We can never let our competition hold us in disregard. We should pester them and worry them. That way we force them to think about us. We should make them waste time trying to figure out what we are doing. If we do this, then they will draw their attention away from their own plans for success and make mistakes.

As we pressure our competition to make mistakes, we first must make sure we are perfect, when the world is watching anyway.

Olympic ice skating champion Scott Hamilton says, "You've got to fall down a lot, you've got to make a lot of mistakes. And you've got to fight for your place in the world, whatever it is. You know, whether it is in business, or entertainment, or the media, or whatever. And you've got to take a lot of knocks and you've got to spill some blood in order to get there. And that's part of the process."

I watched an interview with Scott Hamilton on TV when he talked about his competition. After he made sure that he could make perfect execution of certain jumps and routines, he would dog his competition. He would stay right on their heels. He let them know that he could make the jumps and as he followed behind them, he let that pressure weigh on them. They then made mistakes, they normally wouldn't have.

The quest is always to be perfect. We can sometimes attain it. Hamilton says, "You know, if you fall, sometimes it hurts. Sometimes you twist something and you can't really get up right away. Sometimes you get stitches. Sometimes you fall and your pants rip and you're humiliated in front of a large group of people. I mean, anything can happen. You just have to accept that you cannot succeed unless you're willing to fail. And you fail a lot."

So, what we need to do is accept our failures and continue improving. We need to do our best and forget about our past failures and let our competition worry about us and make their own mistakes.

Don Doman is a published author, video producer, and corporate trainer. He owns the business training site Ideas and Training (http://www.ideasandtraining.com), which he says is the home of the no-hassle "free preview" for business training videos. He also owns Human Resources Radio (http://www.humanresourcesradio.com), which broadcasts HR and business training information, program previews, and training samples from some of the world's great training speakers twenty-four hours a day. You can listen and learn on Human Resources Radio.