Don The Idea Guy
Ideas that mean business... and MORE business!
  • Home
  • Brainstorming
  • Speaking
  • About DTIG
    • Interviews
  • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Disclosures and Disclaimers
  • Get Free Ideas
beat the best

To Be The Best You Gotta Beat The Best

Don The Idea Guy November 17, 2020

You don’t become the best at something by playing at a basic level against basic competition your entire career. If you want to be the best guitar player you don’t stop challenging yourself after you learn three chords. If you want to be the best chess player, you don’t play people who are not as accomplished at the game as you. If you want to be the best, you have to beat the best.

But you don’t start out being able to beat the best

You start out by getting your butt kicked (a lot!)
If you’re picking up a ukulele for the first time, you can’t expect to be able to play like Jake Shimbukuro.

You need to play a lot of wrong notes before you know the way the right notes are supposed to sound.

Click To Tweet

Ever watch one of those YouTube videos of a crazy-awesome Super Mario Bros. video game player? They can zoom through all the levels of the game in record time without ever losing a life and beating the game — but every one of those players started out by losing the game over and over and over and over again.

Each time they played they got a little further in the game, learned about the pitfalls of each level and how to avoid them, and the secrets to beating the each level in record time — but they learned by losing. You figure out how to dodge the cannonball when it comes flying out of nowhere by getting hit by that cannonball a few dozen times in a row.

You learn to be at your best by learning to beat the best

There’s no short cut. There’s no fast-forward button. You just have to sit down at the board and hear the people sitting across from you call out “checkmate” a few thousand times.

And I say “people” because you can’t just play one person to become the best. You need to play a variety of people who can humble you repeatedly. If you only play a single person (no matter how good they are) once you learn to beat that person you will only be able to beat others who play the game in a similar manner. In order to be able to win against all-comers, you need to lose against as many different players and playing styles as you can.

The more ways you know how you got beat, the more ways you’ll know how to win.

 

 

 

Care to share?

  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
Tired of all the monkey business? Your Moving List

Related Posts

lion tapestry

Insight, Inspiration

The Ugly Back

Everyone goes to the museum to admire the pretty fronts of artistic tapestries, but the ugly backs face the wall and are rarely on display. My wife decided she wanted to host a big family Thanksgiving this year. While we were in the process of cleaning up the house and putting our (my) clutter. Hapy […]

Care to share?

  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
awaken broadcast campaign

Insight, Inspiration

My Three Words for 2022

Several years ago I started choosing an annual trio of words to help me stay on track with my goals, focus my actions, and guide my decision making. I copied the practice from Chris Brogan and you can click on that link in his name to visit Chris’ page to read about how he chooses […]

Care to share?

  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
letting hot ideas flow

Ideas, Insight

Want hot ideas? Let the tap run.

I’ve written in the past about how I come up with some many good ideas (spoiler alert: it’s because I also come up with so many bad ideas). I’ve also shared how important it is to throw away the first dozen or so ideas you come up with because they’re not going to be especially […]

Care to share?

  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)


What kinds of ideas are you looking for?

Better Questions = Better Ideas

BUY 100-Whats of Creativity

Cool Stuff For You

free podcast websites

best appointment booking tool

Recent Articles

  • The Ugly Back
  • My Three Words for 2022
  • Want hot ideas? Let the tap run.
  • Back from the grave!
  • The End.

Categories

  • Featured
  • Ideas
  • Innovation
  • Insight
  • Inspiration
  • Rant
  • ThinkLinks
  • Uncategorized

Archives

Tags

action advertising attitude book brainstorming business creativity curiosity customer customer loyalty customers DTIG gitomer goals Ideas Innovation Insight Inspiration kickstart leadership links loyalty marketing media money motivation networking persuasion podcast productivity products projects Rant revenue sales selling service social media speaking success trends web work writing zombies

Idea Guy Projects

  • Big Yellow Sticky
  • Find Your Fries
  • SalesToys
  • Stop Selling At Me!
  • Super Action League

Let’s Connect

Another unusually creative project from Don The Idea Guy
© 2020 - All rights reserved. Do not use content without permission.