The Infinite Game (2): Competition in the Context of The Infinite Game.
“Finite players play to beat the people around them. Infinite players play to be better than themselves” — Simon Sinek.
How do you win all the battles, decimate your enemy, and still lose the war? How do you do all the work, make all the money, and still remain poor? How do you score all the points, kick your opponent out and still lose the game?
While you may think all these are impossible, they are actually a result of playing a game with the wrong mindset.
Tell me. How will a basketball team beat a professional football club in a football game? Even if you pitch the best basketball players against the football team, they will end up confused and frustrated.
The same thing applies to life itself. We view life, often because of the widespread societal beliefs, as a finite game.
We want to beat everybody, we want to make all the money, we want to beat our colleagues to the promotion, we want to beat our teammates to the project.
Every of our words, actions, and goals depict the finite mindset. But life is an infinite game. There is no such person crowned the winner of careers, or winner of marriage, or winner of politics, or winner of business, and there’s definitely no such person crowned the winner of life.
The more I look at the world through the lens of the infinite game, the more I realize that most of us, myself included, are getting a lot of things wrong. Our mentality about “winning” and “beating others” clearly reflects that we don’t know the type of game we’re playing.
Life is an infinite game, pardon the cliché. Which means there is no one to be declared winner, and therefore there is no “competition” in the sense that we understand it today.
The only true competitor in an infinite game is yourself. And if you’re planning to beat somebody, it should be, not your colleague or co-worker, but the person you were yesterday.
The Negative Side of Competition in Life.
“When you compete with every one, no one wants to help you. When you compete with yourself, everyone wants to help you” — Simon Sinek.
How many times have you denied your colleague help because you feel she’ll beat you? That’s the product of competition. When we set out to beat everyone, we begin to see everyone as potential enemies that must be eliminated. Hence, we sacrifice our humanity in order to advance our selfish wants.
Guess what? When you see everyone as potential enemies, everyone also see you as a potential enemy! And this will breed lack of trust, hatred and frequent frictions in our lives.
Imagine how much productivity we would be bringing into our lives if we all help each other out without fear of being cheated.
This concept of living life without the greed to “beat everyone else”, is a major contributing factor to the survival of the homo sapiens. Consider our ancestors during the cavemen times.
They didn’t see the other person as a potential competitor for food. Rather, they saw him as someone who will contribute to their safety, and with whom they would find more food.
As most of us will, they didn’t see the extra citizen as someone that would deprive them of food. Rather, they saw him as someone who will aid them in finding more food for the tribe.
Due, largely, to the finite mindset with which we have been living our lives in recent years, we have learnt to see the other person as a threat.
- We see the new employee as a threat to our own job, so we work to make him fail or even get fired.
- We see the new student as a threat to our ‘supremacy’ in class, so we make him look bad before everyone else.
- Even worse, we see our friends as threats to our lifestyle and ‘pride’, so we make them look debased and ‘lower’ than us.
Our society is now like a jungle where very animal is out to hunt the other. No wonder we struggle to gain satisfaction and fulfillment in what we do despite having more than we’ve ever had in history.
The community that will thrive is the community built upon interdependence of its members.
The Abundance Mentality; What are we Competing for, when there is enough for everyone?
“There’s enough for everyone. If you can believe it, if you can see it, if you act from it, it will show up for you. That’s the truth.”- Michael Beckwith
The individuals that truly live life with fulfillment and purpose are the individuals that have learned to live with the abundance mentality.
When you have the abundance mentality, you understand that there is enough for everyone. The other person’s achievement does not deter yours neither does yours deter the other person’s. The extra pound your friend made does not prevent you from making much more.
The abundance mentality helps us understand that getting what you want in life doesn’t always have to be at the expense of the other person.
You can achieve that promotion without knocking people out of the way. You can make more money without cheating others. Your success, I reiterate, does not have to be at the other person’s expense.
The idea of competition in life forces us to think that resources are scarce and that if you don’t do whatever you can, to knock out as many players, you may never achieve your goals.
The truth is, there is enough money to make and enough cars to buy. No one is trying to fight you (at least not in the way we see it).
“An abundance mentality springs from internal security, not from external rankings, comparisons, opinions, possessions, or associations.”- Stephen Covey
What Happens When You Don’t Compete? (A little story)
Simon Sinek tells the story of Ben Comen in his book Start With Why.
Ben is part of the Hanna High School cross-country track team. Throughout the time he’s been on the team, Ben has never won a race. He’s not among the fastest runners also — in fact he is the slowest.
When the gun is fired, and the entire team speeds off, Ben is always left behind, gently taking his steps.
Ben is not lazy, as you may think, and he wasn’t forced to run either. Ben is always left behind because he has Cerebral Palsy, a condition that affects a person’s movement and balance throughout his lifetime. Ben’s cerebral palsy is the major reason why he never wins a race.
The highlight of the story however, is not Ben’s CP. It is the fact that after every other runner has finished the race, they run back to Ben and join him in his gentle race to the finish line.
In other words, Ben isn’t racing against anyone, he’s racing against himself.
“When you set out to beat everyone, no one wants to help you. When you set out to beat yourself, everyone wants to help” — Simon Sinek
Takeaway
There’s much more to life than just “winning” and “beating everyone.” There’s enough for everyone to get; and as Abraham Hicks said, “The entire universe is conspiring to give you everything you want.”
