An Abundant Approach To Competition

No matter what we try to do in life, there’s going to be competition. On a sports team one player is on the field and the other sits on the bench. In business one company wins the contract and the other gets denied. In dating one guy gets the girl and the other one stays single. That’s just the way it works - in a shared world we’re going to go after the same thing, and sometimes our efforts are going to conflict.

What matters immensely is how you approach that competition. Either you can rise up or bring others down. Gary Vaynerchuk uses the analogy of a skyscraper. If you want to have the tallest building in the city there are two ways to do that: Build taller or tear every other building that’s taller down. 

Competition is an important catalyst for growth. Not making the starting line up, losing the deal, or missing out on the lady can be used as fuel to make you better. Someone else’s success or prominence doesn’t threaten your own but actually brings it out. There’s rich feedback in understanding how your performance fell short to someone else’s. It highlights opportunities for improvement.

This is a healthy, abundant approach to competition and it’s something I’ve really had to work on personally. For many years I wasn’t good at receiving feedback. I realize now the root of that was that my sense of self-worth was in my achievement and if I lost, I interpreted it to mean that I was a loser. But I’ve grown a lot in that area.

It was actually highlighted last week! I’m building out a new technology in the self-improvement space. On Thursday I spoke with someone who consults with a major competitor, and he shared all his insights seeking to support me. Friday I was texting back and forth with someone who isn’t as far along as I was, building an app that does the same thing, and I willingly offered my honest insight.

That’s what healthy, abundant competition is really about. How do we help each other be better knowing that we’ll need to get better ourselves to keep up? When that happens, everybody wins. We all improve and take a step closer toward our potential.

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