"Eyes in the front, born to hunt. Eyes to the side, born to hide”- something they say
Lately I’ve been spending an embarrassingly large amount of time "researching” other bloggers, authors, and coaches- trying to educate myself on what it takes to be successful in my new field.
At least that’s what I’ve been telling myself.
Turns out I’ve been using Instagram and Facebook posts to feed a negative thought pattern in my head and reinforce my impostor syndrome.
Sound familiar, anyone?
Throughout my career in sales, I was always told that being unapologetically competitive was a huge asset. In fact, I used to lead with it in interviews- and would watch hiring mangers visibly light up when I explained that I was a sore-loser and would do anything to crush anyone who got in my way.
Sizing-up the other guy was critical for success, and while that may be good advice for my past life- it’s the opposite of what I should be doing in my new one.
It was time for my competitive side to die.
Here’s why.
I realized that by focusing on the competition, I was distracting myself with what other people were doing; which triggered my ego to repeat, "Wow. They’re doing workshops in Bali. They have 250k followers. They’ve published 5 books. Um, you need to rethink this shit because you’ll never catch up or be as good as them.”
Then I had someone introduce the idea that I put blinders on and just focus on myself and what my goals are.
Genius. Yes. That’s the ticket.
There have been many moments in sports when athletes have taken a split second to look over their shoulder and end-up losing the race.
Why?
Because when they look back to see their competition and they’re close- their confidence gets rattled (this is what was happening to me). Or they look back and don’t see anyone-- get a false sense of comfort and inevitably give slightly less effort because they’re thinking, “I got this”, and lose the race.
It’ a lose-lose situation.
This nugget of wisdom applies to all of us!
The more we look at our competition (co-workers, other brands, other parents, people at yoga), the more we focus on how to avoid losing instead of how to win.
I’m not naive enough to expect that everyone will stop checking social media on the reg, but what I am proposing is unfollowing people, our groups, you feel like you’re in competition with.
I had to unfollow some perfectly nice mom-friends because their Insta posts were all country-club-this, and designer-shoes-that.
I know, I know--hate the game, not the player.
I really wanted to be happy for them, but I never felt great, inspired, or happy after looking at their posts.
I felt…weirdly annoyed, sad, and insecure.
Once I acknowledge those feelings, I immediately stopped following them and I’ll tell you why.
They don’t deserve my negative vibes coming at them.
They are probably very happy and should be proud of their accomplishments and blessings.
If I couldn’t be truly happy for them- I needed to back the fuck out of their lives until I could.
Negative emotions are a boomerang and what we send out comes back to hit us between the eyes.
In a nutshell, let’s all worry about our damn-selves and see what happens.
I’m guessing we’ll all be so focused that our dreams will come true much quicker, because we won’t be wasting valuable time and energy worrying about what “the other guy” is doing.
Who’s with me?