#36 - Competition
I love competition. Anyone who knows me would laugh because they know it’s true. I can find a way to make pretty much anything into a competition—even eating pudding (don’t ask). I always enjoyed competition I guess but didn’t realize how helpful it was for me until I reached high school. Prior to high school, I did okay in school. I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it—I was not motivated and often lazy. My freshman year of high school I was put in a science lab group. All of a sudden I realized I had classmates and I knew I wanted to get a better score than them. It drove me to study. Even though I never liked biology, I did quite well and it is 100% attributable to competitiveness. From that day on, my whole attitude about school changed—even when I wasn’t interested in the material, I studied to win.
In college my roommate, Kyle is very similar; we both thrive on competition and we both have stellar grades as a result. Many of our professors have recognized our friendly competition and make a show out of returning our graded exams. Kyle is a smart guy—we’re both majoring in accounting and finance so we have many of the same classes. I definitely wouldn’t have almost perfect grades without Kyle constantly upping the ante.
Competition drives me and makes me better—usually. What happens when the competition is poor? I work way harder when I have someone like Kyle to compete with, but what about the classes I take without Kyle? Sometimes when the competition isn’t as stiff, I let myself slack (just not enough to lose). To avoid this kind of laziness, I’ve tried a few things. Goals always help but I’ve also tried competing with myself. Competition suddenly becomes a whole lot stiffer when you start competing against your potential. It means asking yourself honestly if you:
Did you best
Gave 100% effort
Couldn’t have prepared any better
The trick to using this kind of competition is accountability. Do not just evaluate yourself mentally because you’ll let yourself off easy. Instead, write it down. Before the competition, write down what you believe your potential is (100% on the exam, 5th place in the race, etc.) and then afterwards give yourself a grade.
So we talked about when the competition is weak, but what about when the competition is too strong? As I’ve mentioned before, I compete in cross country skiing in college. My conference is extremely competitive and stacked with a bunch of extremely talented guys. The competition is fierce, and although I’ve gotten stronger and faster every year, so has everyone else! It can be frustrating to walk away feeling like I did everything I could but still lost. It’s easy to dream about an easier conference where everyone is slow and I win every weekend—but I have to ask myself: would I really be the same skier I am without constantly giving 100% just to keep up? Obviously not. Insanely good competition can be frustrating, but only if I let myself ignore the fact that I’m better than I would’ve been without that level of competition. I could even be one of the top skiers in my conference, I’d be a faster skier which would be awesome, but I probably wouldn’t work as hard and I definitely wouldn’t have learned the same lessons about resilience and discipline.
Not everyone thrives on competition like me—I realize that. Seth Goodin said, “The problem with competition is that it takes away the requirement to set your own path, to invent your own method, to find a new way.” Competition can be damaging for athletes because we get so wrapped up in doing what everyone else is even if what everyone else is doing is not the same drills or training that will make us better.
How does competition impact you? A lot of athletes I talk to say that competition is stressful and the pressure is hard to deal with. So, in the next section we are going to talk about pressure!