How To Be Better Than Everyone Else
For a long time I felt there was something wrong with me. I could not figure out why I was not achieving my goals. It was not for lack of determination or knowledge, I had a lot of both, but so does everyone else. I started to feel as if success just wasn’t meant for me.
But then I noticed something.
I noticed that the people who had achieved a good deal of success had a certain quality about them, something I call “Personal Competitive Advantage™.”
They had figured out something obvious that most people overlook. Most people overlook this because:
- They are looking in the wrong place
- They don’t have a method for utilizing the resources at their disposal
That is why I wrote my book “Competitive Advantage 2.0.” (due out at the end of January 2008)
But please don’t be misled by the title of this post. Creating a Personal Competitive Advantage is about leveraging who you are as an individual to create value for yourself and the world and in the process becoming happier and making the world a better place.
It’s about understanding your “Individual Culture” (see previous post) and creating a new Mental Framework that guides your decision-making and actions in an optimal way.
As I have stated before, the bar is being raised everywhere, in every way. The effects of information technology, the internet and globalization have left no field untouched. Understanding how to develop and sustain competitive advantage is as important as ever, and will only increase in importance in the future.
Knowledge, determination, and positive thinking are no longer the main determinants of success. They have become entry level requirements - still very necessary but now just an entry fee to play the game of life, a mere common denominator among the majority of the world’s population.
On an individual level, creating a Personal Competitive Advantage can mean the difference between success and failure, frustration and happiness, and adding value or being worthless.
Start thinking about how you can apply your uniqueness to whatever field, career, skill or whatever else it is that you are passionate about. When you do this and then apply the proper methodology to create a new Mental Framework™, you will be creating your own Personal Competitive Advantage. –Darryl Dosti
Breaking out of a mental prison
There was a time in my life when I felt trapped in a “mental prison” of my own making.
Do you feel, as I once did, that your mental processes are “narrow minded” and dogmatic? If so, you may be trapped in an inefficent mental prison. If you are trapped in a mental prison, you will feel it internally. Your gut, or intuition, will be silently telling you so.
The common symptoms of being trapped in a mental prison are constant frustration, a lack of enthusiasm, boredom, little or no creative thinking, and a lack of progress towards your goals.
The dangers of a poor “mental framework“™:
There is nothing that can limit your success in life more than being narrow minded. When you are narrow minded, you are operating your life from a very inefficient “mental framework.” You fail to see opportunities to apply your individual uniqueness to the objective world.
In effect, when you are stuck in this inefficient state you have no “personal competitive advantage™” whatsoever. The decisions that you make internally and the actions that you take in the objective world come from a weak and inefficient mental framework. A mental prison causes “victim” thinking and a reactive (instead of proactive) attitude towards life in general.
Breaking out of the mental prison:
You can, and should, take responsibility for creating your own success. How does one create success in such a competitive world? You create what I call “personal competitive advantage.” Personal competitive advantage arises out of the creation of an improved mental framework.
Installing a new mental framework:
In the movie The Matrix, Neo developed a competitive advantage once he understood how to leverage the resources at his disposal. Just as the players in the Matrix installed new mental frameworks with instructions on how to excel, you too can install a new mental framework that utilizes your uniqueness and the body of knowledge within a particular context.
Determination and persistence are no longer enough to succeed in our competitive world, they are now just an entry fee to get into the game. To succeed, you need a personal competitive advantage over the competition. -Darryl Dosti