Playing Small

July 25, 2023

Don’t Be the Best. Be The Only

“There is no passion to be found playing small in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”

—Nelson Mandela

The Hardest Race in the World

For you to change your being and thus impact, competing isn't the key anymore. You need something that is beyond being the best.

Don’t seek to be the best. Seek to be the only.

You need to think about something that only you can accomplish, where only your skills will enable a breakthrough. You alone sit at this moment in time, with your specific and unique genetic makeup that no one else in the world has, and with only your experiences and knowledge. You are specifically here for a reason. It is time to find it. You do not need to boil the ocean. There is something that only you can do or be for yourself and others, however great or small.

Competition = Comfort

Unlearning is part of the process of finding a new level of success and part of your change of being. Seeking competition is a form of comfort. When you are working on the same things as everyone else in a field – to be the best – it is easier and more comfortable; you just need to rise above average. To become the person you want to be for yourself and others, you want to be in your own movie, and not the best in someone else's movie.

That’s the problem with competition in the workplace, on the field, and even in keeping up with the neighbors. You are getting distracted from something that fits your natural abilities. You are distracted by other people. You are robbed of the happiness and joy of your own accomplishments through comparison to others whom you think are just ahead of you. Even worse, the competitor next to you may be playing the same game, but for different or even the wrong reasons. When you are each playing the same game for different reasons, you may think that the person sitting on top of the trophy stage is happy, healthy, and fulfilled with being the best, but ultimately and sadly they may never be. You don't want this to be the case for yourself. Further, if you knew deep down why someone was actually competing, you may not even want to be competing next to them at all; you may actually want to help disconnect them and yourself from the need to compete. The need for competition needs to be unlearned.

Once unlearned you must then seek something that takes courage to attain and where you will have to sit alone and stand apart, where there are no games and competitions. It is time for something that brings true service, fulfillment, and happiness. You are no longer satisfied with lesser goals that everyone else is pursuing in the name of being the best. These lesser goals are keeping you from your own greatness and your own transformation of being.

You now understand the comfort and safety that comes from being in the competition, being among the crowd, and working to stand out among peers. You now know that you will need to work even harder to stand apart in your own game and drop the feedback of comparison.

Your Heroes Don’t Compete

Is it harder to run a race by yourself? To race against yourself? To hold your own standards? To raise your own standards? Hell yeah. But you are getting out of the comfort of competition and heading on your courageous journey to sit alone and be The Only, which is much harder and ultimately more important.

It is time to be more you – the most you. It is time to think and be oneself. You are active, running your own race, and not solidified in an identity of competing with others.

It is time to play a new game the competitors can’t play.

It’s Time To Become The Hero.

Prevent, Don’t Solve Problems

This is a great article from an email I get weekly that I had to pass along.

“Too often we reward people who solve problems while ignoring those who prevent them in the first place. This incentivizes creating problems.

“If we want to get away from glorifying those who run around putting out fires, we need to cultivate an organizational culture that empowers everyone to act responsibly at the first sign of smoke.”

Read the full article here: https://fs.blog/inner-sense-of-captaincy/

41% Incomplete

Forty-One Percent of Tasks On To-Do Lists Are Never Done. It maybe time to ditch your to-do list. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/forty-one-percent-of-tasks-on-to-do-lists-are-never-done_b_9308978

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