Competition is hard. But it’s harder to not compete.
Competitive environments and mindsets are everywhere. They’re sometimes fun and on a macro scale produce great outcomes. But on the individual level it’s not always best. There are three phases. Phase one is discovery, where competition creates too much pressure and hinders learning. After some discovery and basic mastery, the second phase thrives with competition. It demands it. Leveling up from good to great happens when you can rise to a competitive occasion. But then there’s phase three. This is the ascendant, or innovative phase. This is where better won’t cut it. This is where different is needed. Once you learn to win the game, you’ve gotta learn to create new games.
If you’re trying for phase three, competition is a dangerous distraction. Your familiarity with competitive pressure from phase two will draw you to it. Its siren song will pull your focus away from creating new games and into the reactive challenge mode of trying to win the old games.
It’s here where you’ve got to ignore everyone else. It’s here where you’ve got to get free from any external definition of success or failure. It’s here where you’ve got to conceive games where to create them is to play them and to play them is to win. These are the games that are uniquely you, and by definition, above competition.