Let's Talk About My Biggest Rival

So there is another author who does what I do. He writes books, he gives talks, he's extremely smart, and, you know, I hate him. Would you say that my hatred for him is completely irrational? I'm aware of that. He's always been very civil to me when I've seen him at events and very kind. He never done anything to hurt me that I know of. He's good guy. I just have a rational hatred. And as a result of my contempt, I'm very, very, very competitive with him. So I will regularly go on Amazon and look at his book ranking and then I'll immediately look at my book ranking. And if he's ahead, I'm angry. And if I'm ahead, I'm smug.

Mind you, I check no one else's rankings. It's like. It's like as if there's only two people writing books. I check no one else's rankings, just his. Right. I'm competitive with him.

We had the opportunity to speak at the same event. And I don't mean, like, me in the morning, him in the afternoon. I mean, like, we were going to be on the stage at the same time, interviewed by. We're going to be interviewed. And the interviewer thought it would be fun if we introduced each other. And I went first and I turned to him and I said, you make me really insecure. All of your strengths are all of my weaknesses. And whenever your name comes up, I get really uncomfortable. And he turned to me and he said, funny, I feel the same about you. The reason I was so competitive with him and the reason I had this irrational contempt had nothing to do with him. It had to do with me because his strengths show me my weaknesses. It's too difficult to look at myself and say that I'm weak here. And it's much easier to say, I hate him and I'm going to beat him right now. The funny thing is, after that experience, there was a total catharsis. All of that negativity, all of that competitive spirit completely went away. And he and I now friends and regularly, you know, promote each other and help each other is hang out together. We live in different cities, but yeah, if we're in the same place, we'll definitely hang out together.

And I. And this is what worthy rivals are. Worthy rivals are other players in the game whose strengths reveal to your weaknesses. And instead of trying to compete against them because you can't beat them, there's no such thing as winning in this game. Like, what, what am I? There's like, what I Sell more books? Am I the winner? You know, no, right? Means nothing. I pick an arbitrary thing. What if it's social media following? Like, could be anything. What if it's you're winning anyway? Like. Like, who knows? Like, you know, I mean, like, the point is it's. It's stupid and arbitrary, right? It is arbitrary. He makes 10 times more money than me. Am I winning or losing? Like. Like, who the hell knows? What's your metric? Right? It's. It's stupid. The point is the comparisons are stupid, right? But what is valuable is that when you pick players who are better at one or many things than you are, that because their strengths reveal to your weaknesses, the opportunity is to either work on those weaknesses to get better, to become a better player yourself, or to partner with them, because then those strengths and those weaknesses balance each other off. They neg. They negate each other. And so I'm not competitive. I have no competitors, But I definitely have worthy rivals, people who are really good at what they do. And I have such love and admiration for them. And I used to get insecure about it, but now I'm grateful because it helps me be a better player. So I'm a great believer in worthy rivals. And the same goes for companies, by the way. You know, for companies to compare each other, themselves to each other and say, we're better based on what? Revenues, profit, market share, number of employees? Like, based on what? Like, based on what time frame this year total, the next 10 years. Like, it's all arbitrary and nonsense. Right? Not to mention the fact that most companies are taken down not by the competitor they're obsessed with, but the one they didn't know of. Right. You think MySpace even had any idea that Facebook even existed? You know, it doesn't happen. You think the big TV studios and movie studios were paying any attention to Netflix? Exactly. You know, you think the big three car companies were worried about what Tesla was going to do to upset their marketplace? Like, nobody's looking at the upstarts, they're looking at each other. So further reinforcing the folly of arbitrary competition in business or in life or in any sort of these infinite games. So, yeah, I'm a great believer in worthy rivals. We should have them because it makes us better.