Love Life with Matthew Hussey - 61: Competition is For Losers (And How To Be Irreplaceable)

Episode Date: October 10, 2020

In his book Zero To One, the venture capitalist and entrepreneur Peter Thiel famously says: “Competition is for losers”. Whether you are running a business, deciding what to do with your life, looking for a relationship – if you worry about what everyone else is doing, you’ll end up chasing the wrong thing. The only way to escape competition, and feel deeply confident to your soul, is to have your own unique monopoly. You don’t need to win at everything to get a great relationship – you only need to build your unique monopoly in a way that makes you irreplaceable for the right person...  ---   Send your emails to [e-mail]   ---   Follow Stephen @stephenhhussey   ---   Join us for our life-changing 3-day virtual retreat MHVirtualRetreat.com

Hello there, you attractive, intelligent bunch. This is Stephen Hussey, your host for the Love Life podcast. And as I have done before, I am going to read through one of my recent blog posts and talk about it, give commentary on it, and generally chat around the topic, which is that of competition. Who are you in competition with right now? Who do you feel you're in competition with right now? Many of us subconsciously or consciously can't help comparing ourselves to others. People when they go go on dating apps, feel that very directly, very sharply, that comparative element. Many people feel that people are always looking around,

potentially choosing other options. We have internal self-esteem issues that make us pit ourselves against others and see ourselves as locked in this struggle to win or always scared that someone's going to come along and take what we have. I want to talk about why this mentality is so dangerous and what you can do about it, what the solution is to happily embracing and, well, improving what you already have but without feeling like you are trying to win over someone else so this article is titled competition in love is for losers you thumb through instagram and it isn't long until you see photos of bucks and bikini girls jumping up and down by a hot tub in a Balinese resort, or an impossibly proportioned Greek god of a man with shaved pectorals and a torso straight off the cover of a steamy romance novel.

Then you sit back and look down at your own body. I don't look like that, you think? You see selfies of people flying business class, their smug grin now mercifully sheathed in a mask, humble bragging about their company sales figures this month. You see photos of wannabe entrepreneurs and fashionistas vying to not so subtly display their success and how hashtag blessed they are to have it but of course not really it's because they hustled but really they're blessed but really it's because they hustled but really they're so hashtag blessed etc etc then you sit back and look back at your own bank balance i don't have that lifestyle you think yourself. And now you go out on a date

with someone. They're nice. You have a good time. But in your mind, you say to yourself, there are so many people out there on Tinder, Bumble, every dating app, a shop window of people with airbrushed photos laying on beaches with sunsets and coconut cocktails. How can I hold anyone's attention for long? Won't they be tempted to keep returning to the buffet available on their phone in any idle moment? What if he or she is scrolling through their newsfeed seeing the glamorous life they could have, all the while stuck with me and my mediocrity, my normal life of buying groceries and watching Amazon Prime on a Saturday night,

of dealing with my family issues and trying to keep myself above water, of not being sure of my direction and working on myself inch by inch, struggling to juggle my priorities, and... If you're stuck in this mindset mindset you're already losing the battle and it's because you still think you're trying to win in his book zero to one the venture capitalist and entrepreneur p Thiel famously says, competition is for losers. Whether you're running a business, deciding what to do with your life, looking for a relationship, if you worry about what everyone else is doing, you'll end up chasing the wrong thing. Why? Because you'll conform. People like to copy people. It's our our nature we can't help it the philosopher renee girard calls

this memetic theory the idea that all our desires come from what other people desire so if we see people telling us that buying a yacht starting a million dollar company or wearing tiny bikinis in a hot tub in bal is the way to happiness, we'll want those things too. And then we get lost in a hyper competitive mindset. How do I measure up to everyone else? Am I doing good enough? Do I live up to the perfect image of what a good life looks like? The problem of competition here is twofold. First, it makes you miserable. Second, it makes you overestimate the importance of whatever you happen to be focusing on. You only have to read frustrated Reddit forums to see guys fixated on the idea that all their romantic problems would be solved

if they earned 50k, 100k, 500k more dollars per year. Or people who think that being under six foot and not having abs makes finding love impossible. Or women who believe that every single man is 100% visually stimulated and only cares about looks and isn't interested in any other serious qualities in his partner. Now, look, I'm not here to say that life isn't easier if you're beautiful, fit, wealthy. But if you make these things the only game in town, you'll attract people for whom those things are all that matters. You'll also get stuck in a game that you can never win. Someone will always have a larger salary, be better looking, younger or have more Instagram followers. And when you get wrapped up in this miasma of superficial and material things, you'll suddenly wonder why your relationship feels insecure and miserable,

and it's because you've bought into a particular paradigm. Now again, of course looks matter. Of course, being in great shape will make you more attractive to a wider range of people. There's a certain look of healthiness that we're all instinctively or biologically however you want to call it attracted to by and large some people are attracted to different things at the margins different shapes and sizes but there is a norm of course having an appealing lifestyle and confidence are qualities that are seductive in a partner. But is trying to win every single one of these games to worry about whether there's someone with more than us,

whether someone is going to attract the eye of the person we're with if we are suddenly behind on one of these games? Is obsessing over your stats like you're a top trump playing card and worrying that falling short along one single dimension will mean your partner will run to someone else at any moment? Are those thoughts going to help you? Are those thoughts actually valid? No. The feeling that you're in competition with everyone else is a losing mindset. The feeling that you're in competition with anyone else is a losing mindset. It's a game you'll never, ever, ever win. So what really makes you irreplaceable to someone? The only way to escape this kind of constant competition and to feel deeply confident to your soul so that you're not constantly worrying about what other people around you are doing or not doing is to have your own unique monopoly. You don't need to win

everything to get a great relationship. You only need to build your unique monopoly in a way that makes you irreplaceable for the right person. This takes work on two levels. Work towards who you want to be, but also work on accepting who you already are. Think about who you want to attract and what qualities that person will be attracted to and move towards that. Then forget about the rest. If you want someone intellectual who loves talking about art and is passionate about education, who also runs marathons, ask yourself, do I embody those qualities? does my dating profile reflect those things am i at least moving in that direction if you want someone who's kind and generous and loves family

is your life a beacon for someone with those personality traits maybe on your taken on their own your qualities can feel quite normal. But when you combine them all together in your own unique way, with your own distinct personality, they make something that is distinctly you, that can't be copied. Because now you're not obsessed with winning in all these different areas because you know what makes you attractive and interesting and special is this distinct combination these things coming together that might seem ordinary on their own but they come together and they make something that isn't replaceable that someone else can't just come along and replicate and that's how you feel deeply comfortable in anyone's presence when

you go to a party when you show up at social events when you're you know talking with your friends when you're dating you're not worried about what mr x and mrs y is doing because you know what you bring to the table and what makes anyone a great partner is some mix of the following how you make someone feel the kind of energy you bring do you bring a great mood being kind saying things that make people feel noticed another one living in congruence with your values showing discipline the courage and determination to live up to your own principles another one is being a great teammate someone that can be trusted someone that shows you're on your partner's side able to think of their needs including them in future planning showing compromise and of course sexual

chemistry how you take care of your health diet body dressing attractively for the kind of person you'd like to meet thinking about what turns them on emotionally and sexually being a thoughtful lover knowing what excites them all these things come together to make your unique monopoly so do what's necessary for you to feel attractive how whatever that is if you feel you're falling short in one area of your personal standards and that affects your confidence that's a good enough motivation to push you to do something to reach a higher level but if you spend a spend a single second caring that there's someone else better looking more more successful, and you define your own worth to someone else along those lines, you've already lost.

Your unique monopoly is the essential you-ness that makes you who you are. If you can hold on to that, if you can actually value it, learn to love it, learn to see it for how special and distinct and the kind of unreplaceable energy that you bring to any party to any conversation to any place you're in any relationship you're in if you can internally know that someone choosing you is the smartest decision they'll ever make and believe it then you're no longer in competition you make a game that only you can win so i want to ask you a question now and i'd love for you to respond in our email inbox i'd love to

hear from you guys i want to ask you what your unique monopoly is and it can be a few things you bring to the table it could just be two or three it could be a list but really think about it think about what is it I bring that's special about me and don't worry about but other people have this as well forget all of that again that's the competitive mindset just look at what are the different elements of me that make me me and why would that be someone that's great to be in a relationship with why would that be someone that someone is lucky to be in a relationship with now i recommend taking two minutes five minutes whatever you need just to write down some bullet points a list however you want to do it you can do it as a paragraph what your unique monopoly is

if you want to share it send it to podcast at matthewhussey.com and if we get some great ones I'll read some out on the next episode and and uh if you'd like to keep it for yourself and tuck it away in a document or you know on a file on your laptop or in a notebook that's great but i think it really helps to ground yourself and remind yourself of what you offer periodically so you don't buy into some external paradigm that isn't even of your own choosing about whatever games you think you're playing against other people we all know the real game is with ourselves and we always have the opportunity to think about what we bring to the table and add richness to our personality add different dimensions to our character. Think about how we

can be the best kind of partner for the person we'd want to attract and not because we're trying to win over other people but because when that right person comes along we want to make sure that we're ready and we want to make sure that we are playing at our best. We want to make sure that we are bringing our unique stamp to the table, living life on our terms at our best we want to make sure that we are bringing our unique stamp to the table living life on our terms at the level we want to live it because that's what really shines through it's not when people fall in love they don't fall in love thinking oh this person maxes out all these different traits like you know like a car thinking it's got this much power it's got this much speed it's got this much no people are much more complex than that and people look at someone and yes there's chemistry

yes there's attraction but there's also looking at someone and just seeing their authenticity the way they carry themselves with confidence, the way they are comfortable in their own skin, the fact that they embrace who they are, they live an authentic life, they're true to their purpose and their values and that's what stands out and someone decides, am I in love with those values and what that person represents? But it's the entire package but it's the entire package it's the entire unique energy that we bring to the table that can't just easily be replaced by anyone else because it's so distinctly our own and that's what i want you to embrace this week and think about because then you're unstoppable then you're never worrying what the crowd are doing you're following your

own path you're ready for whoever wants to join you on that and be a part of that team with you and you're going to be ready for whoever wants to embrace that uniqueness you have and who's going to fall in love with it so go out there build your unique monopoly write it, what you bring to the table, so that you have it as a constant reminder, and that is it from your old pal Stevie today, thank you so much as ever, that email again is podcast at matthewhussey.com, I would love to hear from you what your personal monopoly is um and uh i am going to what's going on we've got our virtual retreat next week uh that is if you want to join that there still is time not much time left but we are doing it next week it begins on the um 18th sorry sorry not the 18th it begins on october the 16th

on the friday and it goes till sunday the 18th so it's going to be a virtual retreat all able to do from your home have our retreat experience we're going all out we've got the team we've got matthew obviously joining you for three days of that. We've got some little surprises and fun parties and things and you'll see all that when you go and sign up. But if you want to do that, go to mhvirtualretreat.com, mhvirtualretreat.com and you can sign up and we will see you next week to set yourself up right for the end of the year and 2021. Okay, my pickles, pears and peaches. That is it from me today. I'm going to go head out and start my weekend in old London town. All right, go enjoy yours. I'll see you soon love you bye