Seth's Blog : State champs

State champs

Compared to what?

98% of the time, the state champ loses at nationals.

Every billionaire but one isn’t the richest person in the world. Only one of the 300 people who direct a feature film each year will win an Academy Award.

And only one public company has the greatest share price growth.

Competition is often a useful source for fuel. In our scarcity-driven world, looking for external metrics might be a productive way to focus our energy or gather resources.

But it’s also a trap.

A trap that seduces us into accepting someone else’s priorities.

A trap that causes us to forget what got us here and to ignore our good fortune.

And a trap that takes us out of this moment as it pushes us to imagine another one, less likely, in the future.

When we’re captured by the death spiral of scarcity and dominance, we’re signing up for a journey that’s all about the destination, a destination we’re quite unlikely to reach.

Consider what made this worth doing in the first place. Why isn’t that enough?