Growing up, I was taught that competition is good.

When you played, you played to win.

You played to dominate everyone else on the field.

While that lesson didn’t initially align with what my heart was telling me, it was delivered so consistently that it became a part of my psyche.

This was especially true after I graduated from college and was able to take full control of my career.

I never wanted to be “above average.”

Whenever I set out to do something, I aimed to be the best – to dominate.

Problem was, total domination left a gaping hole in one area: happiness.

This boiled down to two reasons:

1. Playing to win above all else is a really lonely journey – you don’t let anyone else in for fear of giving them an edge

2. When the bar is set so high that the minimum expectation is perfection, you’re bound to be disappointed

Recently, I’ve been trying to take the opposite mindset. Instead of dominating the competition, how can I help so everyone wins?

How can I create a rising tide that lifts everyone?

Whenever I promote someone else, or help them succeed, I’m immediately happier.

The give-first mindset has also led to crazy opportunities that would have passed me by if I’d kept my win-at-all-costs mindset.

Fear’s voice is still whispering in my ear, but I’m finding that the new voice — the one that appeared after I starting giving back — is growing louder by the day.

I first learned about “the odd effectiveness” of affirmations from Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert.

Scott said, “All you do is pick a goal and you write it down 15 times a day in some specific sentence form, like, ‘I, Scott Adams, will become an astronaut.”

Then your goal is supposed to manifest itself into existence.

Scott tested it on a stock play, which ended up working out. Next, he set his sights on the New York Times Bestseller list, which also manifested itself.

Good enough for me!

I started with my first mantra:

I, Austin Belcak, will make $100,000.

Then the next:

I, Austin Belcak, will be featured in Forbes.

And the next:

I, Austin Belcak, will have 100,000 followers on LinkedIn.

All three of those things came true, but something funny happened.

They didn’t make me any happier.

In the moment? Absolutely.

But they didn’t scratch that deeper itch of true, genuine fulfillment.

With every step up, there seemed to be a new set of goals, a new north star to point to, a new group of “peers” to compare myself against.

Unfortunately, it took me far too long to realize what was going on.

I kept up the cycle of “More” for years.

And even now, with that realization, I’m still susceptible to negative feelings of “enoughness” and comparison. They show up regularly.

I acknowledge and make space for them, but I also fight back.

Instead of fueling them with my mantra, I rewrote it to disarm them. Now it reads:

I, Austin Belcak, run a business that makes me insanely happy and fulfilled.