From Awareness Builder 101: Chapter 33

33. Rat Race

 

Many books have been written on this topic. The famous rat race where people compete with each other. To be the first, the best, the fastest, the best paid, the….., well, the list is endless. To get to this point, we do a lot, including being less nice to the other rats. Like rats, we bite, fight, steel, anything to be at the front.

It’s hard work, it’s extremely tiring and not without risk. And when you, finally, find yourself in the front row of the group of running rats, it’s even harder to also stay there. To keep your top position you need to fight a lot of opposition. Whilst you have to keep running fastest, and scanning all the obstacles on your path, you also need to have eyes in the back of your head. The other rats will do whatever it takes to make you stumble, and even better, make you fall. There is little to no mercy and it’s usually a very lonely place where it feels you can’t trust anyone. We run, run, run……it’s an endless race. Yet nothing but eternity is ‘endless’ so one day, one way or the other, the race will come to an end. We’re overtaken and end up in the middle or even the back, we are being kicked out, fall sick or drop dead. Game over.

 

More and more of us start to see that and either decide to step out of the race themselves or never even start it. These are the smart ones, don’t you think?

Human beings seem to be rather stubborn around the topic ‘competition’. And I admit (most of this book is autobiographical after all….), I’m one of them. After stepping out of the rat race and starting my own company, a new kind of competition started. The competition of self-improvement. Self-growth is often seen as an ultimate thing we constantly need to strive for. We need to learn every day, become a bit better every week, beat the numbers of the same month a year ago. We start comparing ourselves with a competitor that never seems to let us of the hook: we’re competing against our self. Another self-help book, another course, a seminar, a master. Whatever it takes to beat the current version of our self.

 

In our desire to be free from competition we actually started a competition that we’ll never be able to win…… As the famous Dr. Seuss already wrote: “There are games you can’t win since you’re playing against yourself….”

 

Of course, there is nothing against growth! Yet I wonder what happened with the word ‘enough’? What is so hard about accepting that what we have, that where we are, is enough? For a little while, maybe forever… It seems we’ve replaced the rat race against others with the addiction to ‘personal growth’. Personal and material growth. We’re pushing ourselves for more, faster, bigger, better…. We push ourselves and we’re very self-critical. Never enough, always better.

 

In other words, we find ourselves in a rat race with self…… We need moments to embrace ‘enough’! To rest, reflect, celebrate. To consciously decide to either stay at ‘enough’, and trust that all you need is within you now, or to move towards ‘more’. It’s a balancing act.

 

 

Journaling questions for this chapter:

 

 

Where am I in competition with myself?

 

 

What am I trying to prove?

 

 

What is the balance between ‘more’ and ‘enough’ for me…..?

 

 

© 2026. Alex Verlek, Coaching Works International.

 

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