If you want it badly and train to do as well as possible but also have 20-30% negativity or doubt lurking in the back of your mind about finishing half way down the field, you WILL do just that.

I can only guess that the goals you are embarrassed to mention are a long way off winning the Tour of Britain.. but if the goals are set so high and mentally you know leading up to,and during the race that the podium wont be happening, it’s only going to keep putting you on a downer.

Everyone seems to have the right idea about backing off with the racing,enjoying the ride and stopping to take in the scenery and spinning open a flask of tea. By doing this it’s not the end of your racing career. Its just a change. A break from it all to see how you feel. Surely worth a try!

Col, you mention that this pattern of thinking affects not only your bike time but across all of your life experience. This would suggest that the ‘chatterbox’ – the internal voice in your head (possibly the ‘parent’ in you?)has just too much volume.

We all experience the chatterbox to varying degrees and learning how to mute it/silence it has for me, been the key to easing my habitual tendency towards being a cyclical depressive.

Try to not listen to it when it starts, in other words, try to observe it. Recognise that it’s not your real inner voice and resist the temptation to get caught up in a conversation/debate/argument with it. And practice, practice practice. It takes time.

In the meantime, keep doing the things you love and with the people you love.

Wishing you peace and joy.
Tim

^ this is an issue I’ve had. As someone else said “the Chimp Paradox” is well worth a read. It’s like a user-manual for your head.

A cycling coach would be a good idea, if you can get the right one. A thorough discussion of your abilities and your goals with one should give you an idea of how realistic you are being. Try British Cycling for a local coach.
A good coach will help with this and more importantly will point you at extra medical/mental health help if it is deemed necessary.
As an aside how much cycling are you doing a week? One of your posts shows your commute is 9 miles as a return trip. Gains on such a short weekly distance will be hard to see, you’ll be able to do the speed work but endurance may suffer. See a coach though.

Wow, didn’t expect even more great replies this morning.

Last night I felt very very low and I tried to think of the simple positive of riding my bike – just strolling along the trials in this pretty beautiful countryside we have around Belfast. Didn’t seem like such a bad thing. I’d have gone out, but it was a tad late! This weekend I’m doing the Redbull Foxhunt in Belfast and I’m really hoping I can be in the right frame of mind to just enjoy it and not care about where and what happens. If I can get a cheeky photo with Gee Atherton, that’ll do.

There are a lot of books and online inof, it can be very difficult to spend time and get the right stuff for me.

I am not a coach but I can give you some vague free advice that will probably get you close to the front of the pack 🙂 Email in profile.

I’m not sure about this ‘just ride to enjoy it’ thing. For me, going fast IS the enjoyment. Why else would I keep riding around the same old trails? Trundling through the countryside is pleasant enough, but I’ve been doing it for 20 odd years, I need something more than that. When I was a kid going out with mates it was all about racing them, getting down or up as fast as possible. Now I don’t have regular riding mates I have to ride for speed otherwise I’ll be bored.

Don’t criticise me for it – that’s just part of my psyche, and I embrace it and enjoy it. It does mean that I am prone to beating myself up if I do poorly in races, but again that’s part of it. If you strive to achieve you will fail most of the time, if you don’t strive to achieve you have to accept mediocrity. Some of us don’t mind that, some do.

Decide which type you are and embrace it fully, don’t try and make yourself be the type you’re not.

I’m all for vague free advice 😉

Yea, part of the fun is going fast, no doubt, though I’m thinking that just going out to ride will give me some perspective. I know I’ll continue to ride as hard as a can, I just need to not judge myself on it all the time?

I just need to not judge myself on it all the time?

this. And by, perhaps, avoiding situations in which you judge yourself for a time you can regain some confidence in and enjoyment from ‘just riding a bike’.

No one’s suggesting joining the Rough Stuff Fellowship, just deciding that it’s the process of riding a bike that’s important, not just the result.

Judge yourself based on your situation.

How fast you are depends on a few things:

1) how good your training is (not necessarily how much time you put in)
2) how much other stuff you forgo to do your training
3) how committed you are to it
4) genetics

Your genetic profile dictates how much effect your training will have.

I don’t do well at races generally. I come ahead of the weekend warriors, but behind all the good people. Why is this? Why don’t I win?

1) I’m not single-minded. I love lots of things, cycling is only one of them. I love hanging out with my wife for example, and relaxing watching telly/amusing myself some other way
2) I have a family and commitments to them
3) Work leaves me tired and I only have so much mental energy.

Given those constraints, I do reasonably well. Point 1) is a biggie, but I have learned not to beat myself up about it. It’s just who I am – it’s also why I’m not a top scientist, a leading entrepreneur or a high level consultant in my job.

Point 3) is also significant. I know people who’ve got boundless energy to do stuff – I’m not one of them. It’s just who I am, no point fighting it too hard.

However I think I do well on point 4), I respond quite well to training when I do it. So I am trying to find a way of training effectively that fits into all the other constraints, which effectively means training effectively in a short amount of time.

Which is where HIIT, commuting and the time-crunched cyclist stuff comes in. My project is to learn how to extract the most training benefit and therefore speed out of the least amount of time.

Put like that, it’s a fun challenge, and I can still feel I have succeeded without having to win Elite races. A good performance is a success.

Isn’t a lot of this part and parcel of being a bloke ?

I had the same goals when being a semi pro golfer, the same ones when motorbike racing and the same ones about cyling in XC races… I now sit here after buying a roadie and wondering if i should enter events next year etc, how i’d do in them and what i need to do to move up in fitness etc.

I don’t believe however i’m depressed, although sometimes my lack of ability does irritate and sadden me slightly.

I think some of the ‘just get out on the trails and have fun’ are cracking posts… it’s far too easy to get too wrapped up in faster faster faster and forget about “wow, it’s stunning out here on the side of a mountain”.

Funnily enough my mates often have to drag me back from ‘faster faster’ and back into enjoyment. This thread has also just stopped me as even after 2 rides on the roadbike i was already on the slippery slope to getting too wrapped up in training and speed to actually appreciate just being out there. So much so that when i go out in a little while i’m leaving the Endmondo turned off, because you know what… it doesn’t matter.

So at the very least, your thread has inspired me slightly, for that, i thank you 🙂

Get a bike loaded up and go touring for 2 weeks. Ride fast, explore, eat nice food, drink good wine, meet interesting people. After a couple of thousand Km’s in a couple of weeks you’ll realise there’s more to cycling than chasing men in Lycra round a muddy field. You’ll also have all those Km’s in you and you’ll haul arse!

@op: I know nothing about depression and cba to wade through all this, but my thought is you’re taking riding too seriously and thinking too hard.

It’s just bike riding. It’s not important, it’s just a bit of fun. Chill out and enjoy it for what it is.

Wishing you the best

– M

I think some of the ‘just get out on the trails and have fun’ are cracking posts… it’s far too easy to get too wrapped up in faster faster faster and forget about “wow, it’s stunning out here on the side of a mountain”.

Umm yea.. but that’s assuming you can go out to the mountains or take a two week touring holiday. I can’t practically do that without causing huge problems for my wife cos we have two small kids who idolise me, so it’s not fair on them either.

Am I depressed about this? A bit, yes. There’s a whole world of fab adventures out there that I have to put on hold 🙁

but my thought is you’re taking riding too seriously and thinking too hard.

Chill out and enjoy it for what it is.

“What it is” varies depending on the person. I’m sticking up for the performance interested cyclist here because we get slagged off for it on here 🙁

And thinking hard – jesus, the day I stop thinking hard will be the day I want to die. And I’m proud of it.

Molgrips these words will help (and apply to all fathers of young children)

This too, will pass.

Carry on!

Umm yea.. but that’s assuming you can go out to the mountains or take a two week touring holiday. I can’t practically do that without causing huge problems for my wife cos we have two small kids who idolise me, so it’s not fair on them either

We can all get to a mountain within 5-6 hours max, be it Wales, Peaks or Scotland. Realistically any of us can get up at 5am and be on a mountina just after breakfast, ride for 4 hours and still be home to put the kids to bed.

Wow that’s ALOT of advice!

for what little its worth here’s my bit.
Stop reading the mtb’ comics/magazines they’ll always make you feel inadequate.

Deal with your depression appropriatly with your G if you don’t already do so. (For what its worth my GP has me on 30mg of citalapram, not that I’ve noticed it!)

and ease up on the STW pity parties. Its human nature to not really care about strangers!
🙂

@molgrips do what you want, but my post wasn’t about you eh?

@killwillforchips – yea, coming on to ask a bunch of strangers who genuinely don’t care, sounds the like the wrong idea. However I’m very pleased that in the moment that each and every one of you replied, you felt you wanted too, just to help someone. Human nature if you ask me. I know STW very well, I read a lot more than I post.

I’m on 40mg of fluoxetine, been through CBT about 5 years ago, and attended 6 sessions with a consellor this time last year.

I’m realising I’m pouring out a lot of personal info on here, so I’m still nervous sharing all this.

We can all get to a mountain within 5-6 hours max, be it Wales, Peaks or Scotland. Realistically any of us can get up at 5am and be on a mountina just after breakfast, ride for 4 hours and still be home to put the kids to bed.

I can walk out of the door and ride my bike for as long as I like. But that will upset people I love, so whilst it’s physically possible it’s not really a good idea for me.

@molgrips do what you want, but my post wasn’t about you eh?

No, it was about cycling and attitudes towards it. I posted my thoughts on what’s being said. That’s how forums are supposed to work imo.

Its human nature to not really care about strangers!

Yes and no. STW is partially abstract, partially strangers and partially real friends.. but we do care on the whole 🙂 You’ll always get lots of help and usefully, lots of different viewpoints.

There is quite a bit there, I’ll throw in my 2 cents…

I had a similar attitude of: If I am not the best then what is the point. Then I would think to be the best I must try really hard, so I did “try hard” I would return home exhausted tired and feeling rubbish.

To be a good rider you don’t need to try hard, you just need to ride and ride and ride, like the best pilots have flying hours, same with riding.

I found that if I concentrated or simply riding more often; be that wherever, whenever some days I cba and I’d go for a pootle, some days I would shred. I found that it all adds up, because with every ride you gain experience (especially in the UK with it’s varying conditions).

I also only do what I feel like doing; if I am tired – going racing uphill isn’t going to be enjoyable, but I can do a bit of track-stand practise or something else on that day.

Ok so you want to race so there will be training involved, but some days you must go ride without an objective, just piss about and remember why you started riding – for fun!

But that will upset people I love, so whilst it’s physically possible it’s not really a good idea for me.

seriously ? once every 2-3 months you can’t do that ?

seriously ? once every 2-3 months you can’t do that ?

I’m often away all week long, and I’m always working all week long. So the weekends are the only real family time we have. My wife still has to look after the kids all day even when I am working at home.

So after 5 days like that it’s hardly fair to sod off and enjoy myself all day and make her do it again. There’s nothing she really wants to do on her own that would make up for it. So no, not really…

Col,

I have very similar feeling to you although not identical. I often sit there wondering why I can’t bring myself to do things (not just ride the bike) and would rather not start them than fail. Unlike you perhaps, I don’t have the same sense of failure after an activity and usually enjoy myself when I have actually built myself up to do something.

As a bit of background, I also suffered from clinical depression when I lost my wife to cancer and was on quite high dose medication for over 5 years. I still have bad days, but most of the time I’m the same grumpy git I always was.

I recently read ‘The Chimp Paradox’ which does go quite a long way into answering the question ‘Why?’ we have this behaviour. It is natural for different parts of our brains to be in conflict and it is our responsibility to try and ‘manage them’. In the books terms, the ‘human’ part of the brain behaves rationally, the ‘chimp’ is irrational and will try to mess things up. The only problem is the chimp is a lot stronger than the human and without careful management, the chimp will usually win (why you feel like crap when you don’t perform to the chimp’s expectations).

I have also been reading some philosophy on the meaning to life. Very interesting stuff if you can bypass some of the more outrageous philosophical bull. Basically, life sucks and rather sadly you have to accept this. There are no magic bullets that will make things perfect, you deal with what you are given and make the best way forward you can without hurting anyone else. I know it’s a crappy answer, but unfortunately that is the reality.

Unfortunately, I can’t really say how to help you specifically, but I can say how I get round it? First of all, I try VERY hard, not to have too high an expectation of myself. Accept that the best you can do really is the best you can do. Next, realise that it is your own brain that is playing tricks on you. No one else, just your own brain and this is not unusual. Third, and quite a big one, don’t beat yourself up if something doesn’t go quite right. I still have huge issues with this one and it is the one thing that can send me into a depressive state. Personally, I have to sit myself down and quietly think through the problem and how I can solve it. My psychiatrist used to call it looking for an exit off your ring road. It frustrates the hell out of my girlfriend, because she wants me to talk about it and I can’t.

In practical terms, I don’t like to plan to far ahead although I have to plan things like going cycling. I have to psych myself up to go out as that annoying chimp in my head will always find something else for me to do rather than put the lycra on and start pedalling.

It’s not easy, but unfortunately neither is life in general (well not for me anyway). I’ve no idea if any of this will help, but I sincerely hope it does. Good luck.

All or nothing thinking / perfectionism classic causes of depression.

This may be of some use:
http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/Pages/improve-mental-wellbeing.aspx

Good luck OP

Mavisto likes typing. Do you have blisters now?

😉

@Mavisto – Interesting post. I honeslty don’t accept that life just sucks and that we just have to get on with it, though I know that when I’m down that’s exactly my attitude. I do see the beauty in life, it’s just harnessing that and dealing with the evils that don’t allow my to explore it.

My interpretation of Mavisto’s point was that in reality there is no external ‘meaning’ to life. Fundamentally we’re a bunch of molecules chucked together under the influence of physics, it’s no more than a happy accident, and sooner or later we’re all worm food anyway.

It doesn’t mean anything, it just is.

I found, once I accepted that, I quit worrying about ‘meaning’ and just got on with having as good a life as possible. The scales fall from the eyes and everything becomes simple and clear. It’s great actually.

ps my life doesn’t suck

Col,

Ok, maybe I made a bad choice of words, but I was trying to get a general point over in a limited amount of time without boring everyone. There is nothing wrong with seeing beauty in things and having loving relationships (which most modern philosophy views as vitally important), but expecting life to be a bed of roses is thought of as being misguided and unrealistic. Maybe I should have quoted direct from The Chimp Paradox and said ‘Life is not fair’. Expecting life to be fair and just will always leave you disapointed. Treat life like it’s not fair and you are only ever surprised by the good things.

I realise it is a pessimistic view, but if we share anything in our image of ourselves, you probably have a pessimistic view on life anyway (really sorry if I’m out of order there). I actually like the person that I am inside, part of my issues are with my misguided view of what is on the outside. I assume that this is misguided, because I have been married once and now live with my partner, so I can’t be too bad on the outside.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t sit in a darkened room feeling sorry for myself and thinking life is crap. I just get on with what comes at me and enjoy life as much as I can. When something goes wrong or I don’t make it out on my bike (because the chimp is playing up), I try not to make a big deal out of it. I also try not to let other people upset me. They have busy lives and are just trying to get along the best they can and don’t need me messing their lives up.

I’ve had issues with my partner because, in my view, she works to hard and for too long. I try not to let this bother me now, but I also have the opinion that when I want to do something at the weekend (like biking), if she’s happy to spend all that time at work, don’t complain when I want to do something in the only free time I have.

See I still have issues.

I think there is a lot of interesting advice and perspective on this thread. Just to add my thoughts. I’ve not, as far as a clinical diagnoses goes, suffered from depression, I don’t cycle competitively and I’m not a cycling coach. However, I’ve been a working coach in other sports where I have also performed to a reasonably high level and where I sometimes used to feel the same way after activity/performance.

For me, and as simply as possible the things I learned which helped me to place my own performance into perspective and which I now try to apply to biking are as follows:

1. It’s just [enter sport/activity here] and whilst it is important to me personally it doesn’t define who I am or my value. I have lots of other skills and enjoy other things. People appreciate me not because I am good at […] but because of my values, behavior, actions, thoughts etc.

2. My performance has to be related to my own progression/previous performance, before I relate it to the performance of others. For this reason I choose to compete with myself and I don’t judge my performances against the success of others first. If you compare to others first you will normally find a negative because there is always somebody better/faster etc. Instead I think about my own success first and then look to what I can learn from others to help me improve. This is difficult to stick to in a race where the whole emphasis is on a ‘place’ – forget the number and focus on your improvements/enjoyment.

3. Don’t constantly analyse. Take a break from thinking occasionally and just enjoy the feeling of what you do. When I analyse too much I loose the ‘big picture’, forget that it’s just […] (see my first point), and then when I don’t have the successes/perform in the way that I want it becomes more important than it should be. For me this is what leads to negative feelings, and normally less confidence and a poorer performance. The downward spiral.

Just my own reflections about what I did when I wasn’t feeling good about things. May help, may not. In any case best of luck.

I’ve not read everything but I thought I would chip in anyway.

For me riding isn’t about how fast you can go its about how much fun you can have. I am usually found at the back of a group suffering on the climbs but near the front on the way down enjoying myself and getting into trouble by taking the wrong lines. I know I could be faster if I trained for it but training is boring so I don’t do it.

So my top tip would be don’t go training just go for a ride.

“sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind……the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.”

From Baz Luhrmann’s Wear Sunscreen. Always struck a chord with me.

In other words, you run your own race and play the hand you’re dealt. Comparing yourself to others is pointless, theres always someone better/faster/richer. Compare yourself to where you were a few months/years ago.