In order to achieve any goal that you set for yourself, you must have the motivation to start. Motivation is great for getting you out of the gates and off towards hitting your goal, however, it takes more than just motivation to keep you on track towards obtaining that goal. You can’t always find motivation from within, sometimes it takes someone else to keep you motivated to push you towards your goal.
That is what competition is.
Competition can be the ultimate motivating factor that forces you to stay at the top of your game. If competition was non-existent, complacency would settle in the moment you achieve mastery in a skill or any area of life. If you knew that nobody could ever be better than you, you would have no reason or motivation to continue to strive for more.
Competition keeps the fire inside of us raging and resists the urge to become complacent. This can be in sports, business, school, or anything. We will always be faced with competition no matter what we do. Competition forces us to not only have to worry about ourselves and doing the best we can, but also how we stack up to compared to everyone else.
Looking at the competition in relation to yourself gives you an idea of where you stand. Evaluating the competition is not supposed to make you feel inferior or like you need to make drastic changes to be more like someone else ahead of you. Understanding the competition is simply the measuring stick you can use to better understand yourself along with your strengths and weaknesses. The competition does not represent an ideal model of what you need to be like, but it does set the standard and establish expectation. Copying the competition and expecting better results is wishful and ineffective in the long run. If there are two of the same things then one of them is not needed. Understanding the competition and finding ways to get better results is required for success.
If you are starting a business, it would make sense to try and understand what the other businesses are doing in your specific industry. You would want to understand how they operate, what audience they target, how they interact with their customers, what the similarities and differences are amongst all the businesses in this industry, what drives the businesses, amongst many other things. If you were unaware of this information and spent no time familiarizing yourself with the competition, then you would be putting yourself at a serious disadvantage from the beginning. You would have no idea of what is required for success, including certain do’s and don’ts of the industry, the expectations of the customer, and most importantly, how you can differentiate yourself from the competition. You must find a nice balance between being informed and not caring about the competition. Researching your competition in business, gives you great insight and knowledge about the different business’s you will be competing for market share with. You cannot find ways to stand out if you have no idea what the competition is doing. You may think what you are doing is providing unique value, but everyone else may be doing that exact same thing. Having knowledge and insight on your competition can be a blessing and a curse sometimes. I say that because you may want to adopt some of the things that your competition excels at, which can take away from your uniqueness as a business and reduce your overall competitive advantage. You want to understand the competition and know what they are doing, but you shouldn’t try to mimic the competition and follow in their footsteps. Similarly, if you are focused on how you can beat out the other businesses you compete with, it distracts you from working on your own business. Many musicians don’t listen to other musicians who make similar music because they don’t want to start sounding like them. Use the competition as a template for context but blaze your own path to relevancy.
Becoming consumed with the competition does not pertain strictly to just business. It happens all the time in our personal lives. If we are too focused on others, then it distracts us from our unique qualities, and we try to be something or someone that we are not. Just like in business, the way to relevancy is not through copying exactly what the competition does. Just like in business, you become relevant in life by being yourself and carving out your own space based on the qualities, skills, and traits that make you unique. The world doesn’t need another someone else, it needs you. Life is certainly not a competition but the way our framework can be set up makes it seem that way. Life is different from sports in the fact that our wins don’t have to come at the expense of others. With sports there must be one winner and the rest losers. In life there can be many winners and many losers, it’s just how you look at it. Someone else doesn’t have to lose for us to win. This framework is caused by a scarcity mindset, the opposite of an abundance mindset. A mindset of abundance centers around plentifulness and the possibility of victory for all. Both you and your competition can win. There doesn’t always have to be a winner and a loser. We think that the world only offers limited resources and we all must fight for them. Someone else doesn’t have to lose for you to win. If you believe that you can win, then everyone else should be allowed to have the same mentality. Rooting for others to lose doesn’t increase your odds of winning, it only diminishes them. Going back to what I pointed out earlier, a focus on beating the competition only distracts you from doing the things you need to do to win. The energy and focus are on someone else instead of yourself. You don’t get ahead in life and become somebody by doing what the crowd does, you must find your uniqueness and double down on it. Discovering what makes you unique is an undeniable truth of living a happy life. It is exhausting and frustrating to try and keep up with the crowd or always do what you are told. Everyone has unique skills, qualities, and traits that separate them from everyone else. Figuring out what that is allows you to have something that many people spend their whole lives trying to discover or wishing they could discover. Even if you never find out what that unique skill or talent you possess, you will gain so much knowledge and awareness around yourself. Self-awareness helps provide you with a more thorough understanding of what you like and what you are good at. Knowing what makes you unique provides you with so much understanding and control over your life.
Following in the footsteps of someone else destroys our creativity. We no longer need to use it because we can just mirror what someone else does or just wait for them to do something or be something then we can follow suit. Creativity is just like a muscle, if you do not exercise then the muscle will not grow, it will actually weaken. It takes courage to be creative and only those who are mentally strong can fully capitalize on their creative abilities. This type of mindset and attitude can sabotage our happiness and completely rob us of our personal power. I once heard famous author Robert Greene in a podcast talk about how our power lies in our uniqueness. This really made an impression on me. Power and influence are gained by doing something different, starting something that has never been done or seen before. How do you think someone like Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein gained power and notoriety? They harnessed their unique skills and talents and used them in a way that nobody else thought was possible. Oprah is another great example of someone who rose above the competition and obtained power and influence by believing in her creative abilities and capitalizing on her unique qualities.
Power doesn’t necessarily have to be used in a way where you gain attention and build a strong influence. Most people who lust for power aren’t equipped to properly handle it. This is not power in the sense of ruling over others, but power in your personal life and over oneself. When you have power over yourself you take complete control of your life. Loss of control in your life is when you always follow the actions or attitudes of someone else, in which you are really quietly begging for validation and acceptance. If someone is considered cool or is admired by a large group of people, then we think we can just follow their actions, wear what they wear, talk like they talk, and we can be considered cool just like they are. This doesn’t have to be a celebrity or any famous figure, this can be the alpha of the peer group, a boss, a coworker, an acquaintance, or someone you simply overly admire. Someone who just simply follows suit accepts being victimized, by others and their circumstances. These people become victims because they lack the ability to harness power in their life. The inability to harness personal power is a direct result of not maximizing creative abilities. If you are unable to exercise your creativity you may be scared to face yourself and take inventory of who you really are and deal with your insecurities and flaws. Don’t put on a façade of someone else to cover up for internal weakness. It goes back to lacking courage and mental fortitude required to be original.
It can be very difficult to establish and maintain a trusting relationship with the type of person who just follows others. To get to know someone on a personal level, it requires vulnerability on both sides. It takes honesty and openness to grow trust and build any relationship. Anyone who is highly insecure will be very hesitant to show any form of vulnerability because they don’t want to appear as weak. Insecurity is their weakness and in turn makes them appear to be weak. Trying to cover up a weakness is a weakness in itself. They are fine with keeping things on a superficial level to avoid going into any depth because they don’t want their insecurities to be revealed or weakness exposed. Trust cannot exist in an environment where honesty and openness are missing. Any relationship is set for failure without trust.
Following the competition or someone specific requires no originality, both in thought and expression. In order to have individuality, you must think differently and seek out areas of separation for yourself. People who just follow the crowd, popularity, and trends all have the same dull mindset. It’s hard to be different if you are constantly searching externally for answers, instead of looking inward. To achieve true individuality and become unique, you cannot lack the courage to think original thoughts. Just like Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein, you must embrace the uniqueness of your thoughts and be willing to think about different things, in different ways. You cannot change your attitude and behavior without first changing your mind. This process gets easier if you have a good understanding of who you are. You can’t have the self-awareness required to think originally if you have been focused on others instead of yourself. Without proper self-awareness, you don’t have a good understanding of how to express yourself. Expressing yourself is the projection of your honest thoughts, feelings beliefs, passions, through any form of art. That can be even through the things you say and the way you act. If your focus is on someone else or the competition, you will express yourself in concurrence with that other person or competition. This leads you to act a way that is not true to who you are specifically, rather you are abandoning your true self to be someone that you are not. This is not how you gain respect. Admiration and respect do not come to people who are watered down versions of someone else. Respect is a requirement for achieving power. You now know that you can’t have power if there is nothing about you that is special.
We have complete control over the thoughts that we act on. Those who follow the crowd can’t possibly stand the thought of going against the grain and doing something that is considered uncommon by the majority. When it comes to these types of people, there is really a bigger and more harmful underlying factor, insecurity. If you are afraid to stand out from the crowd, then you are so consumed with avoiding any judgement or backlash. Anything new or different will always initially receive judgement and backlash. Change is not usually welcome, especially if it’s change that has never been seen before. Everyone at first hated the concept of Airbnb. Why would anyone in their right mind let a stranger stay in their home? How do I know this person isn’t a murderer? I could just let death walk right through my front door! It was just a simple idea that hadn’t been done before. It was a huge change from what we were all accustomed to. Everyone thought it was a ridiculous idea that would never work. Now Airbnb has become a billion-dollar company and an industry disruptor. Change is never welcomed until it is proven. If you want to truly separate yourself from the crowd and capitalize on your uniqueness you will have to prove yourself anyways. Might as well do it on your own terms and be true to who you are.
No one person can set an expectation or standard of what everyone should be like. This is not how it works in society. We have the freedom to be self-expressive and decide which path to take in life. We can develop unique strengths and skills that not only enhance our own lives but the lives of many others. When our uniqueness is used for the greater good, we can advance as a society. In order to achieve progress, there must be innovation. Innovation is not possible without creativity and people capitalizing on their uniqueness. Almost all advances throughout human history can be traced back to one person or a group of people who had the courage to think differently, understand what makes them unique, and harness their uniqueness to obtain power and push society forward. This doesn’t have to be done on a grand scale, you can do it in your own lives. When you find what makes you unique, you must first fully embrace it and find ways that you can use that uniqueness to make strides in your personal life. Your uniqueness is the key that unlocks the door to power. Once you walk through the door of power you gain complete control of your life. Once you are in complete control of your life, you make decisions for yourself. Making decisions for yourself and your happiness is how you live a fulfilling life.
Jonathan McClure / The Rolling J
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