Compete Against Your Friends

Coming out of Hell on the Hill 6 – I noticed a theme came out of nearly every conversation I had. They all started with these two questions:

What challenge did you just do?
What challenge are you doing next?

The best part about doing hard, ridiculous and sort of stupid challenges is that you filter out everyone not willing to do hard, ridiculous and sort of stupid challenges.

And, when you’re around those people – the types of conversations you have change.

How did that race go?

What’s the next challenge you’ve got coming up?

It’s not a posturing competition – it’s just the orientation of the people that show up.

Over and over, I started to notice that more and more of my conversations revolve around this and that those conversations are the ones I want to be having.

Case in point – last week – Chris threw out a rowing challenge. I’m not sure who took him up on it, but when I got back to my gym – I took a crack at it.

2 seconds slow.

But now I had a goal.

One bad weekend off and an otherwise un-noteworthy workout later – I got him.

Later that night, he got right back at me.

I’ll text my brother and we’ll see who invoiced more over the weekend.
Ping your friend to see who did more sales on their e-commerce biz.
Race your rival to write that book proposal you’ve been sitting on.

It’s not about being better than the other person (even though that’s exactly what it’s about). Beat your friends. Smoke ‘em. But don’t smash them into the ground.

Make each other better.

Somewhere along the line – the switch – the societal story on success -got flipped.

Don’t compete.

Everyone’s a winner.

You’re just great as you are.

Garbage.

I hate to break it to you, but as it turns out – “who you are” might suck. You might be underselling yourself, cutting yourself way too much slack and being the worst version of yourself possible.

And deep down, you know it too – which is why you might have just cringed.

Who you are right now, might not be that great.

But who you could be – is much, much more.

But even it’s uncomfortable to get called out by a friend and have them pull you on towards something better – it’s better than being left sitting in the dirt as the rain starts to fall and pretending the mud being created is bathwater.

If you sit there long enough, you can convince yourself that you’re doing just fine when in reality, you’re laying in filth.

Trash that noise.

Get competitive with your friends.