In partnership with
Hello everyone! Remember to click the “In partnership with aiApply” above; this brings you directly to the aiApply website and helps support my newsletter! There are three ads in this article, recognizable by their brown border; the aiApply ad (shown above), a “Superhuman AI” newsletter ad, and a Deep View ad near the end of the article. Also, just to clarify, you do NOT have to sign up or do anything past clicking the ads.
“So, psychologically, why do you feel the need to act like Marissa, and why does this behavior always lead to a poor outcome?”
- Part 1
The answer to this is simple:
a hyper focus on short-term success.
Part 2: “Success is a Zero-Sum Game”
Gaining acceptance into a specific program/institution, obtaining the highest GPA or the highest score on a test, and receiving an award all undeniably require competition. However, the problem lies in the faulty belief that this specific accomplishment will take us extremely far or—in other words—guarantee ultimate future success.
As discussed in a previous myth-busting article “I’ll Feel Happy Once I Accomplish ____”, a common tendency of high-achievers like you is the continuous chase of a “finish line” that doesn’t actually exist.
What if AI handled every job application for you?
The internet has millions of jobs.
AIApply helps you cut through the noise.
With AIApply, you can:
Discover better job opportunities
Optimize your resume automatically
Personalize every application
Auto-apply across multiple platforms
Increase interview opportunities faster
No spreadsheets.
No copy-pasting.
No application burnout.
Just your AI Career Agent working 24/7 to help you get hired faster and smarter.
Imagine you are climbing up a mountain with your peers, hoping to be the first to reach a peak. Analogous to Marissa (from part 1) hoarding knowledge for herself, you occasionally sabotage your competitors by disrupting and spreading debris on those who are below you or attempting to cover a potentially usable crevice on the mountain’s surface. You use the subtlety of your actions as comfort, convincing yourself that they weren’t too harmful.
Eventually, you reach the empty peak, satisfied. Within a few seconds, you’re already thinking about your plan to climb further up. Realizing that you’d need help to climb higher, you look down the mountain only to notice that every single competitor has given up on account of your lack of sportsmanship. Your new reality: you no longer have any support to travel further.
200+ Proven Ways to Make Money With AI in 2026
The next wave of millionaires will be people who figured out how to make AI work for them.
The window to get ahead is still open. But not for long.
Here are 200+ proven ways to make money with AI in 2026.
Sign up for Superhuman AI, the free daily newsletter read by 1M+ professionals, and get instant access to all 200+ ways to profit from AI this year.
Ultimately, only thinking about yourself—especially when it involves purposefully limiting others—is guaranteed to lead to a success plateau. You need recommendations and respect from friends in nearly every field. However, if you don’t support anyone else, it's likely that, at some point, no one will want to support you. Additionally, you will undeniably completely exhaust and burn yourself out in isolation while constantly considering every single task as a ruthless combination of competition and comparison. In this way, extreme self-prioritization turns into self-sabotage. And if you’re truly an overachiever, whatever level of success you achieve (or deceptive finish line you reach) will—in the long-term—not be fulfilling enough…or, regrettably, not fulfilling at all.
Hopefully, you now understand why the zero-sum myth is false. But this myth is more of a stubborn mindset than a fragile belief…so how do you change your approach to success?
Your brain believes you have to step on others because it hasn’t ever even tested the alternative. Therefore, the best way to break the myth is to provide counter-evidence. Where do you find this evidence?
The best marketing ideas come from marketers who live it. That’s what The Marketing Millennials delivers: real insights, fresh takes, and no fluff. Written by Daniel Murray, a marketer who knows what works, this newsletter cuts through the noise so you can stop guessing and start winning. Subscribe and level up your marketing game.
One simple step you can take is simply recalling times when you were forced to collaborate with a competitor and you still achieved a desirable and fulfilling outcome.
Even better, as suggested in behavioral psychology, adopt the mindset that you benefit yourself when you help others, especially when your intention isn’t solely self-satisfaction throughout the process. Then, purposefully help a “threat” the next time you have a significant assessment—whether that’s through sharing information or studying together—and just observe what happens. You’ll be surprised.
Lastly, always remember that there is never one single path to your picture of long-term success. Your life will not end when your friend is accepted into that internship/job position and you’re not. Your life will also not end when your friend is accepted into that prestigious university or graduate school and you’re not.
The most successful people don't spend their lives trying to squeeze through someone else's narrow gate; they focus on building a foundation of support strong enough to create their own.
Sources:
(P.S.: browse some of these links to learn about real professional studies/experiments from my research that proved the zero-sum game myth is false!)
Images:
