I have this weird flaw, or at least some people call it a flaw. I’m not especially competitive. I can be. But more often, I’m in a completely different race than the people around me. I’m not sure when I started thinking this way, but it’s fairly evident from my life from as far back as I can recall that I never did care about who came in which place.
Instead, I prefer to compete with myself.
When I win business that other digital media groups were also trying for, I never think of it as winning from them. Instead, I just feel like I finally got a proposal to sound even a third as enthusiastic as I sound in person. When someone else gets a great big feature in a magazine, instead of feeling angry or sad or like I lost, I think to myself about how I can achieve more and deliver more results, so that it’s obvious next time that I be called for a story.
Competing with one’s self is far more fulfilling. You control more of the variables. If you want to find more success, throw yourself into your work, into doing big things that matter, into helping your clients succeed. That’s so much easier to conceptualize than thinking about racing against some other person or group.
If you’re trying to catch up to my numbers (and ask yourself why, because the numbers aren’t what matter as much as how you leverage them), you can’t control what I’m doing. So, every little variable I add messes up your effort to catch up or pass. Meanwhile, you’re not paying as much attention to you as you are to me, and are thus not focused on the part you can change the most.
No one ever won a race looking sideways.
Remind yourself of this often. Competition was given to us by our overlords. It was put in place because in situations where someone fabricates a competition, invariably, a third party benefits from BOTH parties’ efforts more than you. Most times, when you’re feeling competitive, you’re being played.
So instead, work within yourself. Work your variables. Work on those things you can change. Work to improve your skills, your thinking, your ability to serve, and your capacity to complete more than you could before. Execute. There are so many talkers that by just doing, you get the chance to win.
It’s much more fun this way. Believe me.
Photo credit peregrine blue
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