“No Benefit To Keeping It A Secret”

Competitiveness is a double-edged sword. On one hand, leveraging it to become better – or even, the best – is useful when it comes to harnessing the urgency & intensity required for elevated performance. On the other hand, to approach everything as a zero-sum game – one in which whatever is gained on one side is lost on the other –  is an unnecessarily limited way of experiencing life.

Though competitiveness might seem cute or even admirable early in a career – be it in sport, business, or relationships —  all competitors inevitably reach a space where they can either transcend competitiveness as a tool (to include it or not to include it), or they’ll have to move laterally into a new area for competing, at least until the cycle repeats itself… again and again. You’ve all seen this before.

While I’m not discouraging competitiveness (have you met me?), I challenge you to consider how open and/or effective you are in situations that can’t be “won” at the expense of beating others.

Do you always need to one-up your friends? Do you ever reserve support for others out of irrational fear that it would take from your well-being? Are you guarded in sharing ideas, paranoid others might steal them?

If you answered yes to any of the above, I’ve got a message for you: Quit thinking so small.

At the inception of Breath & Exposure, I’ll never forget a conversation I had with Logan when he shared a story about an archetypal, old, washed-up genius of a coach. The story illustrated a brilliant, highly talented human, one that had coached a handful of special athletes to world championship success… but many years ago, and was now living in a lawn chair of a rugged, run-down gym, perpetually pissed at the world now for not “understanding” him.

It haunts me to this day when he said something like, “I’m not saying that’s gonna be you,” before adding, “There’s no benefit to keeping it a secret.”

For all of you out there with incredible ideas – and don’t kid yourself, that’s ALL of you! – I urge you to evolve the competitive mindset that would rather hide or merely talk instead of act. Part of the gig is building structure to breathe life into all the beautiful things in your mind. 

So play bigger, won’t ya? Build.