Today
we live in a society that glorifies competition with others as an inevitable part of life, because apparently it ‘motivates’ us to perform better. Hence the idea
of ‘healthy’ competition. But can competition really be healthy and is it even a
necessary component of our modern culture?
I
personally don’t think so.
To me, competition means comparing yourself to
others, and more often than not, this leads to feelings of low self-esteem and a
loss of dignity. Why? For the simple
reason that, it doesn’t matter where you fall on the win-lose pendulum, competing
with others will always lead to some sort of disappointment because by
definition, competition depends on the external validation of others. Plus,
competition doesn’t really work because each of us is unique and competition
forces us to fit into a predetermined label of perfection that doesn’t really
exist because humans aren’t generic.
Also,
when you’re constantly competing with others you find that there’ll always be
someone who’s more beautiful, handsome, younger, stronger, or more intelligent
than you. Focusing on competing with others you’re actually playing
second-fiddle to someone else’s life instead of playing the starring role in
your own life.
Competition is a zero-sum game with a guaranteed loser.
In
fact, according to American author and lecturer Alfie Kohn, “competition is to
self-esteem as sugar is to teeth. Most people lose in most competitive
encounters, and it’s obvious why that causes self-doubt. But even winning
doesn’t build character; it just lets a child gloat temporarily. Studies have
shown that feelings of self-worth become dependent on external sources of
evaluation as a result of competition: Your value is defined by what you’ve
done. Worse — you’re a good person in proportion to the number of people you’ve
beaten.”
So what’s the
alternative?
From my perspective, a
fulfilling life is only possible when you compete with yourself through self-development. Competing with yourself requires one to
cultivate a certain level self-knowledge and self-awareness which implies
focusing more on yourself, knowing your strengths and weaknesses and developing
yourself to be of better service to the world, vis-à-vis competing with others
for superfluous external validation.
I also believe that to know, accept and improve oneself as an individual is an essential
component to the realisation of human potential as a whole. Self-improvement
encourages co-operation with others because you’re more likely to collaborate
with others when you feel confident about yourself.
Besides, as the old maxim
says, ‘as within so without’ meaning that when you feel good about yourself,
you can’t help but share that goodness with the world, which is exactly what
the world needs more of right now.
Essentially, what I’m saying is that I personally support the idea of running my
own race and I think that the world would truly thrive if humans placed more
value on self-development and co-operation than competition because then we’d
have a populous of true individuals who strive to present their best selves to
the world, while collaborating to make this world a better
place to live in.
The key to overcoming competition, in my view, is the
highest development of the individual paired with co-operation and
collaboration.
In
addition, I feel that we’re in a space right now where the old world paradigm
and its accompanying belief systems and values, is dying out and a new one is
being born. So it’s a good time to reflect upon, and leave behind the
beliefs that don’t really work for us (i.e. competition), and evaluate the
values that we’d like to keep as we move forward and step into creating a world
that is more reflective and worthy of the human spirit and its boundless
potential.
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