Choose inspiration instead of competition
“If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn't have opened for anyone else.”
In reading about NFL players, it seems that there are two camps of professionals who are both successful:
Athletes who compete and measure growth against others.
Athletes who compete and measure growth against themselves.
The subtle difference is a worldview change. It relates to how you see what you do and the meaning you make around it.
Is the world finite, and your’e competing with everyone?
Or is the world abundant, infinite, and you’re therefore on your own journey, competing only with yourself?
Where do you draw your energy from? Others, and beating them? Or your own creative pool?
These differences were pointed out in James Carse’s Finite and Infinite games:
“A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.”
― James P. Carse
Games create your strategy
The game you choose to play is what sets your strategy.
Mr. Beast, for example, is just A youtuber, playing one specific Youtube game. He’s really, really good, extremely, extremely good, at gathering views through the Youtube algorithm by paying people to do stunts. That’s his game. Should it be yours?
If you create Youtube videos, are you in competition with him?
My view is that no, you aren’t, and no you shouldn’t. Inspiration is free and infinite. Be inspired all you would like. Inspiration breaks our view of competition and breaks our envy. But comparing yourself to someone playing a different game than you is a misuse of your own genius. So is playing the wrong game, for the wrong purpose, with rules written by someone else.
Which metrics excite you?
Sport’s games are not an the right analogy for work.
In business there is no “winning” or “losing.” There is only continuing to play. And nothing really prevents you from continuing to play. Markets grow and change all of the time, so the landscape needs to be navigated.
Inspiration itself is infinite, and value expands through our use of our creativity. That’s why business as a game never shuts off or never ends. TV shows and movies inspire the next TV shows and movies. Which metrics you choose to track matters. It turns out, money is an approximation.
Does a drug company setting out to cure cancer use revenue as their ultimate metric? If they are truly successful, maybe they should be worth northing at all in the end.
To determine metrics that matter to you: Ask, what excites me? What is my thrill?
Games like sports set rules and boundaries. In life you get to decide which games you play, which points matter, and you can build games that uniquely excite you. Finding your game, loving your game, is as good of a path to mastery as any.
“If you follow your bliss,
doors will open for you that wouldn't have opened for anyone else.”
― Joseph Campbell
It’s taken me some time to see that my game of business is very different than how other people play it. I see it as a tool for personal development, so the results I find most exciting are when clients are meeting goals across their entire lives, not just their business. When a founder tells me they started a new hobby, took a few weeks off for family vacation, or is simply enjoying their business more than ever, that excites me.
I see business as a place where we all connect, collaborate, teach one another, and ultimately build better vehicles for self expression.
Realizing this helped me build my own scoreboard. I also get to avoid following and competing with others who are playing for different purposes..
You have to set your own rules, and your own standards. Getting caught in competition is a lack of this perspective.
Don’t just take my word for it…Here’s Peter Thiel, arugably the most successful startup investor of our era:
"All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition."
"Competition is an ideology that pervades our society and distorts our thinking."
― Peter Thiel
Inspired goal setting
Remember, you are the one setting the boundaries of the game you are playing. You are in control of how you interpret the competition, or if you’re in one at all.
When you set goals for yourself, see the power that you have to define the games you play.
Competition, or inspiration? Your choice.
xx David
Your business can grow without you at the center… let’s an create your exciting growth roadmap together and see how I can help.