Invest Positive Competition not Negative Competition

From an early age, you have always wanted to win. Your life experiences have changed your expectations and your habits toward winning. But, your default response to competition has stayed the same. You often speak about “proving her wrong.” You are happy to rebut, “He does not know me. I am capable of much more.”

I am asking you to change your definition of winning. Winning is bringing out the best in others. The best way to do that is to be your best, every moment, every task. You must also change your approach to competition. You are not competing in order to have what I have or to be like her. You are competing in order to bring out the best in you, me, and her. Competition, used wisely, is a complement to internal motivation. The result is your second wind—the ability to achieve beyond what you could do alone.

Definitions of winning and competition are not the most important change I want you to make. Most importantly, I want you to recapture the expectation that you will win. Disappointments and obstacles have contributed to a personality of individualism, habits of isolation, and motivation steeped in negative competition. You have a choice. Consider that collective activities do exist, interactions can be supportive, and competition can be positive.

Collective activities are tasks that you can share with others. You have been told that true expertise knows without any prompting. This is only partly true. Expertise knows, but the development of expertise is often a function of like-minded people collectively sharing ideas and tasks. It is in the brainstorming and the doing that new methods take shape.

Vygotsky suggested that we become ourselves through others. This is true in your traditional supportive interactions, but also in your antagonistic relationships. The key observation is your reaction to the other. Others can motivate you to prove them, but the interaction may also provide an important reminder to pause and consider your actions, thoughts, and meaning making.

Positive competition is born out of the reality experienced when you are at your best. Collaboration is not just working together on a specific shared goal. It is sharing a goal. The enemy you and your foes have in common is failure. See that the competition that you may have resented is nothing more than an expression of respect. The others who you have assessed to be preoccupied with you are really targeting their own fears No competitor worries about the opposition that has no momentum. As you move from potential to momentum, you will realize greater competition. Continue with purpose and the knowledge that each stride you take encourages the other. Each advance of the other signals motivation to you. Undergirding the competition is the certainty of reward. No other can wrest your trophy. Because of your disappointments and obstacles, you have fashioned an expertise that is uniquely yours. The product you will distribute, if it is truly your product, cannot be duplicated by any other.