Success Hack
Success Hacks on Hacking the Competition
“You having (more than), does not equal me (less than)!” Alex Dee
Don’t Compete, Get Inspired Hack – Terry Crews
You work hard because you’re inspired to, not because you have to. Work becomes fun. You have energy for days because this life is not a young man’s game. It is an inspired persons game. The key belongs to whoever is inspiring, and no specific age, sex, gender, cultural background has a monopoly on inspiration. When you’re creative, you render competition obsolete. Because there’s only you, no one can do things exactly the way you do. So, never worry about the competition. When you’re creative, you can, in fact, cheer on others with the full knowledge that their success will undoubtedly be their own.
The reason why we worry about competition is because we are always in a constant state of wanting to compare our successes to others. Learning to get rid of the comparison will help you learn to get inspired.
Getting Rid of Compare Hack – Alex Dee
The more you know who you are and why you’re here, the less you’ll compare yourself to others! The only way to discover who you are and why you’re here is to go within! Hot yoga, nature, meditation, journaling!
This is not to say that comparison is bad. However, there is a right way and a wrong way to compare. The right way, means comparing yourself to one person only.
Comparison Hack – John and Missy Butcher
The only form of comparison you should EVER make is self to self! Not self to others! The major reason is your wants, goals, desires, and then your background, experience, beliefs, conditioning, environment make up so much of our self-DNA is that it’s different than anyone else. So, the best form of comparison you should ever make is self to self! And the best hack for that comparison is your present vs. your past! Where were you at 12 months ago, 6 months ago to now! Are you in a great relationship? Is your health better? Are you doing what you love? Do this present vs. past every 3 to 6 months in the different areas of your life and you’ll see you’ll feel much better and have a more accurate comparison! Self vs. self is not the best comparison you should make, it’s the ONLY comparison you should make!
Once you decide you will only start to compare you to you, the next step is realizing which you deserves comparison. Is it the complacent you, or the bold you?
Complacent vs. Bold Version of You Hack – Meghan Good
You know people always look at competition and it turned to the outside! Is competition good or bad for people? People always question that the answer is you’re in competition but not with anything that’s out there, they’re in competition with the most complacent version of yourself! You are in competition with the side that knows that in 20 or 30 years from now if you’re not taking action to become the best version of yourself, the boldest version, the one that knows that I can reach maximum potential, you’ll have regrets! That is where you’re at in competition with! The only two things that stand between who you are now and that complacent version, is action and time. Only through these two things if I could battle of being the thoughtless, most boring version of you versus one or you’ll have no regrets when it’s all said and done! You see, it’s time to spend with you it’s just worse and it’s not a time watching TV or not connecting or not doing something to make you feel alive, you’re battling a complacent version of you that you know can do better like you’re just not! To compete against complacency is because diversion is your biggest competitor, not anyone on the outside not any other relationship but just that version of you!
Learning to conquer the complacent you takes a bit of forethought. You have to understand that the best version of you hasn’t come yet, but it is right around the corner.
Mine is Around the Corner Hack – Meghan Good
How do you deal when your competition wins? For me, I think that what is uniquely mine is mine, and what is uniquely for them is theirs. So, I always give them my best and be grateful for the roles that I do get. From that, I get to love my passion. When another actress gets a part that we both auditioned for, I choose to be excited for them and say, you know that was meant for them to get. I’m excited for them! For me it’s acknowledging that competition is a choice and I can choose to be in competition or choose to be happy for them getting it and wishing the best, while I focus on mine is just around the corner!
Competition is still ever present no matter how hard you try to look inward. Sometimes it can be difficult when your competitor is clearly better than you. The key is to understand what your edge is, and what you are capable of.
What is My Edge and What am I Capable of Hack – Colin O’ Brady
How do you overcome your competition when someone is clearly superior? – When we were sledding Antarctica for the world record, I was going against a guy who had been used to being in this type of conditions and it just seemed like he was much better prepared than I was! The first day I started I could barely pull my sled, and he took a huge lead and was just crushing me. It’s a part of what I look at it when I see competition is the fact that it can definitely drive you to become your best self. So, I said just looking at them saying well you know what I train for this and keep looking at it until I see overall, he’s human just like I am so what is the edge? What is the edge that I have? I have an innate curiosity and it’s not just wanting to beat my competition just for the sake of beating them but using the competition to bring out the best of myself. So, I just looked at it and said what kind of Edge do I have and how can I use it?
At that time, I was listening to Kobe Bryant and he was talking about how he wasn’t the best basketball player. He wasn’t the most athletic! He just outworked his competition by coming to the gym an hour earlier and staying an hour later. So, I started looking at what my edge could be, and I said I have more to give. So, what if instead of going 10 hours a day which already is insane in Antarctica to be able to just track that far for that period of time is already insanely challenging. But I thought what if I could? Then I started doing 10 hours a day and then once I did it, I said what if I could do 10 ½? I just started increasing it to a part when I caught up with them! At that point it wasn’t about oh let’s beat him, but more about well if I could go 12 hours then what else can I do and what else am I capable of. This one hack got me to the point where the last 72 miles of the race I went the entire time without stopping. So, I think the key was competition can be very good is in the fact that I always ask, what is the edge… What edge do I have and then use that to not just beat them, but to find out what is my potential because those last 72 hours I was like, OK that’s where the growth happens! This is where I’m going to realize what I’m actually capable of. Even when he came across the finish line, I was sitting there waiting for him because we both just pushed each other to do what no human being had been able to do before. So, use competition not for the sake of beating the other person but to find out what is the best that lies within you so you can reach your untapped potential!
This is great for when your competitior has a clear advantage. However, many times we compete against someone with the same skill level. Compete enough, and they become your arch rival. There is no sweeter feeling than defeating your rival, but how does this fit into the look into yourself system?
Worthy Rival Hack – Simon Sinek
How to look at your arch nemesis – There is someone who is in the exact same space with me and whenever we get called for speaking engagements it was either him or myself that would get the job! And let’s just say I hated him. In fact, every time his book would come out, I would go take a look at the ranking of his versus mine! Mind you, I wouldn’t check any other books except his and gauge the results between us. Well, it just so happened that we both got work for the same speaking engagement and instead of having us come out at different times, the interviewer decided for us to come out on stage at the same time! And he asked us to introduce one another. So, when I had the opportunity to introduce him, I said you make me insecure, all your strengths are my weaknesses and I feel like I’m not enough every time I think about you. And he took a second and said that’s funny because I feel the same way about you. So what’s interesting when you’re playing a finite game, you will have someone that you’re competing against whether it be someone in the same company or a different company and we’re setting some arbitrary metrics that gauge our results which creates animosity, hatred and overall is not very productive for either one of us!
We have somebody in our team that gets a promotion and we get upset. Think about that for second. We get upset. Why couldn’t we share in the joy? What is it about them that is being revealed in us? And so therein lies the problem. This is the part where we can make a contrast between competitors and worthy rivals. Now competitors are someone that we want to beat. The problem is that life is an infinite game and there’s no end, so be sure you are ahead by whatever metric that you have, but to what end and to what cost? That’s why competition is not sustainable!
Whereas worthy rivals, be it in your company, a different company, or whomever we choose to be worthy rivals, reveal to us our weaknesses and thereby give us an opportunity to improve! Which is the ultimate end to the infinite game which is constant improvement! And that is a game that we can continually win and sustain for a lifetime!
**Disclaimer** Please forgive any spelling or grammatical errors in our posts. We’re not looking to win the spelling bee, or even compete. Our goal is to give you the main concepts and short implementable strategies, or what we call “Success Hacks”, so you can implement them right away and get the results you want. To that end, many of the hacks are paraphrase of a paragraph, chapter of a book, or a podcast interview. These are a summary and main points so you can gleam the wisdom and use it. They do not reflect the author or expert’s opinion that’s being quoted. For more info on any of the hacks, feel free to go to the source or Join Our Success Hacks Nation FB Community to ask questions.