The stiffest of competition

Who poses the stiffest of competition in your business?

For me, it begins and ends with…ME.

While shooting the shit with a couple of speaker colleagues recently, an interesting topic came to the surface. 

One of the folks asked me about my competition. 

I responded, “I don’t have any competition.” 

At first thought, that sounded like an arrogant response, and that was confirmed by the reaction I saw from the 3 other people listening in, which was not my intention at all. So, I shared my story. 

I talked about how I spent years following what every other photographer was posting online and that created a level of jealousy that would impact my mindset and productivity levels for days. 

I would stew over other their success and wonder aloud why no one was hiring me. This was during the time in my business where if I received an inquiry once every 4 months, I was lucky. 

I was resentful, and I didn’t do shit about it.

It was a self-defeating exercise that I would participate in daily…

…for a couple years. 

And it got me absolutely nowhere. 

Fast-forward a couple years, and a positive psychology course later, I finally understood the harm I was doing to myself. The horrible self-talk. The lack of empathy towards myself. The lack of meaning and purpose in my own life.

I spent my day allowing myself to let other people to control my thoughts and actions, and forgot the one person that I needed to focus on and be mindful of... 

Myself. 

It was shortly after completing that positive psychology certificate course that I vowed to NEVER concern myself with what other photographers were doing. 

In addition, I’ve completely abandoned the idea of identifying competition in the marketplace altogether. 

The only competition that I care about is the one I have with myself. 

I’ve adopted a mindset of having an unquenchable thirst for better. 

Better strategy calls. Better lifestyle portrait sessions. Better keynote shoots. Better conversations with clients. Better overall relationships with those I serve.

And, that objective has also bled into my personal life, as well. 

Better relationships with friends and family. Better social life. Better ways to spend down time. 

By being steadfast in eliminating the need to compare my work, business and life to others around me has added back years to my life. 

And, it’s allowed me to focus on what’s most important - how do I solve my client’s problems better? And how do I live a better, more fulfilled life. 

Everything else is just noise in the air…and fortunately, I have a great pair of noise canceling headphones to take care of that shit :) 

After I shared that whole spiel with my colleagues, one of them raised his glass, and said, “Cheers to that!”

Yeah absolutely. 

It’s a much healthier way to approach the game of life :)