Only the weak compete.
When do we need to compete? When there is no meaningful difference between you and others, you can only fight over limited positions through competition.
Put bluntly: whether you win or lose is, to everyone else, completely irrelevant. You may be slightly better than others, but that margin isn’t enough to set you apart.
Among the resources a person possesses, background, appearance, and talent are the most “important” — and not in the sense that no matter how hard you grind, someone who coasts on their looks will still beat you.
The point is this: when your “replaceable resources” — skills, experience, knowledge, hard work — are roughly on par with others’, your “irreplaceable resources” — background, appearance, talent — become the deciding factor.
If A comes from a rural background with a skill level of 6, and B is the son of the local bank president with a skill level of 4 — if you’re the boss, who do you hire?
Professionally, B falls short of A. But you can train B up to a 5 or a 6. What you cannot do is give A a new father.
How do you stand out from the crowd? I once wrote this:
Only by performing at 200% can you outcompete those who are older, more experienced, more educated, from wealthier families, or more naturally gifted than you.
Even if you push yourself to 120%, you usually won’t change how others look down on you.
And the brutal reality is: reaching 200% demands an enormous price.
Look at the classmates, colleagues, and neighbors around you. How much better do you honestly think you are? Better at what, exactly? In what area can you say with confidence that you have completely surpassed them — not just “a little better,” but completely?
What achievements in your life actually prove that you are significantly superior to others?
Most of us are under the illusion that we are “far superior” to those around us. But in everyone else’s eyes, you’re all about the same.
The weak, having no power of choice, can only compete under rules written by others — and competition itself drags you into the mud. Your goal is not to adapt yourself to the rules and prove you’re better than others within them.
You were born in a starter village, beginning at Level 1. Your goal is to defeat the Demon King and rescue the princess. The Demon King is Level 100, so your first objective should be to reach Level 100.
When you reach Level 5, the starter village holds a tournament — the “White Rabbit Slaughter Championship.” Whoever kills the most white rabbits in a day wins 10 gold coins.
You enter. You don’t do well — you don’t even crack the top ten. So you make a resolution: you will win this next time. You’ll prove yourself. You spend year after year hunting white rabbits. Meanwhile, your friends have all hit Level 50 — and you’re still in the starter village.
To win within a competition, you end up doing countless things that pull you away from your original goal, paying a hidden cost at every step.
Competitors are constrained by the rules of the game itself. In the process, they burn through enormous amounts of time and energy, ultimately exhausting themselves — only to be replaced by whoever comes next.
Put all of this together, and the pattern becomes clear: the pathways for upward social mobility are shrinking. For ordinary people, breaking into the upper class is nearly impossible.
Regular people look at those with political connections or inherited wealth and realize: there is no competing with them. They are untouchable.
Why? Because they know how to leverage their own strengths to attack others’ weaknesses.
It’s like stepping into a fighting ring where you’re alone and bare-handed, your opponent is fully armored with two bodyguards — and the referee is their cousin. Tell me: how do you win?
Now do you understand what needs to be done?
If not, let me lay out a few simple points:
1. Master your professional skills — push for excellence, and let quantity become quality.
In many seemingly unremarkable areas, being truly excellent creates real opportunities. Good at Office software? Create tutorials, run training sessions. Skilled at gaming? Become a commentator or go live. Write well? Start a column or publish a book. Great cook? Build a following and add an income stream.
Skills never weigh you down. Learning more is always worthwhile. And people with a distinctive skill tend to hold stronger positions in their social networks as well.
2. Strengthen your irreplaceable resources.
- Appearance: skincare, fitness, minor cosmetic improvements, how you dress
- Relationships: communication skills, social etiquette, expanding your network (assuming you bring value to the table)
- Talent: explore your natural strengths, then sharpen them through study and deliberate practice
3. Avoid competition — engineer your environment.
Feeling suffocated in a small city? Move to a bigger one. Dorm roommates are partying and dragging you down? Move out. Surround yourself with excellent people. Watch how they think. Go to companies with better culture and more room to grow.
4. Use your resources.
Talk to experienced mentors and absorb their wisdom. Join organizations and groups — don’t hesitate to ask for help when you need it. Don’t be embarrassed to lean on friends, but always repay what you receive.
Learn to trade money for time.
Find the best training programs or coaches. Identify what you’re genuinely good at. Use your strengths to solve problems.
5. Change the rules.
I’ll say just one thing here — the rest you need to work out yourself: rules exist to be broken.
If that’s hard to grasp, look up the story of Tian Ji’s Horse Race (田忌赛马).
May we all rise together.