Contents:
This article is meant to encourage you to voice the advantage you have in certain aspects of life, when you know that you have it.
Humility When Possessing an Advantage
There are few interactions which occur on absolutely equal ground. Even if the factors are controlled as much as possible, life’s unfair ways seem to always make their mark on our reality. The athletes partaking in a 100m sprint (a seemingly fair and controlled competition) didn’t all eat the same thing, and sleep in the same position. They didn’t all say the same exact things to their family, and hear the same exact things from their friends prior to the race. The more you try to control the factors of life, the more factors to control you’ll find.
You’ll sometimes have the advantage in life. Some days you’ll simply be more rested and less hungry than the people around you. Some days you’ll have eaten a perfect mix of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Some days the ideas will flow like a healthy stream without you having to squeeze anything out with force. Some days the document within which you type an important letter won’t keep up with the speed at which you type.
Shining a light onto the fact that you may be at an advantage compared to the people around you in any specific domain serves to benefit you more than if it were called out by someone else.
Exposing Your Advantages Yourself, Rids Them of Their Worth
Competitive aspects of life surround you, even on your average day. There will be people who are focused on improving the way they walk for instance, and will compete with your simple act of walking down the hall. People are odd creatures, and will find ways to compete with you in aspects of your behavior you don’t dream of being on someone’s mind. Your comments during meetings at work will be subject to being competed against. Your ability to mingle with higher ups at your company will be seen as a threat by those who aim to do the same. The goal of this article is to limit negative behavior from those who consider you their competition.
Be in tune with the advantages you possess. When people make comments on how well you mingle with the Senior Vice President at your company, tell them that it comes easy to you, and that you’re lucky to not be stricken by anxiety when you talk to important people. When people compliment you on your ability to present good ideas at meetings, tell them that you’ve simply studied the topics you discussed at that particular meeting the night before, thereby possessing an advantage over the ones who did not.
Call out the advantages you have in life so that your competitors don’t discover them first. The chances of your advantages being used as excuses for your success increase when your competitors figure out the advantages you possess by themselves. If you call those advantages out, you serve to nullify the power of them being utilized as excuses against you.
The reason why calling them out first nullifies the chances of your advantages being used as excuses, is because people don’t expect someone like you to be introspective. Your act of calling out your own advantages places your competitors in a tough spot. If they agree with your observation, they will inherently label you as introspective and thoughtful. They’d naturally want to question if the advantages you voice are true. The blatant, open, and honest truth in that regard thereby, will be met with skepticism, rather than viciously sought out and believed. If they disagree with your analysis of yourself, they’d label your advantages as nonexistent. Either way, they won’t be able to use your advantages against you, if you call them out first yourself.