The Best Lesson I’ve Learned This Year is to Reject Competition. Here’s Why You Should Too.

We don’t have to battle it out all the time

1st question.

Who says we must compete?

Next question.

Who says we must compete all the time?

My final question.

Who says it (actually) makes sense to compete all the time?

I have been thinking about this a lot recently. On competition. On being competitive. On winning an imaginary war.

You and I are no stranger to competition.

Society silently endorses and incentivizes our efforts to go faster, beat others, stand on the podium, get to the top, and hang on to our dear lives up there…

… only to be pushed down the podium apex by the pal or gal behind you.

And then the cycle repeats itself.

Yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

I Have Nothing Against Competition, By the Way.

Why should I?

There are benefits to the competition rhetoric.

• It landed me on podium positions in the Triathlon and Duathlon National Championships.
• I won multiple Top Performer Awards.
• I win 7-digit contracts.

In short, I got better spurred by the people around me. So, yes. Competition pushes me to the next level.

We improve, get faster, become more efficient, punch at the next level, and learn to do more with less. This is the beauty of competition.

And, and, and.

It can be a source of motivation.

That guy you hate who just thrashed you this sales quarter? Are you annoyed? Do you have the fire in you to bury him next quarter? Absolutely!

It is so, so, so convenient.

So, I say this.

Tap on it.

It’s free energy.

And we do need that kick in the butt… every now and then.

The Dark Side of Competition That Chips Away Our Self-Identity

Oh, this is simple.

Simple, but not easy.

Why do I say that? Well, it took me years to figure myself out. Humans mature through life experiences.

We must immerse ourselves in the darkness to understand that emotional Black Holes reflect no light.

My experience tells me one thing. Competition can be psychologically damaging.

I don’t mean it makes you dangerous. Yes, it does. It works up until a point. Cross that line, and you lose yourself.

Why so?

Well…

Imagine writing topics you have zero interest in and yet do very well because you can improve on the content others wrote.

Imagine studying the strategies of your fellow triathletes and trying to beat them at their own game.

Imagine modeling the blueprint for success the top salesperson left behind.

Okay, forget imagining.

You know what it is like.

Because improving on demonstrated success gives you one leg up on your peers. It’s easy, too. You don’t need to start from 0.

That said…

Trying to beat someone means you are forever following the back of that someone. Is that good or bad?

• It’s good because you know (exactly) how to get to where they are today.
• It’s bad because you drop one piece of you to slap on one chunk of them.

And before you know it…

You become them.

Still confused?

Well, don’t be.

Consume more articles published online if you can. Chances are, you can find traces of writing styles that read familiar.

You can effectively trace that writing style from Writer C to B, to A, to 3, to 2, and to 1.

And then, you start wondering.

Are there many writers?

Or just 1?

I Reject Competition

Not totally, of course.

Let me be clear with my thoughts.

I reject the dark side of competition.

It took me many years to be comfortable being me. I want to be me. Why should I not?

That is one perspective.

This is another.

I think being out-of-world competitive drives us monkey nuts. We fall prey to symbols of success and impression metrics with no intrinsic contributions to our life goals.

We waste our life energy fighting with others for a super small stake.

Henry Kissinger nailed this line of thinking. And I quote.

“The reason that university politics is so vicious is because stakes are so small.”

Of course.

Kissinger is a politician first. An academic fellow second.

His big picture is in international trade and relationships. The academic world is a subset of his life.

Professors, however, do not share Kissinger’s sentiments.

This is Jid Lee’s retort in Why Academic Politics Are So Vicious.

“If I had a chance to meet Kissinger, I would shake hands with him and correct him: “You owe a lot to the academy of which you thought so little. Where else would you be praised so consistently for having opened the door to China?”

This is my unpopular opinion.

There is a big world in a small world. Say WHAT?

Everything we know, that we believe in, that we engage in, that we work on is big…

… no matter how small.

• That one extra like someone else has on their post on top of ours.
• Online articles written by folks with fewer followers have more engagement.
• Spitting 7 online long forms weekly because the person you never met publishes 6.
• The guy wearing a brighter red dry-fit tee finished the same 5km 3 seconds faster.
• The colleague who got promoted at the same time as you earned $30 more monthly.

Look, I am not dissing the people around me. Really, I am not.

I am writing this article to remind myself not to fall prey to unnecessary, vanity-driven, testosterone-fueled competition.

I want to be better than everyone I know in all possible metrics. Money, social strata, and so on.

Trust me. I am human.

I want all that good stuff.

But…

I don’t want to lose myself for 1 more comment, 2 more reposts, or $30 more each month.

The competition is (simply) too vicious for stakes that are [simply] too small.

The Close

I love what Peter Thiel wrote in Zero to One.

In it, he tabled the idea of ‘escape competition’.

“All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition”

― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

I concur.

And it applies to individuals and folks running their 1-Person business.

Our goal is to be the best, not number 1.

Aiming for number 1 subjects us to constant attrition, war, and churn. It wears us out.

Becoming the best confers respect.

Let me use one example to explain this.

You don’t have to win a war to gain respect back home.

You will.

Because you fought for things that genuinely matter.

Not small stakes. Or small steaks.

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