{"id":597,"date":"2011-08-09T20:03:12","date_gmt":"2011-08-10T00:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/?p=597"},"modified":"2011-08-09T20:03:12","modified_gmt":"2011-08-10T00:03:12","slug":"competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/2011\/08\/09\/competition\/","title":{"rendered":"Competition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Growing up, competition was considered a good thing, healthy even.\u00a0 As a visible minority I was told I had to be better than the rest, because nothing was going to come easy to me, and I was going to need the upper hand intellectually in order to achieve the success I wanted.\u00a0 To be honest, I used to categorize this \u201cwarning\u201d as one of my parents rants on the importance of education and never took it too seriously.\u00a0 Thankfully, getting good grades was never a struggle for me, so I never saw myself as having to fight or compete with my peers in such a serious, life altering way.<\/span><\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean to say that I wasn\u2019t competitive.\u00a0 As an only child, I didn\u2019t have brothers or sisters to compete with, but I did compete with my male cousins in particular.\u00a0 There were good at science, so I had to prove I could be good at science too, and started entering science fairs (and doing pretty well!).\u00a0 A young feminist, I always wanted to show that I, as a girl, could do anything the boys could do, if not better! Unfortunately, that didn\u2019t include baseball, since I never could manage not to throw the ball \u201clike a girl\u201d!<\/span><\/p>\n

I am a lover of many sports.\u00a0 I grew up watching baseball, CFL and NFL football with my dad, along with boxing and wrestling.\u00a0 I cheered for my teams when they were winning, and of course, like any \u201ctrue\u201d fan, was disappointed by the losses.\u00a0 I never imagined myself to be a true fanatic, screaming at the television when things didn\u2019t go my teams\u2019 way.\u00a0 I remember, however, my mother on more than one occasion coming to my room asking me what I was getting so heated about!\u00a0 As I got older, I found myself disliking certain players simply because of what team they played for (what other reason was there, it isn\u2019t like I knew them personally?), and at some point, it hit me that this was all a bit crazy!<\/span><\/p>\n

I stopped watching professional sports for a while because I realized I was embarrassed by how attached I was to the outcome of the games.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t betting on these events, nor was I fortunate enough to be an owner, so why was I hurling expletives at the referee for what I considered to be a bad call?\u00a0 Why was I getting angry at the player who missed a \u201csimple\u201d jump shot?\u00a0 It was time to check myself and it made me wonder what the big deal is?<\/span><\/p>\n

Unless you\u2019re playing soccer or hockey, ties are an unacceptable way for a game to end, so there has got to be a loser.\u00a0 While no one goes into a game thinking they are going to come out on the losing side, the reality is, someone has to lose.\u00a0 First place doesn\u2019t mean much if no one came in second or third, does it?<\/span><\/p>\n

While I acknowledge that my attachment to professional sports wasn\u2019t contributing to healthy blood pressure, what\u2019s more troubling is how this competitive spirit affects our personal lives.\u00a0 Whether it\u2019s fighting for a parking spot, or to get that popular, but rare toy on Christmas Eve at the mall, it seems so much of our lives has become a competition.\u00a0 It is no longer about keeping up with the Jones\u2019, it\u2019s about being better than them.\u00a0 Bigger homes, nicer cars, smarter or more athletic kids or even a greener lawn \u2013 everything has become a competition.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Some may argue that competition has its benefits.\u00a0 The motivation to do as well as someone else, if not better is a good thing, right?\u00a0 What\u2019s wrong with striving to improve one\u2019s life?\u00a0 I don\u2019t believe there is anything wrong with wanting to improve our lives.\u00a0 Where I think things start to get ugly is when we believe our growth or improvement can\u2019t happen in parallel with someone else\u2019s, but must happen instead<\/em> of another\u2019s success.<\/span><\/p>\n

This kind of competitiveness, from my perspective, is counter-productive.\u00a0 It reinforces this \u201cus versus them\u201d mentality that doesn\u2019t lend to cooperation of any kind, the idea that we all cannot succeed at the same time in our own way doesn\u2019t resonate with me.\u00a0 It is possible for us all to reach our highest potential without it being a detriment to anyone. I think that we just need to shift our focus from the negative aspects of competition and look at competition as a challenge to uncover our greatest abilities and encourage one another instead of looking at things in terms of winners and losers.\u00a0 It is time to start building each other up rather than putting one another down! \u2665<\/span><\/p>\n


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Growing up, competition was considered a good thing, healthy even.\u00a0 As a visible minority I was told I had to be better than the rest, because nothing was going to come easy to me, and I was going to need the upper hand intellectually in order to achieve the success I wanted.\u00a0 To be honest, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[322,323,324,325,326],"class_list":["post-597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughtoftheday","tag-better-than-the-rest","tag-competition","tag-cooperation","tag-losses","tag-professional-sports"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harbirzinc.com\/sandradawes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}