Competition Good Or Bad
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The document discusses the pros and cons of competition. While competition can drive progress, it can also cause excessive stress when people feel pressure to constantly outperform others. This is illustrated through the example of a student who suffered health problems from the pressure to get top scores. The document argues that competition is best when it pushes people to improve their own performance, not when it causes people to neglect their well-being, family, or enjoyment of the process.
Competition Good Or Bad
- 1. Competition Good or Bad?
- 2. competition should not drive people to such limits that they reach breaking point" let me share an example Saroj was appearing for the 10th boards that year. Shanti her mother was extremely proud of her daughter's performance. Saroj always responded with alacrity to her mother's tutoring. I was alarmed when I saw Saroj in tears on the day of the result. "Had she failed in some subject?" was my first thought. To my utter astonishment, I soon saw her being congratulated for being the top scorer in her school, but in deep misery all through. I heard Shanti console her through her own disappointment, "It's all right, dear. You will surely be in the state merit list in the 12th." It was only then that it became clear that the family had set a firm goal of a merit list ranking and were to be satisfied with nothing less than that. I later came to know that the girl was so much under pressure in her 11th standard that she suffered from severe health problems and missed many months in college. ..
- 3. A certain amount of competitiveness is an essential part of our psyche. "A need to compete is a very basic need that is seen to be existing in every living being, though society and the environment do also contribute to the level at which it exists."
- 4. Is there a problem? If the mouse runs to save its life from a cat, humans run to test their ability and fitness. In other words, human beings compete not just to survive, but to excel. Certainly, this has brought in a lot of progress. We would not have had so many athletes doing their best and increasing the standard in virtually all games, had it not been for competition. At another level, the constant improvement that we see in virtually all products is certainly due to the increased efficiency and productivity due to competition.
- 5. One-Up-man-ship or Greed? Many a time, this begins at the preschool stage itself. This message gets reinforced in school, where doing better than the rest of the class/ group becomes more important than understanding the concept or subject. College is, of course, an extension of school and here, several other types of competition, or rather one-upmanship, emerge - competing in dress, style, possessing the latest gizmo, and so on. "The financial possibilities that sports now offers has brought with it excessive parental pressure on children, leading to many instances of early burnout."
- 6. "Economic cycles which were of 10 years earlier are now 18 months. Naturally, this has brought with it tremendous demands on people. At the individual level, this gets manifested as a frenzied work pace that leaves no time for family, friends and, most of all, oneself. Often self-imposed, people are fast becoming strangers to themselves and their families."
- 7. A New Perspective At a childrens' party, all the adults who came to pick up the children wished to make the children eat quickly. One parent announced a 'prize' for the child who finishes his food first. One little boy, after struggling to gobble up his food for a while, suddenly got up, and said, "We don't want a prize that does not let us enjoy the food". Everyone burst out laughing, while we adults were suitably chastened. .
- 8. Children party incident sums up the essence of the way we compete today Competition, essentially a standard or scale of measurement, can be extremely beneficial, if only it is understood and applied properly. What is required is some self-examination; which is bound to give us a new perspective on who we are, what is it that we wish to achieve, and ultimately, why and with whom we need to compete. Most often, we will find that it is our own performance that we need to improve on. With this perspective, competition becomes a tool rather than a threat. As with all habits, the sooner we develop this perspective, the easier it would be to adopt.
- 9. Excessive competition is only due to lack of clarity of the goals of one's life, The educated middle class whose aspirations have skyrocketed who are under such severe stress. "It is only by reducing our needs that we can lead a peaceful, stress-free life."
- 10. Run your own race Competition, in its real sense, is about bringing out the best in ourselves Indeed, it's time we learnt to say like the little boy at the party, "We don't want a prize that does not let us enjoy the food".
- 11. Competition can often be an excessive drive to an illusionary goal. We need to compete, instead, with our own selves, challenging and realizing our innate and unique potential.