Hide Your Competence
There is a thrill to sharing our success stories with others. We become proud of our accomplishments, and by extension, we hope that others will share our success with us. It’s only natural right?
If only…
Dear reader, you might have that one true friend that does indeed share in your progress, but every ‘true, innocent friend’ you have is counterbalanced by 100+ envious, bloodthirsty enemies; people who don’t share your success, but rather envy you for it and would die to see your head on a silver plate… or perhaps being scattered around like a rag doll in the latest TikTok trend.
From the best friend that turns into your ‘worst enemy’, the co-worker that spreads lies about you, the significant other that starts throwing snarky remarks your way because they envy your success, the boss that tries to put chains on you for fear of you surpassing their competence – You will have many people that will celebrate your downfall with the same veracity as victory in a world war without seeing they are the perpetrators.
So don’t count on people to celebrate your successes with you. We’re all human, after all. We operate in hierarchies. Display your talents to others, and you invoke fear and insecurity in others.
Unfortunate, I know. But I’m sorry, reality can be rather blunt.
Don’t believe me? Look at what Robert Greene has to say.
“Never outshine the master. Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity. Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of power.” (1st Law of Power)
“Never appear too perfect. Appearing better than others is always dangerous, but most dangerous of all is to appear to have no faults or weaknesses. Envy creates silent enemies. It is smart to occasionally display defects, and admit to harmless vices, in order to deflect envy and appear more human and approachable. Only gods and the dead can seem perfect with impunity.” (46th Law of Power)
So, dear friend, hide your achievements from others if you want to go about the world living with more breathing space, and above all, if you want to go about the world without having a massive target painted on your back. Conceal your achievements, be proud of yourself quietly, but understand deeply that humanity is not always wired to be benevolent.
This sounds rather cruel, but you’re not missing out on much, for true competence my friend is not a function of one displaying ‘more status’, ‘more wealth’, ‘more this’, and ‘more that’. True competence need not be flaunted like an engagement ring, like a nice set of six-pack abs, or like a handbag boyfriend. True competence comes from knowing when to share your success and when to not share your successes. It comes from knowing the name of the game and working with what you have rather than getting sh^tty when human nature fails to change and you get stiffed by people you thought could be trusted.
Dear friend, don’t get annoyed at me. Don’t start getting angry or disagreeing with me. Believe me on this one.
Don’t display your talents…
HIDE YOUR COMPETENCE.
***
If I were to be brutal, I would say that work occupies more of our time, our mental stamina and mental bandwidth than anything else, whether it be family, relationships or hobbies. No sooner are we asked, “what do you do?” when people first strike a conversation with us. Work is more than just an activity we leave behind after 5pm; it is our passion, and more fundamentally, our identity.
Perhaps it is more apt to think of work as its own living ‘thing’; a living, breathing monster in and of itself. We become that monster.
How, then, do we tame the monster of work so it does not consume us? That is something we shall attempt to answer in the next five letters. This is the second of five letters that I shall be writing on work.
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