You must have heard about the saying ‘Compete with yourself, not others’. However, this concept is lost on a lot of people probably because that was how they were brought up or probably because that is what they have experienced in their lives; compete with others, always, in everything, you have to be the best amongst everyone around.
Let me start with narrating the pitiful and worrisome situation of an acquaintance. This lovely person has been competing with a neighbour’s kid since teenage over everything, from academics to extracurricular, looks to lovers. It was encouraged by the parents. This person has now come of age and should be married (as per societal norms, not my opinion) however the person is not married yet and the neighbour’s kid has got married, has a nice spouse, family etc. It is a trivial matter if you think about it. However, this has become a sore point for this person. Day-in, day-out this person wallows in sorrow, suffers from low self-esteem because this person feels that s/he has failed and hates to lose. By the way, this person is doing extremely well otherwise.
This sense of competition has now spread like a weed to all other aspects of this person’s life for example, the need for a more good-looking spouse just to one-up his/her ex-lover, competing with close friends etc.
This is sad and frustrating to see people harbour such negative and self-sabotaging attitude. How can and why do parents encourage such extreme attitude?
Moving on from this person’s situation to another simple example, while passing by people on the streets, how many times do you check out people from head-to-toe and compare yourself with them? I face this quite frequently and I must state that people are so transparent in their expressions and body language that you can just tell what is going on their heads, the sense of competition or jealousy drips from them. Little bit of jealousy is natural, we are humans but we are also supposed to be intelligent beings, capable to steering ourselves towards taking a higher road. Why not be positive instead? Appreciate other’s good points, walk upto them and compliment them, take inspiration to do better yourself but don’t project negativity out of sheer sense of competition.
I am not saying don’t compete at all in life. Healthy competition is fun for example professionally or in actual sports, it is like a game which provides motivation and it is great to compete with good opponents but you are not supposed to take competition so seriously that it starts affecting your self-esteem, your life and people around you. Never make it your life’s mission to one-up someone, you are just wasting your precious life energy. Moreover, if you keep competing with others, your growth will be limited and controlled by the growth of others. If you want to keep growing take your yesterday’s self as the reference point, not your neighbour’s kid or your ex-lover.
Peace.