How do you react to Competition?

Are you scared of your competition?

Think about this scenario:

Somebody or a company in your direct line of work has suddenly found a new way of doing things that is driving the traffic in their direction, earning them recognition and improving their sales. This affects you directly and your customers start leaving you slowly. At first you begin to panic, you start to think there is no way that you could ever match let alone beat them and then soon enough you begin to cower and feel defeated, finally you give up. ‘They have already won so what’s the point’, you may reason.

In such a scenario, you let the competition get the better of you and you let their success dictate what you do.

Most things we experience in life are all about perspective, and that’s including how you view your competition.

Being scared of your competition can be understandable, especially if your competition is innovative and quick to take action. But other than something that needs to be defeated, competition can also be seen in a different way.

It can be seen as something that exists to make us better.

Competition is a good thing and instead of fearing it you should thrive on it, using it to make yourself better than the way you currently are.

If something is working for someone else and not for you then that is a chance for you to get better, you have the opportunity to analyse what they are doing and use their strategy to make you better or even do one better than them.

Competition is what makes you try a bit harder.

If there was no competition we would hardly improve. Companies would be over pricing terrible goods and subpar performances would be considered excellent.

Because there is someone doing what you are doing maybe even better, you are forced to work harder and smarter to stay on top.

And because of the stiff competition our achievements have turned out to be more than what we could have expected.

Imagine competing with teams and big established companies and seriously beating them in some categories just because you did your homework and went a step further.

The confidence you would gain after such a feat is immense, giving you the permission to even do more.

Competition also gives you a head start even though you may seem like you are lagging behind. If your competitors implement a new solution or technology you are working, then they have done the market research for you and you can use their results as data to work with. You can find out where they advertise and see if those methods are working effectively. You can analyse their services and add more value to them. You would not be flying in blindly and you would make a better strategy that would make you succeed where they have failed.

You can learn from their mistakes, you can also learn from their success and you can grow from them.

When you are competing it’s no longer about money, it’s now about creating more value so that the customer returns to you again and so that others can see the value that you bring.

In the end competition is not about beating the other (even if winning does feel good and I often do aim to do so), it is about pushing yourself to be better than you were before. And when we all try our hardest to be better, overall we raise the standards of solution we create and make a better environment for everyone.

Remember that there is always more than one prize to be had, and if we all do our best there is always enough room for the best at the top.

Thinking that competition will make us lose everything is a scarcity mind set. A mind set focused on abundance, one that you should work to have, will realise that there is more than one prize if we do our best and together we can create more prizes.

Getting comfortable with the idea of competing will help you get ahead faster.

What are your thoughts on this? Leave a comment and share your thoughts in the section below.

Thanks for Reading :)