Be Your Best friend, Get an Enemy
We easily trust what our goals are to a friend, if not to be helped by them, at least to be encouraged and praised through the worst moments. The hardest part is to trust ourselves, to endure the tasks and sacrifices needed to reach that goal. Is anyone more keen on plan sabotage than we are towards our own?
«mutual obsessions are fuel for excellence, pushing people beyond their boundaries»
Our friends’ white lies are comfortable, much like the excuses we master to fool ourselves into inaction: “I know, right, you’r such a great actor, that part should have been yours!”, or “If I only get one more hour of sleep, I can be more productive later on”, all this belongs to the spectrum of pleasant motivation. Bad news people, it is not the most efficient motivation. Your friends know it, but it kind of sucks for them to say how much you suck; You know it, but “old habits die hard”, “I’m only human”, and all the other stuff we keep saying; even the alarm clock that you’ve set up last night, to go exercise in the morning, knows it – if you are to depend only on your inner motivation, you’re never leaving the comfort zone.
If you want to be your best friend, get yourself an enemy. Not a 007 style nemesis, but a rival. That one person you would never admit how alike it is to you; whose objectives resembles yours – a shadow, with a magnitude comparable to your own, whose steps you will naturally promise to keep up with, to both despise and admire. An external element to keep you running, an outsource motivation.
”An enemy? That can not be remotely healthy nor productive, it would stress the hell out of me!” Yes it would, it would keep your teeth gritting, your dedication sprouting and imagination flowing. You get a rival, you get ingenious. For example, at the birth of painting as we know it stands a design competition. During the Renaissance, an artistic contest was set up to designate the one who would design the bronze doors of the Florence Baptistery. Since then a competitive hysteria began among artists and patrons: Raphael and Michelangelo, both commissioned to work at the Vatican, are probably the most famous opponents.
Famous rivalries are not rare: Newton and Leibniz, Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, or, in art, John Constable and J.M.W. Turner – in one episode, Constable, who spent about ten years working on the painting above (The Opening of Waterloo Bridge), was at the gallery just before the exhibition, finishing some last minute details on this piece, when Turner, seeing the adjustments being made by his rival, added a raw red brushstroke to his painting, creating an unlikely yet amazing effect, that drawn all the attentions to his canvas: this was fatal to Constable, even Thomas Stothard, his friend, said Waterloo Bridge to be “Very Unfinished” in comparison. This wasn’t the first confront between the two, one year earlier, Constable had lobbied the exhibition committee to take down a Turner’s painting, replacing it with one of his own.
As unhealthy as it might seam, these mutual obsessions are a great fuel for excellence, pushing people beyond their normal boundaries. It compels more risky behaviours, gathers emotional resources and sacrifice: the competition needed to keep the level rising, aiming for perfection.
Oscar Wilde, who had a dispute with Bram Stoker, once said: “I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects”
I guess you are only as good as your rival can be.
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