Episode 7: Developing a Competitive Spirt- Because Second is Always Last

When you develop a competitive spirit that thrives on challenges, hungers for victory, and never settles for mediocrity, every setback becomes fuel, Every opponent is a teacher, and every victory is just the beginning. Welcome back, guys, to another episode of the leaders realm podcast. I'm your host, Tony Cammarata. Here in the leaders realm, we're building a team of titans, all while activating a beast mode mindset. Each week, we spend time building a mental toughness and becoming stronger in our belief in ourselves, our faith, and building leaders for tomorrow.

In last week's episode, we talked a lot about physical strength and stamina. That's the 5th characteristic in activating a beast mode mindset. Well, this week, developing a competitive spirit. Why? Because second is always last, guys.

So how do we develop the spirit in a world where everything seems to be falling apart, where negative seems to be running rampant? How do we set ourselves apart from the status quo? The norm. We'll grab your coffee, sit back, and let's get it done. What is a competitive spirit?

I'll tell you what it's not. It's not sitting back and just or just showing up somewhere and expecting a trophy just for being there. It's not that, well, I'm entitled to get a certificate or an award without putting in the effort. It's about laying it on the line, giving it your all, stopping at nothing to achieve your goal. Yeah.

You might fall short, and that's okay. But don't just sit back and just expect, well, hey. I'm here. I just need to, you know oh, yeah. Well, I deserve it because I'm here and I showed up.

It's more than just about winning. It's about pushing yourself to become the absolute best version of yourself, guys. Nurturing and cultivating a competitiveness over time involves a combination of mindset and personal development strategies. So what are some of the key aspects? We need a mindset shift, guys.

In this world today, we've got to shift the way our mind thinks, the way our mind operates. We've got to get out of our heads and stop living in between our ears. Developing a competitive mindset, it starts with a shift in how we perceive the challenges and the goals. It's about embracing the competition, not just as a rivalry with others, but as a means of self improvement and achievement. This mindset shift involves focusing on personal growth, continuously learning, and developing the drive to surpass all of your own limits.

Not my limits, the next guy's limits, your own limits. Once again, guys, setting clear goals, identifying what your why is. I have had so many people say to me in the past couple of weeks, you know, between emails and and phone calls and text messages, you know, wow. I never really thought about it that way. Guys, your why, and I'm gonna stress it again, it has got to be as important as the air that we breathe.

As specific as being able to look in the mirror and outline everything. You can see yourself in the mirror. Why can't we see our goals? Setting ambitious yet achievable objectives, it gives you something to strive for, and and it gives you something to measure your progress against. These goals should be challenging enough to push you out of your comfort zone but be realistic enough to maintain the motivation.

That's a tough balance to strike, and you'll get there. It just takes time. Embrace your challenges. View the challenges as opportunities. Competitive individuals see setbacks and difficulties as chances to learn, adapt, and improve.

It's a resilience in the face of adversity. It's a hallmark of a nurtured competitive spirit, competitive learning and improvement. Competitiveness is not just about winning. It's about constantly getting better, getting stronger, engaging in deliberate practice, seeking feedback from others. Be careful who you seek your feedback from.

Remember, the lions are not the sheep. Actively working on refining your skills and refining your knowledge. Knowledge is everything. Knowledge is power. This commitment, ongoing learning, it fuels your competitive drive.

It helps maintain a moment momentum over time. Surround yourself with competence, Being around others who are competitive and excel in their lives, they will inspire and motivate you. Engaging with a supportive network of peers, mentors, or teammates who challenge you, challenge you to elevate your performance and help you nurture your competitive spirit. Stopping and reflecting on your progress, Regularly reflect reflecting on your progress and achievements, looking at your setbacks closely, checking your progress. It's essential, guys.

This so this kind of self assessment helps you identify the strengths to leverage and the areas for improvement, reinforcing your commitment to grow and your competitiveness. Staying hungry yet humble. A nurtured competitive spirit balances ambition with humility. Let me say that again. A nurtured competitive spirit balances ambition with humility.

While striving for success, it's important to remain open to learning, acknowledging your limitations, and continuously seeking ways to evolve and innovate. Overall, nurturing the competitiveness involves a holistic approach that integrates mindset, goal setting, resilience, continuous improvement. And a supportive environment. So there's there's been plenty of times in my life, guys, where things never seemed like they were going the way I would have imagined. Looking back, I now realize that I found myself in those situations.

And it wasn't about not having the right goals or the right drive. It was during these times where I was surrounded by negative whiny people, the sheep and not the driven successful lions. It was during these times where, you know, I wasn't as in tune with myself as I should have been. Listening to the naysayers, you know the type, the ones that never want you to look, feel, or do any better than they are. During these times, I found myself doing less and less work and spending less time in scripture, less time focusing on my goals.

It was through prayer and determining my why, guys, and getting outside of my comfort zone that helped me out of that pit. It wasn't easy. It takes a lot of self reflection, guys. It takes a lot of being honest with yourself, following the principles that we've been discussing over the past few weeks. If you don't like where you are, where you are right now or where you're headed, it's time, guys.

It's time to stop and reflect, evaluate and be brutally honest with yourself. Get the hell out of your own way and start making it happen. It I don't know. I don't know what that it is for you, but you'll find it, and you'll find it in your why. Stop coming in second.

Start competing with you. So let's discuss some strategies that we can implement, guys. We need to cultivate a hunger for improvement. We've got to get hungry to make the changes and get better, get stronger. Cultivating a hunger for improvement through continuous learning and self improvement is crucial for several reasons.

It deeply impacts the personal and professional growth guys. We've gotta learn to adapt to change. In today's instant gratification world, technology advances so quick. Markets are shifting so fast. People want everything now.

Now I always talk about back in the eighties when we got our first microwave. It was so cool. We put that you know, cup of water in there, and within 2 minutes, it was boiling over. Well, you know, today, that same cup of water takes the same 2 minutes, sometimes a little less, to boil, and yet we stand in front of the microwave and wonder why is it taking so long? Everything is moving faster and faster and faster.

We've gotta continue to learn, guys. If we wanna stay relevant, if we wanna stay adaptable, it gives us the knowledge and the skills that we need to navigate and thrive in today's environment. By continuously learning, we enhance our skills. We acquire new ones. It not only improves our ability to perform tasks effectively, but it also opens us up to all kinds of new opportunities, career advancements, personal development, business opportunities.

Become innovative and creative, guys. Learning, it has a way of fostering the innovation by exposing us to diverse perspectives, different ideas, method methodologies. It encouraged the creativity by challenging our conventional thinking. It forces us to think differently than the next guy. A commitment to continuously improving cultivates a mindset of curiosity and experimentation.

This is essential. It's essential for activating a beast mode mindset. It ties into how I close my podcast out every week, becoming fast, fluid, and flexible. Professional growth and confidence, acquiring new knowledge, and honing existing skills boosts our confidence and our competence. It empowers us to to take on more challenging progress, projects, gives us the ability to take on bigger leadership roles, And this confidence, it stems from a deep seated belief in our ability to learn, adapt regardless of the circumstances.

Beyond personal aspirations, continuous learning contributes to personal fulfillment and a sense of purpose. I had no idea what it takes to put a podcast together. All I knew is that I felt a calling. I felt a calling to start sharing some of my life experiences. Someone recommended a podcast.

Someone else said, hey. You know, you might be pretty good at that. You like to to you like I like to talk a lot. So I figured, what the heck? And it it took months to put it together because I just didn't and I shared before, you know, I was making excuses.

Everything had to be perfect. And it's just a matter of learning, guys. You just stick. You just get outside of your comfort zone and stretch. My first podcast, I recorded, and and I was, like, freaking out the whole time.

I feel like I'm I'm sitting here talking to this wall, this microphone. And now, you know, several weeks later, I don't even realize the microphone's there. A commitment to lifelong learning, guys, it puts you in a better position to seize any opportunity that comes your way. Gives you the opportunity to outperform your peers and achieve long term success. It makes us proactive and forward thinking.

When you're committed to continuous improvement, others get inspired. And when others get inspired, they wanna follow. We become role models within our communities and our organizations. This ripple effect, it fosters a culture of growth and innovation, benefiting entire teams in an organization. Next, let's talk about the qualities that are essential in order to building discipline and consistency.

Building habitual excellence. Discipline is the rock in which habits of excellence are built. It involves a commitment to a set of principles, routines, and actions that contribute to long term goals. Consistency reinforces our habits, turns them into second nature, muscle memory, whether in athletics, academics, professional fields, discipline practice ensures that skills are honed and maintained at at their peak levels. Number 2.

This one's tough for me guys. Overcoming resistance and procrastination. Discipline enables us to overcome the natural resistance and procrastination that comes with difficult and tedious and monotonous tasks. How many times do we naturally put the hardest things last? Think about it.

We have a list of things to do, and somehow, some way, all the hardest things get put at the bottom of the list. By adhering to a structured practice schedule, we can confront challenges head on, pushing through the discomfort of the setbacks that might otherwise derail our progress. Number 3, achieving mastery through repetition. Consistent practice allows us to refine and master skills over time. This process involves deliberate repetition, gradually improving technique, efficiency, and effectiveness.

This comes that comes to play a lot for me in the martial arts studio. It's the same thing over and over and over and over until we master the small tasks, the tiniest parts of the techniques. I remember early in my teen years playing ball, I had a coach. He was very dear to me. And he said to me 1 day, he's like, listen.

I know you wanna be fast, but let me tell you something. Speed comes with perfection. The more we repeat over and over, the faster we become over time. If we try to put the speed before the perfection, everything falls apart. Enhancing focus and concentration.

Discipline fosters mental resilience and enhances our focus. It requires us to prioritize our goals, manage our distractions, and compartmentalize our time. It's back to that chest of drawers, guys. Developing resilience. We'll talk a lot more about resilience next week.

Discipline cultivates resilience. It instills a mindset that embraces challenges as opportunities for growth rather than obstacles to be avoided. Sustaining a long term motivation. Discipline and consistency provide a framework for sustaining the long term motivation that we need to achieve our goals. While initial enthusiasm may dissipate, a disciplined practice encourages us to stay committed, stay committed to our goals through the highs and through the lows.

It ensures the progress even when things get tough. We develop a habit to push through. Building self confidence by cons by consistency consistently meeting our goals, our micro goals, and achieving the bigger milestones, we develop a self confidence and reliability. We become bulletproof, guys. It forms a foundation for setting higher goals and tackling bigger challenges.

Learning from failures and setbacks. Learning from failures and setbacks is a trend is transforming, guys. It allows us to learn and turn our adversity into opportunities for growth and improvement. So let's let's review from some earlier episodes. Embracing a growth mindset.

This involves viewing challenges and failures as opportunities for learning and development rather than fix setbacks. It encourages us to believe in our ability to improve through effort and resilience. Instead of dwelling on failure or assigning blame, those with a growth mindset will analyze what went wrong and how they can adjust their approach in the future. That's what we're trying to get to, guys. Identifying lessons and insights, reflection and analysis.

After experiencing setbacks, we benefit from taking the time to reflect on the circumstances that led to the failure, extracting the key insights. By analyzing the failures, we get a valuable insight into our strengths, our weaknesses, and areas for improvement. But the key here, guys, is we have to be brutally honest with ourselves. It builds resilience and adaptability. Overcoming setbacks builds resilience, the ability to bounce back stronger from adversity.

It involves acknowledging our emotions, the ones that are associated with the failure, processing them, and refocusing them. Learning from setbacks reinforces our commitment to long term goals. It instills a sense of determination to persevere, overcome the obstacles, the setbacks, or the initial failures. Setbacks can serve as motivational fuel, propelling us to prove ourselves, surpassing our limitations, and achieve even greater success. This motivation, guys, it stems from a deep seated desire to learn, a deep seated desire to grow and evolve.

Failure encourages us to explore new ideas, new approaches, things about things that we've never even considered in the past. It forces us to think outside of the box. It challenges our normal thinking, and it stimulates us to think and experiment with different strategies. Surrounding ourselves with supportive peers and mentors. This helps to enhance the process of our learning from failures.

I promise you guys there's not anything that you haven't gone through or that you will go through. But if you get with the right group of people, the successful people, they've gone through it themselves, and most of them are more than happy to share how they were able to overcome it. Surrounding yourself with supportive peers and mentors, it enhances the process of learning. Constructive feedback and different perspectives provide valuable insights and encouragement during challenging times. Collaborating with others who have experienced similar setbacks, it gives us an opportunity to mutually learn and grow and a lot of times grow together.

Remember early episodes I talked about iron sharpens iron? Guys, our personal journey towards personal growth, peak performance, and resilience. It's paved with so many essential principles, competitive spirit, continuous learning, self improvement, discipline, consistency, and training, mental techniques like visualization, positive affirmations, mindfulness exercises, meditation, learning from our failures and setbacks. Each of these elements all contribute to helping us strive for excellence. Cultivating competitive spirit involves harnessing ambition and determination to surpass our personal best and achieve our goals.

Activating a beast mode mindset, it requires a commitment, a commitment to pushing beyond our limits, embracing the challenges, maintaining a relentless pursuit of success. Mental toughness techniques, visualize, guys, positive affirmations. They all enhance our focus, helps us manage our stress, strengthens our emotional resilience. These practices empower us to maintain a peak performance and navigate adversity with clarity and determination. Learning from failures and setbacks is perhaps it's the most transformative aspect, guys, of personal development.

It cultivates a growth mindset where setbacks are viewed as opportunities for reflection, adaptation, and improvement. By extracting lessons from our setbacks, we gain insight into our strengths and weaknesses. Together, all of these principles create a holistic framework for achieving a personal and professional success. They empower us to embrace challenges, persist in the face of adversity, and continually strive for excellence. By integrating these practices guys, if we just take our time and we really break it all down and we start to integrate these practices on a daily level and put them into our daily routines and start shifting our mindset, we can unleash our absolute best potential.

We can positively impact our journey towards fulfillment achievement. We can impact the journey with our peers, our families, all of it. I just ask guys that I mean, you're taking the time to tune in week after week. Take the time to review some of this stuff. Start implementing just just small things.

I I remember early in my sales career, I I read books from some of the greatest salespeople, the greatest sales books that you can read. And I remember each day I would take 2 or 3 items that I read the night before, and I would just put them in direct practice. And figure out which was gonna work for me and which wasn't. And that's all I ask. You do the same thing here, guys.

Just take some of these nuggets, put them into practice, and see what happens. What have you got to lose? Thanks again, guys, for joining me here in the leaders realm today. You're taking all of the necessary steps to activate a beast mode mindset. You're doing the work to become titans.

You're doing the work to become leaders for the future. And as I've mentioned last week, soon some of you will have access to exclusive content, episodes, free webinars. I really do hope that you enjoyed the episode, that you found value in it. If so, please take a minute. Rate the podcast.

Share it. If you feel led, write a review. You know, I've got some reviews that are coming in online, offline, and people are asking me to, you know, cover different topics. It's just going to help enhance the podcast in the future. So tune in next week, guys, when we'll get into the 7th and the final characteristic needed to activate a beast mode mindset.

That's resilience. So until next week, guys. This is Tony Cammarata, and remember, stay fast, stay fluid, and stay flexible. Be the absolute best that you can be.