This week I learned something funny (and a bit painful):
you don’t always need competitors — sometimes you are your own toughest opponent.
I’ve been working since 5:30 AM, doing what I always do:
optimizing, tweaking, improving, fixing things no one else on the planet would ever notice except me.
Then something small didn’t go the way I wanted.
Really small.
But in my head, it became a “failure”.
And suddenly… I found myself angry at myself.
Not the normal “come on, you can do better” kind of thing.
I mean a full-on silent treatment.
I was literally in a fight with myself for two days.
My wife looked at me and asked:
“Who are you not talking to now?”
And I said:
“Myself. I’m disappointed in me.”
She almost fell on the floor laughing.
She told me: “This is stand‑up material. You should go on stage with this.”
Then she said the sentence that always brings me back to reality:
“You work too hard. You don’t enjoy the process. You try to be perfect even when you don’t need to.”
And she’s right.
I come from a competitive background —
Jiu‑Jitsu, sprinting, medals, first places.
In that world, there’s no second place.
You win, or you train harder.
And that mindset followed me into digital marketing and SEO.
Into every task, every detail, every pixel.
I always want to be number one.
Always want to prove to myself that I can do more.
But sometimes — and this is hard for me to admit —
I need to let go a little.
To say “good enough is good enough”.
To stop fighting myself.
To stop putting pressure on myself that no one else is putting on me.
I’m still learning.
Still messing up.
Still arguing with myself from time to time.
If you enjoyed this story and want to dive into something more SEO‑focused, here’s a related article I wrote:
👉 https://dev.to/fayzakseo/how-much-do-social-networks-really-impact-seo-in-2026-kmc
But at least now…
I can laugh about it.
And maybe that’s the first step toward the next win —
not over others,
but over myself.
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For everyone asking what the fight was about…
Here’s the “catastrophe” that triggered it.
Yes, I know — my wife still laughs at me.