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#68 GET UP A GAME
Our
country has gone through a difficult period of time since World War II.
We no longer value heroes and individual achievement as we once die.
"Competition" has become a bad word. But competition, if
confronted enthusiastically, can be the greatest self-motivating
experience in the world.
What some people fear in the idea of competition, I suppose, is that we
will become obsessed with succeeding at somebody else's expense.
That we'll take too much pleasure in defeating and therefore "being
better" than somebody else. Many times during conversations with
my children's teachers, I am told how the school has progressively
removed grades and awards from some activities "so that the kids don't
feel they have to compare themselves to each other." They are
proud of how they've softened their educational programs so that there's
less stress and competition. But what they are doing is not
softening the program - they are softening the children.
If
you are interested in self-motivation, self-creation, and being the best
you can be, there is nothing better than competition. It
teaches you the valuable lesson that no matter how good you are, there
is always somebody better than you are. That's the lesson in
humility you need, the lesson those teachers are misguidedly trying to
teach by removing grades.
It
teaches you that by trying to beat somebody else, you reach for more
inside of yourself. Trying to beat somebody else simply puts the
"game" back into life. If it's done optimistically, it gives
energy to both competitors. It teaches sportsmanship. And it
gives you a benchmark for measuring your own growth.
The
poet William Butler Yeats used to be amused at how many definitions
people came up with for happiness. But happiness wasn't any of the
things people said it was, insisted Yeats.
"Happiness is just one thing," he said. "Growth. We are
happy when we are growing."
A
good competitor will cause you to grow. He will stretch you beyond
your former skill level. If you want to get good at chess, play
against somebody better at chess than you are. In the movie
Searching for Bobby Fisher, we see the negative effects of resisting
competition on a young chess genius until he starts to use the
competition to grow. Once he stops taking it personally and
seriously, the game itself becomes energizing. Once he embraces
the intriguing fun of competition, he gets better and better as a player
and grows as a person.
I
mentioned earlier that I'd heard a report on the radio that there was a
Little League organization somewhere in Pennsylvania that had decided
not to keep score in its games anymore because losing might damage the
players' self-esteem. They had it all wrong: Losing teaches
kids to grow in the face of defeat. It also teaches them that
losing isn't the same as dying, or being worthless. It's just the
other side of winning. If we teach children to fear competition
because of the possibility of losing, then we actually lower
their self-esteem.
Compete wherever you can. But always compete in the spirit of fun,
knowing that finally surpassing someone else is far less important than
surpassing yourself.
If
you're better at a game than I am, when I play against you and try to
beat you it's really not you I'm after. Who I'm really beating is
the old me. Because the old me couldn't beat you.
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