Competition is a tool.

Published: Mon, 07/07/14

"You wanna know what scares people? Success. When you don't make moves and you don't climb up the ladder, everybody loves you because you're not competition." ~Nicki Minaj

Good Morning ! I hope your weekend was awesome!

Last year I wrote about how people often fear competition. It's something that brings out our true nature whether it be goodness or something else. It is my hope that we can learn to use competition to show us where we need to do the hard work. It's a great tool that shows us our weaknesses, our laziness, and our over inflated sense of pride.

Nonetheless, people fear competition. The obvious reason is that if someone else is working in your space, then they have the potential to apprehend resources, customers, and opportunities, that might ordinarily go to you. But I think the real reason is deep down, people fear their own success.

Competition causes people to try and find an advantage, a unique differentiator that we can pull ourselves up on. It's a proven strategy--so long as our mindset is one of "scarcity."

Engaging in competition is also very distracting. The diversion of focus, and resources to playing defense reduces our ability to make offensive plays. This means that innovation takes a back seat and personal progress is slowed to the speed of the herd. The moment one innovative idea makes it to the marketplace, it is captured by the competition because most are playing defense and shouting "me too."

The whole thing is very noisy. It is a vortex that sucks people in....