Do you remember how you were always striving everyday to be better than you were the previous day? How all you lived for was to make sure your next project was bigger and better than the previous one? How you made sure you looked better, felt better, acted better than who you were in the past?
Do you remember how you were always pushing to learn new skills so you can be even more valuable than you were in the past year? How you would create a tracker for the skills you want to learn and then you start learning them and ticking the items on the tracker off, one after the other? How you'd reach out to friends to ask what they were learning and you'd query yourself on how much you have learned in comparison?
Remember those days when you actually competed with the previous version of you, and pushed yourself to do better and be better than you were? What happened? Why did you stop competing? Oh! You didn't even realize that you had stopped competing? AHA!
I know that you've been told that competition isn't really good, as it is an offshoot of comparison, and you shouldn't think much to compete. In the new corporate lingua, we say, rather than compete, collaborate. We say, rather than show yourself to be agressive, you should be open, friendly, and accepting of everyone that you meet.
While that is good, while it helps keep the peace and avert you from undue pressure and unhealthy competition, it must never water down the spirit and idea of competition. You must always compete. You must always be fighting and guiding. Not against other people, no. Against yourself. Against the previous you. Against the slow and comfortable you. Against the basest form of you.
You must always be fighting and guiding. Not against other people, no. Against yourself. Against the previous you.
We all have that side of us that wants to stay in bed, that craves comfort and arbors the hellishness of work. The side of us that wants to stay with the familiar as long as the familiar isn't looking like it'll let off any time soon. We don't think the cheese would be moved to a different cheese station, so we build brick houses around one cheese station. We are wrong, and this is why we need to always be competing.
Look, other than the fact that those who stop competing stop growing, and those who stop growing have started dying, the only one reason why anyone should ever stop competing is if they believe that they are already at the top and would never be surpassed again. They have done all they need to do with their lives and they don't think they have any more capacity to do anything else.
Now, I need to ask you, dear gentle reader, is that you? Have you arrived? Where you are right now, in that work or business, with those skills, is that where you only ever want to go? Is the season you're in right now the only season you always want to be in? No? Please, no! For the love of God, NO!
If your answer is otherwise, you should stop reading the newsletter here and move on to something else. In fact, please unsubscribe because this newsletter won't be useful to you anymore. There's no need for it. You have grown all you ever can and want to.
However, if your answer is No, and you haven't arrived, and you still want to do more, go to more places, become more, achieve more than you have, my question to you then is, why did you stop competing?
For the most part, the reason is that you have probably been consumed with work, going about your quotidian tasks at work, quelling fires, making sure invoices or materials don't fall into the wrong hands, hustling for daily bread just to get by, making sure you survive the day, getting overwhelmed and overworked on the job that you got with the skills you once gained.
In all of this, we forget that what we have now is the result of who we were or who we became to get it, and if we must get something better, higher, bigger, we must focus on becoming someone better, higher, bigger than who we were.
They say you cannot pour new wine into an old wineskin. You must tear up the old wineskin and find a new wineskin to receive the new wine. In the same way, you cannot receive a new level with an old skill.
What we have now is the result of who we were or who we became to get it, and if we must get something better, higher, bigger, we must focus on becoming someone better, higher, bigger than who we were.
I said all of that to say this; you have been consumed by the workings of this present level that you stopped competing with yourself to be better so you can climb up the ladder. Give yourself space to compete with the previous you and best the previous you, else, you'd stay where you are for a while, until you start declining.
Learn a new skill to better yourself, increase your value and improve your chances to climb up your career ladder. Don't be too consumed by where you are and using the skills you have currently that you ignore where you want to be and what you want to build.
If you are not building new skills and learning new habits, it means you are stuck in collaboration with what is meant to be a previous version of you. Picture waking up every day and still remaining the person you were the previous day! That's the reality of many of us.
Instead, we must actively be in constant competition, and actively conquering who we were the previous day, because this is how we can grow to become all that we desire to be.
My question to you is, the version of You that is in existence right now, when did it come to life? The time between then and now is how long you have been stuck for. How long have you been stuck for? How long have you stopped competing for?
Time to get unstucked! Time to join the competition again and compete against this You that you've been stuck with. Time to go back to your growth tracker and put in the new skills you need to develop for the next phase of your life.
Compete again. Or Die.
To your growth,
Your Coach,
Abiola Okunsanya,
Handzinspired.
Thank you, sir! 👏🏾💯