How to Optimize Cooperation & Competition

Cooperation is the organizing principle of life and well-being. Competition is the 10% juice that optimizes cooperation.

We get indoctrinated from childhood that life is all about competition—sports, academic rankings, capitalism, corporate success, wars and so on. This focus on competition divides counties, religions, political perspectives, and people against one another, as if life is a zero-sum game of winners and losers. It can even divide you against yourself.

Cooperation is poopoo-ed as being wishy-washy, for snowflakes and those afraid to fight for supremacy. Cooperation is actually the organizing principle of life.

The extraordinary cooperation in nature allowed more complex organisms to emerge. The cooperation within your body allows you to play a competitive sport. Competitive team sports are actually a competition about cooperation—the team with the highest level of cooperation generally wins over a team with a bunch of individuals all competing to be top star—if you doubt that, watch the cooperation of the Harlem Globetrotters.

Imagine reframing your life—especially the challenges aspects—through the lens of cooperation. What changes? If you imagine yourself as a cooperation of trillions of biochemical reactions in each moment, does that shift how you experience yourself and your life?

It sure did for me.