Chad Silverstein reflects on his competitive nature (noting competitiveness was a top strength), recounts a painful high-school wrestling loss that still motivates him, and draws lessons about using regret as fuel. He advises against measuring yourself by others or by an ideal you invented (the "gap trap") and recommends competing against your past self—"compare backwards"—to track growth and maintain momentum.
Chapters
When I did my strength finders, I had competitiveness in my top five, and probably just my. My mental attitude, my. My background in sports, whatever it is. But I. I do love to compete. I love to win, I love to fight, and I love to keep getting better so that I could win next time. And I've had a couple instances in my life where I didn't win and I didn't get a second chance at it. And they. They still haunt me. But I will say that I learned more from those about myself. And one of the things that I learned for myself is that I use those as drives to just keep getting better. So I'm really unhappy. The fact that my wrestling career in high school ended by losing a state championship against a kid I beat. And for me at the time, it was devastating. That was the hardest thing I'd ever gone through at that point in my life, which now. Now looking back at that, that I was blessed, that that was the hardest thing. But at the time, that was the hardest thing. And to this day, it still. It still gets me. I still think about it. I still. I wish I would have done things a little differently. I wish I would have left it a little more out on the mat. And that drives me to keep pushing so that when I want to give up on something or when I'm frustrated because I'm not where I want to be, that I. I think about that feeling, that regret of not winning and not being competing at my best, and I use it to let it drive me. And so, you know, where does it show up in your life? Where does your competition show up? Do you have the competitive nature? And if not, do you even care? There's no right or wrong answer to that. You should know for yourself where you fit with being able to be a competitor. You know, I think if you look at life today and you look at your job, and if you look at the way society works, you know, people want to work with winners, people want to work with the best. And that shows up in many different ways, whether their reputation, whether it be something that they can accomplish or do or something they can build or something they can serve a service for somebody. And one of the things you can do is you can keep score of this, and it's really important to score it against yourself. It's one of the biggest problems today in schools is that people are competing against other people. You know, one kid is competing against the kid who got the 4.3, and this kid's competing against that kid who's Got the, you know, 4.0. And today, now you can get 4.9s. I don't even know what's going on, but I. I know that competing against other kids doesn't make any sense. Competing against yourself and looking backwards and seeing where you came from, that's how you can drive yourself forward. And it's important that we talk about the gap trap. Don't compare yourself and compete with yourself against this ideal that you've created for yourself. And that's a really scary place to be, and it can create a lot of anxiety and depression, meaning that if you are where you are today and you want to be here, whether in your business, whether it be anywhere in your life, and you've made that up, you've made up that ideal, you know, don't compare where you are today to that ideal because you made that up. But if you look backwards and see where you came from, typically you'll see growth, you'll see the momentum, you'll see the traction that you built, and that will give you more momentum when you're competing against yourself from where you came from, not to where you're going. So throw the rock out and know your aim. Yes, that's an ideal. And then compete and compare backwards. Always measure backwards to where you came from and stop comparing yourself to other people. And it's important because a lot of times what you're seeing from other people isn't the truth anyways, it's just what they're showing you. Compete against yourself, find that inner drive, and always measure backwards.
