How do you see competition? Is something threatening that needs to be avoided, to be squashed to preserve yourself or is it an opportunity to rise up to it and be better? For many of us competition can make us feel like we are not enough, knowing that there are others who might be better at certain things than we are. Self-doubt can trigger us to be defensive and we are more focused on what others are doing well that it throws off our focus to do the best we can.
In being concerned about how others are doing it naturally makes us compare ourselves, whether it is good or bad. It could be looking at all the things others do better than us that makes us feel down about ourselves, or it could be looking at all the things that they do wrong or poorly to make us feel better about ourselves. This will not serve us well because it means being dependent on what others do. There will always be others that are better at than us at certain things and we’ll be better at certain things than others.
Either way this perspective is putting competition above or below us. Come to see competition as reference point or guide to see how to do things better that you can apply. To have a healthy admiration for what they do and learning how to do it. We all have a need to feel significant and if others do what we do that makes us feel significant it can naturally make us question things about ourselves. Wondering the validity or skill level that we once thought.
Reflect on competitors
Really stop and analyze the competition in a neutral manner as it will take away that emotional sharpness so you can learn from them. This lowers the wall that hides the truth, no longer coming up with justifying yourself or actions. Come to state the facts of what they do well, where they can improve on, and this gives you an objective point of view that allows you to be a little bit detached from how you feel compared to them.
Maybe what you come to find out is where they can improve on is what you do a little bit better. But try not to get so hung up on how exactly you compare, it's mainly just a reference point to guide you in a potentially good direction. Just because others do it a certain way doesn't mean that it's going to work for you. There are many correct or effective ways to do things, so we got to remember that.
Going through this mental exercise helps you get accustomed to the competition you're facing and helps to deal with some of the associated pressure. This is applicable in many things that we encounter whether it's school or work or sports. If we look in school when it comes to taking a test does it really matter if you got a 94 and somebody else got a 98. Is there a need to one up somebody to make yourself feel better. A score of a 94 does not diminish what you've done simply because somebody else got a 98.
Or maybe you got a 68 and many other students got higher scores but if you improved on your scores from previously maybe a 61 that's still something to value because it shows that you've improved. Sometimes in these cases when it comes to how we stack up to one another and we fall short, were we're below average obviously that makes us feel down because we're naturally want to keep up with others. It really does affect how we value ourselves.
But then there's also cases where things become highly competitive and multiple people are vying for a limited resource, and that resource is the prize whether it’s a job promotion, landing a big fish client, winning a large sum of money or a trophy. This is what happens in the animal Kingdom where they’re competing directly with each other for water, food, or land because someone must be declared a winner. In instances like this it can be somewhat cutthroat.
In the movie Talladega nights the Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Ricky Bobby was a professional race car driver that consistently would come in first and he had the motto of if you're not first you're last. Meaning that anything below first did not matter and squandered everything about what you worked for. When the focus is all about coming in first, being at the top, it creates an all or nothing scenario. And if winning 1st is what it's all about consistently it desensitizes the joy of winning and it becomes more of a relief when it does happen. So when coming up short it can be devasting that damages self-worth.
Multiple winners
In a head-to-head matchup of a particular team sport such as basketball or soccer the winner comes at the expense of the loser. But there's so many different situations that show us that there can be multiple winners in the same realm. In a classroom setting there can be many students that can excel at a particular subject. Just because you exceled in physics and somebody else did as well it’s not that either one of you have diminished each other work but can be proud of what you done but also gracefully respect what another person has done as well. The pie is big enough for everyone to enjoy the many successes on their own.
This just emphasizes that your happiness doesn't have to come at the expense of somebody else. That we all or many of us can be happy in the endeavors that we choose to pursue. We have to condition ourselves to avoid falling into the trap of when somebody shares their good news to resist the urge to want to share your own good news to not be left out. When others share a significant moment that makes them feel great about themselves congratulate them and give the words of encouragement, that you recognize and respect what they've done.
When you're able to do this, you detach yourself from seeing competition as a threat and more as an opportunity to be a more respectful and cordial person. This is one of the great traits that many successful people have is that they celebrate the successes of others because that creates an environment that uplifts everyone as opposed to trying to keep people down to make themselves look bigger.
Competing with yourself
Ultimately come to see competition not so much as you're directly competing with somebody else but you're directly competing with your own self. You're really competing with how you did before so you can do better now and be much better later on. This helps to harness much more of your attention on yourself because your heavily focused on all the things that you did do previously whether good or bad.
It's great to have a balanced approach taking the good and the bad and building upon it. You got to be constructive in this way of evaluating your own self so those bad things while it might hurt to acknowledge and replay them, really come to see why they went wrong and how you can improve incrementally because you’ll find the answers for the next time.
Part of what makes somebody a great learner is the ability to learn from mistakes, to look at the series of events where things went off course and this requires not looking to blame but simply looking at where things went wrong and what could be done the next time that happens. The more you can go through evaluating your mistakes, the more comfortable you become with the process.
It’s important to be balanced, not too soft where you give yourself too much slack but not too critical that you beat yourself up for it. When you can find that right touch it can be so motivating that you want another opportunity to put in play what you gained from it. This is the piece of competing with yourself that allows you to break through to a higher performance level because it’s about you and what is in your control, not about what others are doing which are outside of your control. This just further builds your initiative and hunger in your pursuits.
The other part of competing with yourself is acknowledging the things you did well and building on it. This is where confidence comes from. The better you do, the better you feel going forward. It gives you the ability to be loose and give your best. Appreciate the entire process that led to the results that you got because the ego will take things for granted if you’re not careful.
It can keep you in the same comfortable spot that will not help you advance. Whether you perform well in school or work know what exactly you do well, and the details involved that make it happen. Forgetting the details is a recipe for things to deteriorate so make sure to emphasis them and refine it consistently. This builds momentum in the right direction. It will elevate you to excelling at an extremely high level.
Competition leads to innovation
While competition can bring out some of the ugly stuff within is, it also can bring out great things about us that we may have not realized. In heated competition where things are going back and forth it leads to innovation, finding solutions to challenges that seem too difficult to overcome. Over the long run if you can stay at it the mental blocks of feeling threatened by competition, you’ll eventually get acclimated to it where it serves as a challenge that is embraced.
Often, in the beginning when we are pursuing our desires the wide-eyed excitement is eventually met with wanting to throw up and retreating to safety because of feeling inadequate. This natural process needs to be worked through to develop withstanding the hard times to build resilience. Resilience is what is going to allow you to stare down what seems to be insurmountable with a dazed and confused look to see beyond what hurts and find viable solutions.
This can come from being conditioned in the sense of look at how your brothers and sisters are performing at a high level or constantly be referred to your classmates about how you should be emulating them. It's understandable the notion of what that's trying to get to, to use as motivation but really it can be a deterrent. Really there needs to be more patience exercised that some of us take a lot longer than others to really get in the groove of things.
Eventually this leads to feeling like if we're not competing well with others, meaning keeping up with the high performers, it somehow means we're just not good at it and should find something else. But that is only a temporary view on what's going on, maybe you're just not at a high skill level at that moment. But with enough consistency and commitment towards working and figuring out how to get better you can break past that initial daunting feeling.
The next time you find yourself in the position where you fallen short and you happen to feel that way be proactive and say what exactly did I gain from this. What specific knowledge or information about what I did or what I need to do better that I can apply going forward. Thinking in this manner constantly keeps you acquiring these building blocks that are eventually going to lead to great ways of scheming and innovating.
For many inventors that have made contributions no matter how big or small they've consistently tried different things some of them were disappointing they felt like blunders and maybe even a waste of time but what all these people had in common was the urge to figure it out. Somehow, they were able to be able to stick with it, getting past those feelings of self-doubt that they should cave in and do something that's easy.
Final thoughts
Hopefully you come to see competition not so much as a threat but as a way that it can help you learn and grow. It does not have to be a winner comes at the cost of the loser because that is focused on a finite number meaning that we're limited in what we're competing for. That is playing the short game that is focused on one upping the next person, to feel the need to be superior. There’s an abundance for all of us to enjoy what we need if you can focus on the long game.
Let's get away from talking about who's the best, who's number one, that we're going to crush the competition and all that mumbo jumbo because that's really just drawing lines to see who's with us and who's against us and if you're not with us that means you're the enemy. This creates that tribal mentality that just pits us against each other and then trickles into every other part of our lives.
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