It’s time for another sample page from my book I published in April, called You Don’t Know Jack! Why the Jack of All Trades Triumphs in the Modern World. You can buy the book here, and if you could leave a stellar review too, well, that would be stellar,

The page is entitled ‘There Can Be Only One’ and it goes like this.

There can be only one regional champion, one national champion, one world champion. There can be only one team leader, one head of department, one chief executive. There can only be one political head of a region, one leader of the political party, one leader of the country. There can only be one winner of the prize, whatever that prize is.

Maybe you won prizes at something, and then you went on to the next level. Maybe you won prizes at that level too. At some point you start to analyse how you measured up against the people at the next level. At some point it gets serious. Really serious. At some point you come up against people for whom it’s always been serious. And it’s not fun anymore. You might come second, or worse. For there can be only one.

To take a line from Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata: “If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.” Vanity and bitterness is for those who are competing with others, for those who are specialists – or believe they are specialists – in whatever they do.

You should be competing with yourself. This is why our teachers, coaches and other bodies encourage us to be the best we can be, to do our best, to better ourselves. There’s nothing wrong with all of us striving to be the best, as long as we understand that it’s our best that counts. This way we avoid unhealthy, unproductive feelings like vanity and bitterness.

Thanks for reading!