From a very early age we are exposed to the addictive nature of external validation.
Sitting in my second-grade classroom with my bob-haircut and awful plaid dress my mother made me wear, I was eager to please the teacher and collect the award of her attention. I had my hand raised straight and tall, and I was practically levitating over my chair in readiness to answer the question she had just posed when she unfathomably looked to the opposite side of the room and chose Benjamin (who happened to have the same bowl-hair cut as me) to answer instead. In the process of making this huge mistake, she added insult to injury by lauding Benjamin for his “excellent hand raising.”
I took note of Benjamin’s posture when the teacher had called his name. His elbow was bent at ninety degrees so that his hand was barely raised above his shoulder. Even as a 7-year old I considered this a pretty weak display of enthusiasm. But because the teacher had called on him instead of me, and made such a big deal about his “excellent hand raise,” when the next question was called out to the class I tried to make my hand raise a little sloppier to emulate the form that had “won” the attention from the teacher in the last round of questions.
I literally changed my innate style to compete with someone else who had won the prize I was seeking.
I have many examples like this one from my childhood. In one particularly stark memory I competed with a boy in my 5th-grade class for winning “free homework” passes, which were awarded for attaining the top grade on assignments and tests. “Mark” and I were always the top two students and we each kept a stack of our awarded green “free homework” tickets inside our respective flip-top desks, instead of using them for their intended purpose to get out of doing our homework assignments. We would spend each afternoon break sitting on the windowsill in the classroom, counting our stacks to see who was “winning.”
It was more important to us to “win” than to actually enjoy the prize.
Competition can change us for the better, or it can make us forget who we are and what it is we want to achieve.
When others set the stage for the competition, we often blindly follow their rules and attach ourselves to a prize we may not even want, but the marketing of that prize can lure us in and we end up deviating from our own course.
One might think that my practicing and teaching yoga would have helped moderate my competitive mentality. Yoga is not supposed to be competitive, but rather a personal practice to promote inward reflection. In my yoga teacher training we were taught a simple set of phrases to set the tone for our classes, guiding our students to “Let go of expectation, let go of judgment and let go of competition.”
For reasons that may be clear from the above examples, the last part of that introduction about competition didn’t resonate with me at first, and I actually avoided saying it when I first started teaching yoga classes. As a competitive athlete and student throughout my life I felt that if we didn’t push ourselves how would we ever get better? And how could we push ourselves if we weren’t at least feeling competitive with ourselves, if not with the others in the class?
But I was competitive with others in the class. And I didn’t want to “let go of competition.”
When I first started doing yoga I had a sense that I should immediately be able to do the hardest postures that others had been doing for years, given my gymnastics background. It killed me when I saw someone doing something I couldn’t.
I also always pushed myself to attempt the most difficult versions of the postures, even though I didn’t have the experience required to do these advanced poses. It was less enjoyable for me because of this approach. It also hurt my body.
It took a long time, but eventually I was able to “let go of competition” when I realized that yoga, in particular, was something that I was doing for myself, and that choosing to do the easier versions of postures actually helped me be more present, mindful and honor those days when my body just needed easy movement instead of pushing my joints and muscles into impossible pretzel shapes.
As I “matured” in my view of competition, I realized that those who could find the balance of when to compete and when to let go of competition had found the balance that provides appropriate drive for continued growth and equally appropriate rest to allow for that growth to take root. (see my previous blog post that dives into this topic here https://dday.blog/blog/intention-in-tension/ )
For those of us who grew up competitive, either by way of participating in sports or academic endeavors, it can be difficult to let go of the type of competitive mindset that pushes us to win, but not necessarily to listen to ourselves and what we really need to “win” at achieving a life that is aligned with our values.
In my sport, gymnastics, our “performance reviews” are subjective. We were literally “judged” for how we looked as well as what we did on the apparatus. Back when I was competing we could even lose points for having a messy ponytail, nail polish on our fingers, or underwear peeking out from under our leotards.
My teammates and I have realized in later years that this environment left some indelible marks on us, including a tendency for people-pleasing behaviors. We learned at a young age that we were to listen to our coaches no matter what, and never question even things that didn’t feel right to us. Our worth and our value were externally determined and we were trained to seek the coveted top spot, whether that was in the scores we achieved or the place in our coach’s book of “favorites.”
Having a competitive spirit has helped me achieve many goals in my life, academic, athletic, and professional. Healthy competition amongst team members can drive innovation and productivity, but I have also been part of organizations where competition creates divisiveness and disunity.
In gymnastics, some coaches create unhealthy competition and exacerbate the natural human proclivity for external validation by having “favorite” athletes to whom special privileges are given, and ostracizing others who do not meet their standards. This behavior drives a wedge between the team members and fosters jealousy and animosity, whereas they could use the power of competition to motivate and raise everyone on the team to realize their fullest potential.
In the corporate world, well-intentioned tactics like “talent pools” and “high potential” pathways to development can also lead to issues where individuals are lured into a spiral of “shoulds” regarding their careers rather than being guided to lean into their strengths, their desires and their values.
Oftentimes the motivations of the manager are not completely altruistic either. Team members who excel and get promoted to higher positions make the manager look good.
Additionally, in some cases there is a stigma associated with individuals who feel satisfied in their current role and who do not aspire to do “more” or “climb the ladder.” I have found that very few individuals like this are willing to trust their gut and self awareness when outside forces, especially people they admire and trust (like their managers), try to push them to do more than they want to do. And so they succumb to the pressure of pleasing others and continuing to rely on external versus internal validation.
The result of chasing a prize that someone else has defined to us as what we want is that we veer from the path we would have designed for ourselves, had we just listened to that inner voice and felt confident to say, “No, thank you. I’m good with where I’m at.”
But if we throw competition out completely and suggest that we should not seek rewards from external sources (praise, medals, raises, promotions…) then what motivation is there for us to continue to grow, thrive and advance as humans?
It sounds nice in theory to allow people to pursue their paths as they wish without pushing or encouraging anyone with potential to strive for “more” because we see something in them that they don’t see in themselves.
Without competition, where would the energy come from to create cures for diseases, or build solutions to sustain our human-environment interactions, or challenge ourselves to create new art or explore new places?
As the title of this post suggests, I’m conflicted on how to feel about competition.
I guess where I land on this is that competition is necessary for evolution of thought, character and physical and mental growth. I don’t fully subscribe to the idea that we should only be competitive within ourselves and not step up to challenges offered by others that do offer an external reward.
I do believe that competing with ourselves is the purest form of self discovery and learning to attach our expectations to an internal authority versus an external one will bring more peace into our lives and our pursuits.
Being “judged” by others, given a score, a rating or a title, should not be the bar by which we measure ourselves. It is one piece of information that shows us what the external world values, and where we fall on someone else’s scale. This comparison can be helpful only if we use that information for just what it is–information. It does not define us or tell us where our goals should be or what our limitations are.
At the end of the day, it is our prerogative to choose whether we align our self-view to the world’s measurement stick, or the measurement stick within ourselves.
Compete when it fuels a fire and inspires you to grow outside of your comfort zone in a way that brings you satisfaction.
Let go of competition when your inner voice tells you that where you are in this moment is enough.
Re-evaluate each of these mind-body states on a daily basis, and choose the path that works for you in each circumstance.
No one can compete with us on the ability to trust our own instincts.