Competition can inspire and motivate you to pursue excellence, but it can come at the cost of unnecessary, personal stress. Because people have such different backgrounds, belief systems and inherited strengths, basing your personal worth on how you measure up against others isn’t really an accurate or fair metric. When you’re doing what you love to do and want to share, inspiration and motivation are internally generated. Competition between your past performance and your present one has no downside. Every time you score in that game, it means…
You’re evolving.
Jarl and Steve
..I play at the edge of my capabilities and constantly improving my abilities by Continuously outperforming myself.when I am on the track I compete with others which is inevitable.there I am not competing with myself.
When I am training for a game or an event ,I have the space to compete against myself,which will in the long run help me in honingy skills,that enables me to enjoy the flow even when the challenges are getting strong.
But when I am really playing a game,all my training is to outperform the other .when I am trying to outperform others ,success or failure can happen.when the opponent is increasingly talented it creates a need for myself to play at the edges and to extend beyond the limitations.in that way opponent becomes the catalyst for your greatest growth.
If i am the losing opponent how will i maintain the spirit of the game in the face of failure where i am stretched to the edges of my limits and yet lost???
Sarath, If you’re competing in a game of physical skill and the opponent pushes you to your edge and makes you play even better than ever, but you still lose…Be grateful that you were pushed beyond what you thought you could do and realize that we aren’t all equal in skill, talent, strength, beauty, intelligence, etc. And in the particular area of competition in which you lost, just realize that the other person was a bit stronger or faster or whatever. It doesn’t say anything about you that really matters because it’s a false metric. And also remember that you chose to compete, so there’s no reason to feel bad, enjoy the spirit of the game.
It seems to me that trying to do better is always good; trying to do better than others is never good. I can’t even see how to countenance the word “competition”, My problem!