"The race is long, and in the end, it's only with oneself" - reads the signature of one of my friends on the office communicator. And it never fails to inspire me, though I've known him for more than a year now, and I pretty much read it every single day.

When I sit down to teach my brother, he generally gets excited when he has just one last unit left to prepare for his exam with ample time left on hand- so excited that he doesn't touch his books until there is equal to or lesser than the amount of time he anticipates he needs to study that last unit.

Moral of the story is, he could learn more in less time if only he didn't get complacent in the last run. I still haven't been able to get this point across, I hope it will reach him when he reads this article!

Coming back to myself. As I am about to reach a finishing line that's personal to me, I want to talk about that moment when you're not at the finishing line yet, but very close.

How does that make you feel? Maintaining relaxed passion till you achieve your goal helps you achieve it faster! It gives me a slight high, but what's not done is not done, and that's the only thing I -and you- need to remember!

The worst thing to do would be to check how your peers are doing, it would be like comparing how a monkey and a fish fare in climbing a tree. You might be way ahead in some field, but way behind in another, so yes, the point to remember is what my esteemed senior Ujjwal keeps his status as: "The race is long, and in the end, it's only with oneself".

So keep running, and keep breaking past records you yourself created. (Do you remember Usain Bolt?)