Find A Rival

As manga readers and anime watchers are aware, there's a thing called the rival. You have two characters who have the same basic skills, experience, and training. And they want to kick the ever living heck out of each other. 

This is sort of cool because these two characters have this intense rivalry going and they've got motivation to do the best they possibly can. They are constantly challenging themselves, and are constantly figuring out new ways to apply their talents. All of this in order to give them one up on their rival. This is sort of cool because it gives the viewer a chance to watch these guys actually get more skilled, more powerful. On top of that, you've got people taking bets and it provides a nice little competition for those watching because you never really sure who's gonna come out on top. 

In real life, you need to establish this rivalry. This gives you somebody who you can face off against. You're going to find out that by having arrival, you're going to be doing a lot of stuff you didn't think was absolutely possible thanks to that competition. You're going to be try to do whatever you possibly can to be better than that other person. 

The only word of warning here is that you don't want to get to the point where the rival is an enemy. That gets into some really nasty territory and provides some really nasty side effects like PR issues and even the possibility of some actual injury. A friendly rivalry is better than having actual enemies. 

By establishing the rivalry by having somebody who is as skilled enough to challenge you, the two of you are going to find you're going to be a lot better writers in the long run. So if you can find somebody and just have some fun with it just to see what the two of you can do to outdo each other. See what happens. 

You're going to find that rivals can keep you honest while keeping you challenged, and that's a great thing.