If there is something I have a plethora of experience in, it's competition. Shout out to anyone who has siblings, from a young age, those of us with siblings have been competing for attention and we understand how fierce the competition gets.
But as we get older, we don't compete for our parents attention and approval, we start competing for everyone else and the question I began to ask myself, at what point does it hinder our personal growth?
A bit of competition can be great, it helps drive, motivate, feeds the fire to help you progress and actually get off your ass and put in that hard work. When we win, it feels amazing, top of the podium, all of our hard work and dedication realized. But when we lose, we end up feeling unworthy and like a failure. There has never been anything wrong with this, we can't all live on highs all the time, life would be so boring. Who we are is made in the failures, the heart breaks, the mountains we overcome so failing is never the problem and neither it seems, is competing. Competition is just the act of competing with someone else to win one prize or goal, which means, there is an end goal.
But when we compete in every part of our lives, we compete to be better than other people to fulfill our needs for validation and attention in every aspect of our lives.
And there is where the problem begins.
But lets start with the glaringly obvious, when competition gets mixed in with comparison.
See, competition with other people is healthy when it comes from a good place, but a lot of us compete and compare ourselves with them and when we don't win, we feel unworthy and like a failure. And for a one off sporting event or a set competition with an end goal or a prize, that is fine, it builds grit and character but we are doing it with every aspect of our lives, it becomes unhealthy and down right soul destroying.
We compete to look pretty, be funny, be smart, be interesting and it always seems like there someone better at doing whatever it is that we are doing and that makes us feel like a failure. There is no set standard for that, there is no trophy at the end and there is no panel of judges. We aren't in a competition setting and yet, here we are, competing with people we barely know about everything.
The problem isn't competition or they fact that there are amazing successful people out there, the problem is we are comparing. We are seeing our rivals and watching them succeed and instead of being inspired and cheering them on, we see their success as a reflection of our own failure.
That Is The Problem.
We are making other people's actions and success a reflection of ourselves, it doesn't even have anything to do with us but we do.
We are not fully to blame, social media shoving peoples highlights in our faces all the time of happy smiling engaged couples and stories of quiet perfect babies and travel pics. It's hard to look at them and look at you, in your sweat pants, binge watching The Good Place for the third time, eating that ice cream Bridget Jones style thinking, I am not good enough.
No one is posting their #5HoursBingeWatchIn #LookAtThoseIceCreamStains #NeededToPee1HourAgo #Haven'tGoneYet. Even though, guaranteed Sharron with the Hashtag Perfect life with her 100000 followers is also watching The Good Place in her sweats. We see someones highlights and once again, compare it to our lives and we feel inferior because we aren't where they are at in the competition that society has set to live that Hashtag Perfect Life.
In Crossfit, we are always taught that competition is good, that why we love the games, but you can't live in competition mode because it's unsustainable. All sports have off seasons, so why aren't we applying this lesson to our lives?
Normally in a competition, there is one challenge you train for, for a specified event.
But in societies competition, it is a brutal game, the standards are high, the finish line is death and you are judged on every category of your life and comparing it to the timeline society has harshly set out for us.
Great grades at school
Get into a good university
Married with kids by 25, big house, successful $100,000 salary and a body a model would envy to boot.
Perfect emotionally supportive partner who looks like they should be in a toothpaste commercial.
One perfectly trained dog, a great car, fulfillment in your life and of course, you have to able to be a great social host. Introverts pack your bags, you don't belong here.
And anything less is considered a failure in the cruel eyes of society and it feels like the eye of Sauron is watching you at every moment casually reminding you that you don't have a date to your cousins wedding.
Biologically, we are pack animals, we want to be accepted into the pack for protection and the more popular we are, the less likely we would be kicked out and left to fend for ourselves in the wild and die. It's in our nature to want attention and to be popular so we want to win societies competition, that way, we can be safe.
But it makes living very difficult when you are walking around comparing yourself to everyone else's successes because it's making us allll miserable, ALL THE TIME.
It's like we carry our self worth in little coins in a purse and every time we compare ourselves to someone else and berate ourselves for not being good enough, we hand them a coin. You can see why we are always so anxious and filled with no self worth because we constantly walk around casually handing it out to people like it’s pocket change.
Oh the post of Susan whose got a massive pay rise, just hand her a gold dubloon.
Oh look, Gary just had another beautiful child, here is a coin Gary, guess I didn't need as I don't have a child.
But the lesson we all need to learn is that our self worth, isn’t pocket change and we shouldn’t just hand it out. We should invest wisely in carefully thought out business transactions that will bring us more profit.
So. What is the cure? The cure to the endless self destructive cycle of living in competition mode. How do we stop handing out pocket change and start investing in our future?
The cure is to no compare yourself to anybody else.
Compete? Sure! If you look at someone, be inspired, cheer for them, ask them how they did it and throw yourself into the deep end and try. Don't use their success as a reflection of your own failings because and this is critical.
You aren't comparable
You are different people, living your own different lives. Totally different scenarios, genes, favorite colors. You don't compare. And I have 3 Identical Sisters, take it from me, you don't compare because they aren't you.
The only person you should really be competing with is the Sassy Beautiful Worthy person who looks back at you in the mirror. You know the one, the one you look at and berate for not being better. You don't have to be better, you don't have to be anything but yourself.
You just have to be you and if that doesn't look like what you envisioned (no society), change up your life! Not to be like someone else, but to be who you want to be, whatever that looks like to you.
The only person we should compare ourselves to is the person we were yesterday, that is all. I know it can be hard to do if you look back to a time when you were in a much healthier and happier place but we need to only compare to who we were 5 minutes ago and what we are doing every moment after that to build towards our new dreams and lives. The past is in the past, it cannot be changed, but the future is yet to be written and what a story it could be! If you would just take a moment to visualize what it could look like, keep your eyes on the road and step forward. Ignore all the other people sprinting around you and just feel proud that you are on the road, taking steps at your own pace. You are a hero for doing that.
I myself set extremely high standards for myself but the reality is, we can't all be as successful as Taylor Swift or as talented as Beyonce. But you are the Beyonce of your life, so be Beyonce. Enter a room with Confidence, Gravitas and Pazazz safe in the knowledge that you don't worth isn't comparable because it's yours and you are no longer going to freely give it away.
The moment you take control, put your coin purse of self worth away and start saying, "You're life looks awesome, I am so happy for you, I am thinking of doing something similar maybe in a bit when I feel a little less unprepared, any tips?" or "Hey Brad, you are smashing life right now and I am proud of you. I may not be where you are and that is okay because that is your journey. You may be where I want to be but I will get there, at my pace, in my time and I can't wait to get there"
The moment you do that, make the switch and keep your eyes on the road, head down and start letting the comparison wizz by, happiness can creep its way back into your life because Happiness and Success are subjective and completely personal to each person which means societies standards to have a Happy Perfect life, are a fantasy. Life isn’t a one size fits all dress.
You need to find your definition of success, happiness and fulfillment, and follow that path and when the haters come knocking, you send them to me and I will put them straight.
Thank you all for reading, it's been great tackling a subject that has affected my life, having 4 other siblings, it felt like no matter what I was good at (which was few and far between as it was), I had a sibling that was better than me at it. Looking at us all now, its amazing to see our strengths, how we are all so similar but so different and how our talents have never been comparable, only inspirational.
See you back on Instagram!