Amelia Boone and Stephanie McMahon compete at the highest levels in both their personal and professional lives.
Boone is a corporate attorney at Apple (AAPL) and one of the world’s top obstacle racers, who has completed endurance competitions that require 96 hours without sleep. McMahon is WWE’s chief brand officer and a former wrestler who once pinned The Rock.
And yet both offer the same tip when it comes to dominating the competition: ignore it.
“We are all hyper-competitive people,” says Boone, speaking at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. But “when I focus on other people, I spiral into a very bad headspace.” It’s not about the other racers out there, she says. “It’s about competing with myself.”
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Boone says the moment she stopped worrying about what everyone else was doing, she took her performance to the next level.
McMahon echoed Boone, saying, “You need to focus on yourself or your company and making it the best it can possibly be.” She adds that resorting to tactics like catty behavior just brings you down rather than helping lift others up.
McMahon learned the business side of wrestling from her mom, former WWE (WWE) CEO Linda McMahon, and the creative side from her dad, one-time professional wrestler and current WWE CEO and chairman Vince McMahon.
Boone was speaking with a cast on her hand, having had plates and screws inserted after shattering her fingers during a recent race. Boone says that recovering mentally and physically from injury has been a learning experience.
“There is that silver lining,” she says. “You don’t learn anything when you’re winning. You learn things when everything is taken from you.”
