I disagree about ignoring the leaderboards. Rather than ignoring it, accept the fact that you are not the best.

By ignoring the leaderboard you will have no clue if you are improving or not. The only way to know that for sure is to see how you compare to others. For instance I took up chess, and I can easily see if I improve when my ELO rises. If I didn't have ELO or leaderboards, I'd have no idea. I can never judge my improvement accurately if I can't compare it with others.

And I'd rather say I'm strong enough to be okay with not being the best, as opposed to having to pretend that others and leaderboards don't exist. It seems like this strategy to not compare oneself to others is just turning your head to an issue, because you can't handle it.