A Worthy Rival:
You might be familiar with your competitors, but do you know who your worthy rivals are? This term is a little bit of a head-scratcher, isn't it? A worthy rival is someone doing something you are precisely doing, but they may be doing a little better job than you. They can be anywhere from your place of work to your gym. They hold up the mirror for you and reveal your weaknesses, potentially making you uncomfortable. But that’s okay. Our weaknesses only make us human; whoever you think your worthy rival is has flaws too, and they might also be working on those. With our competitors, all our energy is focused on defeating them, but with a worthy rival, if we do it right, our energy can reflect on our flaws and improve them. Competition is about winning, but the rivalry is about advancing. People who focus on defeating their competition are playing a finite game.
In contrast, people who concentrate on having worthy rivals in life are the ones who are playing the infinite game. Simon Sinek, an author and inspirational speaker, explains these concepts well. He says you can only have a competitor in a finite game, like football or baseball, where the goal is to beat your opponent to win the game, and your competitors live on to fight another day. But it's better to focus on the process instead of the outcome in business, which is an infinite game, constantly evolving and changing, with its players being the employees. Sinek believes that most businesses don't thrive because the leaders play an infinite game with a finite mindset. The goal should not be to beat your competitors. Instead, the goal should be to look at those competitors as your worthy rivals. Study your rivals and observe what about them makes you insecure. The observation will usually identify areas you grapple with and need to work on. And take that as an opportunity to fix those weaknesses. For instance, you want your supervisor at work to trust you and assign you some creative projects, but instead, he always assigns any creative project on the docket to your coworker. If you have a finite game mindset, you'll focus all your energy on being jealous of that coworker and resent them. You'd speak about them negatively, always wondering why that happened to you. But if you change your mindset slightly to an infinite one and make that coworker your worthy rival, you will focus all your energy on observing why that coworker always gets those creative projects. Is it because that coworker sharpens their creative skills like graphic designing or sharpens their creative writing skills, or do they have a more substantial portfolio than you? After all that observation, you can notice your shortcomings and work on them, and in time you might score the next creative project or client.
So, next time you have the urge to beat that competitor, notice why that underlying emotion makes you want to beat them so desperately, and then work on being a better version of yourself while making that person your worthy rival.
Sources:
How having the right kind of rival can help you thrive in a changing world. (2019, October 15). Ideas.Ted.Com. https://www.scribbr.com/citation/generator/folders/5yxlv22rI10AePOHgqCZ3m/lists/YaceBaIfKg9y70ADE1HNb/cite/online-news-article/
A Worthy Rival: Learn From the Competition. (2021, June 11). Short Form. https://www.shortform.com/blog/worthy-rival/
