Real Success Is Making Your Younger Self Proud
It's you against yourself.
Vacation is supposed to bring leisure and rest. It might be a margarita on the rocks with a salt laced rim as you waste away the day with your toes sunk in the sand and the sun beating down on your skin. Maybe you get away to explore Earth’s majestic wonders that leave you in awe wondering how nature produces such beautiful sights. However, my recent vacations have been a paradox and anything but. I explored a new city but I didn’t head home with sand in my suitcase and aloe soaking my sunburnt skin. Instead, I waddled through the airport with sore legs, a suitcase of sweaty clothes, and a finisher’s medal.
I spent my vacation competing in a Hyrox – a fitness competition that combines eight kilometers of running with eight functional workouts. I wanted 2025 to be the year of me doing things, and a lot of said things are athletic pursuits. It is hard to think of a better time with fewer responsibilities, you know? I saw this as a solution to some of my problems. I get away and detach, have an excuse to travel, and it gives me a goal to work towards.
Hyrox is similar to a triathlon, a 5k, or a marathon. In the start chute, to your left and right, lie strangers. People I couldn't tell you a single thing about. I can tell you we all have a similar mission–to complete the race as fast as possible. It’s everyone’s ideal scenario. The quicker we finish, the happier we will be.
But is success just finishing as fast as possible? Maybe beating those around me? I wasn’t going to win the race or my age group. Few are afforded that opportunity. The usual suspects in contention for the title are familiar with each other. They know what to expect of others, but for most of us, we don’t. Convincing myself I need to beat those around me does nothing. I don’t know their training regimen, injuries, goals, plans, or fitness level.
Maybe success is beating a goal time? I knew success for me lied beyond finishing. I wanted to go fast and beat my time from my first Hyrox. However, some would like to go fast, but their priority is to cross that finish line. Well, if that doesn’t satisfy success for everyone, how do you define it?
I’d argue real success is if you are making your younger self proud. I know how my younger self is wired, and I am still wired the same way. I want to push my physical limits. End the race expending all my energy and cross that finish line ready to crash to the ground in exhaustion. I want to continue to improve and be better than I used to be. That Hyrox was me against my previous self, beating the version of myself from two months ago when I completed my first one. I know every version of my younger self would be proud if I could do that.
I’ve grown a bit. It wasn’t always this way. In high school, I defined my athletic success against others. I could have gotten a personal record in the 5k, but placed eighth on my team and still been unhappy. You can drink the Kool-Aid of not facing all the consequences of your actions and try to convince yourself the world is conspiring against you. It would be quite an honor if the world is doing so. This isn’t to say, life isn’t littered with moments of wounds and sabotage that parlay into unfortunate events. But internally, we all know it is not others and the world against us. It is you against you.
A constant battle of trying to be a better version of yourself and bringing yourself closer to where you are meant to be because your younger self never has it figured out. I always appreciated how Brianna Wiest puts it in 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think,
“I hope you never reach a point in which you look back on your younger self and think, “Wow, I had it all figured out!” That means you stopped growing. (And that means you stopped living.)”
As I reflected on my “vacation” and if my race went well, I could list all the things I could have done better. I am my own harshest critic, trust me. I always have more to figure out. I learn things every race on what I could do better, techniques to improve, and weaknesses to assess, but I didn’t want to drown in my deficiencies. Instead, I wanted to focus on my overall effort.
I crossed the finish line 2 minutes and 30 seconds faster than my previous time. Nick Cave puts it well in Hope and Carnage,
“We’re often led to believe that getting older is in itself somehow a betrayal of our idealistic younger self, but sometimes I think it might be the other way around. Maybe the younger self finds it difficult to inhabit its true potential because it has no idea what that potential is. It is a kind of unformed thing running scared most of the time, frantically trying to build its sense of self — This is me! Here I am! — in any way that it can. But then time and life come along, and smash that sense of self into a million pieces.
Then comes the reassembled self, the self you have to put back together. You no longer have to devote time to finding out what you are, you are just free to be whatever you want to be, unimpeded by the incessant needs of others. You somehow grow into the fullness of your humanity, form your own character, become a proper person — I don’t know, someone who has become a part of things, not someone separated from or at odds with the world.”
I knew it was a step towards growing into my fullness and becoming a proper person, the person I was meant to be. Fulfilling that potential I always had but am always working to unlock. Doing things I always wanted to do and going to places I always wanted to go. Your younger self knows you. They know what you have been through. The things you have seen. The turmoil you have endured. They know how far you have grown, and how proud they would be to see you where you are today. Did I make him proud crossing the finish line ? I would like to say he would. I think that is success after all.
-Scantron
Appreciate you being here.