... everything was a competition?

We are surrounded by competitions all our life. There is competition between siblings about the last lollipop or the remote control, between classmates about grades, between fellow sportsmen about games or races and between friends about board games. The big difference is if it is healthy or unhealthy competition.

So what defines healthy competition? Well, it should be about delivering a quality product or result and trying to continuously look for a way to improve skills. It can also be about pushing yourself to your limits and expanding the boundaries of what is possible. In games it is important that both sides are motivated to win but not afraid to lose. Often that is not the case because a lot of money is involved and defeating the other side is not only about personal growth.

According to psychologists being competitive is a natural, unavoidable feeling. It indicates what we really want to achieve and therefore is the key to getting to know ourselves. Competitiveness doesn't discriminate, you feel it towards strangers as well as your closest friends. Being competitive is part of the human nature, it has been there since the beginning. Sheperds wanted the best patch of grass, merchants the best products and prices. Some may say life without competition is life without progress. The point is we all feel competitiveness but we can choose how to behave on it. It is unhealthy to just try to be the best in everything and to assume that losses are failures. We can comfort ourselves with one simple yet complex thought: Life is not fair but it's unfair to everyone.

There are many situations in our everyday life that could be competitions if we acted on it. Let's assume we did: it starts at breakfast, the best coffee, the Insta-perfect breakfast picture. Who drives the flashiest car, who wears the most expensive clothes, who types the fastest? The tallest one, the prettiest girlfriend, the most exotic travels. If we all felt like we had to be best at those things, what would that make us? Zombies who act on auto-pilot? It has to be exhausting to always try to be best. The number of people with psychological problems would raise significantly, there would be only superficial friendships that secretly or openly deal with competition and of course it would be the end of teamwork as we know it.

It is fair to say that this is not what I or anyone of us wants for our future. But maybe it already started because there is a thin line between healthy and unhealthy competition.