I think when people say "just do a little better than last time" they leave off an important, potentially implicit, but important part that is "than yourself last time".

Self competition is one of the key parts to maintaining a healthy mindset when improving on anything versus overly relying on external comparison.

The author also briefly touched on another topic I think is incredibly important for improving and moving forward with "I'll say it for you: you're forgiven".

I consider myself rather Type A and one of the hardest things is forgiving myself for anything really. I carry things that happened N years ago with me that likely no one besides myself noticed or things they did but forgave me for a long time ago. Forgiving myself is even harder than not focusing on external comparison and I'm getting better with it as times goes on and sometimes it fuels me but at other times it really is a lot of weight that can slow you down when you don't want it to.

So I'm still working on forgiving myself on things that I really should be able to and knowing the difference for things I maybe should carry with me for a bit. As I've lived I've realized I am without a doubt my own harshest critic and the critic is a right bastard who's not always in the realm of reality.