Find a Rival

No matter how great you are or become, you will never improve by yourself as much as you will with someone else challenging and competing with you. Let’s talk about the importance of finding a rival.

Here Comes a New Challenger

In many popular stories throughout the ages and even in today’s modern media, the protagonist has some sort of rival figure. It may be a friend with whom they share common pursuits, a bitter enemy with similar skills, or anything in between.

The common theme that you see is that through competing against this rival, the protagonist is consistently forced to raise the stakes, to train harder and grow more. The presence of their rival, friend or enemy, is a constant reminder to them that they cannot rest on their laurels, basking in previous achievements. This other person, whether they were victorious over our hero or not, will continue to grow. This forces the protagonist to do the same if they want to even keep up, much less have any hope of winning.

This motivation, complete with either an encourage friendly rival encouraging them to do their best or bitter enemy mocking them, pushes the person well beyond their own limits. With the inspiration and challenge of another person to compete against, they far surpass whatever they may have achieved on their own, with only their own motivation to sustain their efforts.

How to Find Your Rival

Not everyone feels like they need this kind of motivation their lives. You obviously can’t just go around challenging people in every area of your life to an eternal rivalry with life or death stakes attached, much as that might liven up the Monday morning status meetings.

So what to do? As with so many other things, this comes down to talking to the people around you. If you are actively engaged with the people in your life, personally and professionally, you should have a good idea of who would be up for a healthy rivalry. If you don’t know whether or not anyone would consider this a good idea, take this as an indication that you need to start talking to the people in your life more so you can find someone.

Now, everyone competes differently. Some people are only comfortable with bragging rights as a prize. Others are skittish about anything more than low stakes. Others will only even consider the idea if the stakes are high. Meet people at their level and compromise. The point here isn’t to win money in a bit, it’s for both you and your new rival to push each other to improve and succeed.

Who is Your Rival?

As always, I want to hear from all of you. Tell us about the rivals in your life, how you met, what you compete at, and how it has improved you both.