Competition Is For Losers
How "competing" is an inferior method of motivation
Many use “compete” to denote making an effort. “You gotta compete” as a way to say “try harder”. But why is giving an effort tied to wanting to beat someone? Is this really being self motivated when you have to think of winning and losing to coerce someone into giving 100% effort?
Competing against others doesn’t make sense ideologically, given we only have control over ourselves. If we obsess over beating others rather than maximizing our own potential, our motivation is tied to external factors and to arbitrary measuring sticks. If motivation is tied to factors outside ourselves, then so is our happiness and disappointment. We add an edge to life, regarding ourselves as winners or losers, not based on what we have done, but based on what others have done.
Why purposely attach our emotional wellbeing to what others have done/are doing? Thereby making ourselves vulnerable to factors outside our control? We choose to undermine our ability to be resilient when we do this. This complicates our ideas of when we’re “allowed to” or “supposed to” be happy or sad based on what others do.
I think about the verbiage we use, the connotation of said language and its implications in regards to the individual and how they see themselves. This perspective becomes their attitude and mindset regarding others. There are widespread implications of commonly used words. Words revealing wider societal ideas and attitudes below the surface of most people’s conscious awareness. Deeper meanings we could see, provided we take a moment to stop rushing around and deeply consider why we say what we say. And in what ways this influences why we do what we do. How what we say and do affects society as a whole, especially in regards to the children who grow up in this environment. An environment created by human ideas, a large part of which is language and all the far reaching consequences of how its used.
To change society for the better, then we must change human ideas in multiple ways,1 of which is language. Ideas are attached to language. Language changes your perception of what’s real, what’s possible, what’s normal, what’s okay. Our haphazard use of language means a haphazard application of power, something worth avoiding because it denotes a focus on the wrong thing.
When you choose to compete, or more accurately, feel as if you’re in competition, you have no choice but to make things personal. Making things personal is implied in competing and is a recipe for suffering. Given the impersonal nature of life, things being personal is an illusion because others’ decisions have nothing to do with you and everything to do with who they are, how they grew up, and what they see as normal or not. We are simply a proxy, a dynamic object against which they reflect their human experience.
Making things personal is choosing to compete, when life is not a competition, but a game that’s supposed to be fun. When you play the game, giving max effort should be implied. Instead of using the /idea of “compete” to encourage effort, effort should be implied when you use the more accurate word of “play”. Encouraging the players to “play” should reinforce and imply the necessary effort of taking part in a game.