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
Discovering your “Individual Culture”
Positive thinking and determination are no longer any guarantee of success. They are now merely entry fees to play the game of life.
For you, the individual human being, success now requires that you find a way to leverage what I call your “individual culture.”
For an individual person, the integration of their personality, unique individual traits & characteristics (idiosyncrasies), values, likes, dislikes, passions, talents, knowledge, etc, and anything else that makes them unique constitutes their “individual culture”.
Leveraging your individual culture:
I was watching videos of Jimi Hendrix on youtube the other day. You can’t help but marvel at how unique and advanced his skills were. He added a tremendous amount of innovation and value to the world by applying his unique talents to a set of competencies in the context of “guitar playing.”
One cannot deny that Jimi Hendrix had fully leveraged his individual culture when he picked up a guitar. By applying his individual culture to the competencies and skills within the context of guitar playing, he created a unique competitive advantage, and added an incredible amount of value to our culture and society. 
Understanding your individual culture is an important part of life in general.
The ramifications of not understanding your individual culture are many, but in general, not understanding who you are as a person means that you will not be able to develop a competitive advantage for anything in life, and this can dramatically limit your success and happiness, or at a minimum make it relatively more difficult to achieve your goals. In my book, Personal Competitive Advantage™, I explain a method you can apply to your own life that allows you to leverage your individual culture into a sustainable 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
Bruce Lee had it, Tiger Woods has it, and so do the best Pick Up Artists…
Bruce Lee had it, Tiger Woods has it, and so do the best Pick Up Artists. So do successful entrepreneurs as well as the greatest leaders throughout the history of civilization. Any business that has been successful over time has it as well, just in a different way.
I am talking about sustainable competitive advantage.
Just as a successful business has a sustainable competitive advantage, every successful person has developed a personal competitive advantage. Anyone who has achieved a high level of consistent success has figured out how to apply their individual uniqueness to some field or skill. They have not just gotten down the learning curve, they have figured out a way to shift it in their favor.
The bar is being raised everywhere. Persistence, determination, and knowledge are no longer enough, they are now minimum requirements. In our hyper-competitive global economy we need to apply our unique individual qualities to find ways to add value to the marketplace.
When we have an actual method that allows us to apply our individual uniqueness to a set of skills we can effectively align who we are as individuals with the competencies that are necessary to succeed. We “individualize” the skills. Our actions then become optimized and second nature in feeling. We create uniqueness in action and a competitive edge.
If you are frustrated that you are not achieving your goals you have probably not developed a personal competitive advantage. But how do we develop this? Can a new “mental framework”™ be installed in our minds? In my book “Personal Competitive Advantage™” due out later this month I discuss just such a method. -Darryl Dosti
Becoming a New Barbarian
One of the books that had a big impact on me was The New Barbarian Manifesto (2000), written by Professor Ian Angell. In this book he discusses how we have entered a
“new elite cosmopolitan age where knowledge workers have become the real generators of wealth… It is now abundantly clear that knowledge workers are the real generators of wealth. They always have been, only now they realize it. For their knowledge is the basis of innovation, and innovation underpins the creation of alternatives - not only alternative products but also alternative procedures. Alternatives deliver new competitive advantages, and destroy the old. …The income of these owners of intellectual wealth will increase substantially. They will be made welcome anywhere in the world, no matter what their age, race, sex, color, or creed. “
Of course, knowledge, in and of itself, achieves absolutely nothing. Knowledge, in and of itself does not produce competitive advantage. It must be applied by individuals that utilize their talents to add value and create wealth. Personal competitive advantage is what allows us to create value and wealth. Without it, you will be among the increasing masses that are forced to compete for insecure service or other low skilled jobs. Quoting from the New Barbarian Manifesto once again:
“(National Economic) growth has been decoupled from employment, it is created from the talent of a few knowledge workers, not from the labor of low grade service and production workers. Growth is delivered by entrepreneurs, but only if they are given the incentives, and otherwise left alone…. Companies and individuals, not countries, generate the wealth. New technology has released these organizations and knowledge workers from any geographical constraint, and they are roaming the world looking for free-thinking countries as partners.”
Understanding how to develop and sustain a personal competitive advantage is now more important than ever, and its importance will only increase in the future when you consider the trends discussed above. The old models of narrow minded, dogmatic management and bureaucracy have fallen by the wayside in this brave new world. What matters now is how you as an individual can add value to the world and make someone else’s life better in the process. What can you, as a unique individual apply and leverage through some context to add value to the world? Do you have a competitive advantage?
This is not a time to fear competitive forces. It is a time to embrace them. The current environment presents opportunity. The opportunity lies in being able to utilize our individual and organizational idiosyncrasies in the global marketplace. We do this by developing a Personal Competitive Advantage™. –Darryl Dosti