What are you competing with others for? People say life is about competition, and that is what survival is about. But what are you really preserving yourself for? What are you contributing to this world, what difference are you making?
Too often people are saying they are competing to be better, to move up the ranks, the leaderboard, to get higher scores, better grades. Than yourself? Or than others? What happens when you are better than others? Are you becoming a better version of yourself? In Brene Brown’s podcast episode with Simon Sinek, she said something that struck me: when you’re better than others, your ego grows; are you able to do better?
So we have to ask ourselves what is the work we are doing? Is competition really just about self-improvement? Or have we skewed it to appeal too much to our ego, fed our obsession with our status and sow the seeds to some of the destructive behaviours (eg. Toxic work cultures, lack of sustainability in corporate practices).
For our mental health, and a better future, let’s change the culture of competition wherever we find ourselves by first practising it differently.