Run Your Own Race
Define winning as something inside your control so success is always attainable
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 80%
Holiday ties Peter Thiel's line that competition is for losers to Epictetus, who said 2,000 years earlier that if you only run races where winning is up to you, you will always win. The mechanism is control: if your definition of winning requires someone else to award, buy, or admire something, the outcome is not yours to determine. Redefine winning as being the best version of yourself, putting in a certain amount of effort, or pushing past a place you have never been, and winning becomes attainable. This is not a cop-out that lets you slack; the internal standard is usually higher and harder than the external one. Holiday, a lifelong runner, notes you are almost never actually racing someone with a shared start and finish, so comparison is illusory.
Origin
Holiday draws the model from Peter Thiel's Zero to One and from Stoicism, specifically Epictetus on focusing only on what is within your control.
Core principles
- 01If winning requires someone else to deem you something, you might not get it
- 02If winning is being your best self or hitting your own effort standard, winning is in your control
- 03Competition is for losers because when people compete someone loses
- 04Chasing well-defined spaces everyone else chases produces commodity outcomes
How to run it
- 1
Audit your current definition of winning
Ask whether your success requires someone or something to deem you worthy: most money, most awards, most well-known.
Watch out External definitions may still be reached, but they are not up to you, so you can do everything right and still lose.
- 2
Redefine success as controllable
Recast the goal as being your best self, investing a set amount of effort, or reaching a level you have never hit before.
Pro tip Controllable standards tend to be higher and harder, not softer, so you are not selling yourself short.
- 3
Refuse the crowded, well-defined lane
Notice the pull toward what everyone in your position does because it feels safe and no one will laugh; recognize that safety also caps the upside.
Watch out Doing the obvious thing lowers the chance of catastrophic failure but also lowers the chance of real and profound wins.
- 4
Ignore the runner who passes you
When a competitive impulse fires because someone blew past you, remember you do not know when they started or where they finish.
Pro tip Being clear about success in your own terms makes success much more attainable.
In the wild
Holiday was interested in Stoicism and had a clear, defined market he wanted to reach; everything else was extra. Publishers humored the idea. It would have been preposterous to predict his books on ancient philosophy would sell as they did, but he ran his own race rather than chasing a proven category.
→ The books succeeded, and the same people who called the idea crazy later asked him to blurb copycat books chasing the audience he built.
When someone tells Holiday they want a book to sell a million copies, he loses interest immediately, because the number is pulled out of thin air. They have said their goal is not to write something amazing or meaningful, and have not specified a timeline. They usually just heard a book they liked sell that many and adopted the figure instead of defining their own race.
→ An arbitrary external metric replaces a personal, controllable definition of a worthwhile project.
Common mistakes
Treating it as an excuse to coast
Running your own race is not selling yourself short; the internal standard is usually higher and harder, you just refuse to let others set it.
Defaulting to the safe crowded lane
Going where everyone goes because it cannot be obviously mocked guarantees a commodity result and forecloses the big wins.
Is it for you?
Best for
Ambitious people who feel driven by rankings, sales numbers, or beating rivals.
Not ideal for
Genuinely zero-sum contests with a fixed field where relative placement is the only thing that matters.
From the transcript
“if you only run races where winning is up to you you'll always win”
“when you can be really clear about defining success in your own terms then success is much more attainable”
“competition is for losers when people compete someone loses so go away you're the only one”
From the episode
11 Harsh Stoic Truths To Improve Your Life - Ryan Holiday - #795
Ryan Holiday