If you compare yourself to others you can only ever follow in someone's footsteps while becoming second best...
But if you compare to past yourself, you can potentially get head and shoulders above the crowd and become the best.
That only helps when you're on an upward (career) trajectory and optimistic. My younger self was healthier, had more energy, more mental acuity, was better-looking, better-liked, less cynical, had more opportunities and more time on earth left to fulfill their dreams as well as enough naivety to believe he could be become the best at something for which other people had a natural aptitude and a twenty-year headstart.
Put another way, if you let your personal self worth come from external means then you’re ripe for being manipulated by toxic and malignant sources (people/algorithms).