When we were in school, we were made to participate in various competitions during our physical activity classes. Even during exams, we were always given ranks based on our performance. Have you ever wondered what the use of those was? They were to help us push ourselves to be the number one; to try to do better every time.

More often than not, while dealing with kids, we always compare them to other kids and get them to obey us by trying to scare them that if they don’t, the other kids will get ahead of them, or rather are better than them.

But somewhere, I feel, people forget to teach their kids that it is ok to lose sometimes. They don’t have to try and win every race. We are only human. We don’t need to be the best in everything. The aim should just be to give in our best, that’s it. Everybody can’t come first in every race of life. We all are good in something or the other; we can’t be good at everything. We just need to find out what that one thing is that we are good at and have interest in, and try to be our best in it.

Winning shouldn’t become a habit, because then, when the person feels like he is losing in any race, he falls prey to depression and self-doubt.

People sometimes go overboard while competing with others. I, myself, have come across people who compete with others on everything; it may be good or bad. Competing on positive things still seem to be acceptable to an extent, but competing on the negatives of life, seems just insane. They then come across as emotionless people.

Like if I say, I or any of my known one is suffering from some disease or have fallen prey to some misfortune, they try to compete even in that! They, then tend to narrate instances in which either they or someone dear to them had already faced that exact same disease or misfortune and got it pretty bad. They fail to understand the need to show compassion even at this point, and instead start sharing instances to assure themselves that they aren’t lagging behind.

Such people always feel the need to prove that they are better (or have suffered worse) than the other. It is more of rather trying to prove it to themselves, and not the other person. They need to be on the top, they don’t care for what it is. It’s just what they eventually become. Their sole purpose of life narrows down to putting others down and this makes them feel good about themselves. It is what motivates them.

The purpose of competition should be to better ourselves every day; to try and beat our own best so far. It is to bring out the best in us, help us to utilize our full potential. But we need to try and understand our limit that is the most important part. Competing with others to help us reach our limit is the best kind of competition we may ever have, but once we start overstepping our limit, it is when we actually need to get a hold of ourselves. It is then that we need to understand that we have given our best and be satisfied with it, and if still there are people better than us, then we need to accept it and let it go.

Healthy competition is good, but when a person starts competing in everything with everyone, it slowly consumes the person and they start becoming toxic. They lose any sense of what is right or wrong. They just can’t bear to see anyone better than them in anything. This leads to jealousy, and jealousy is good for no one. As they say, excess of anything is bad.

We may have read it or heard it at several occasions, which life is often compared to a race. But I agree to disagree on this logic. I feel life shouldn’t be thought of as a race; it just destroys the actual essence of life itself. It is just life, your life. It should be led at a pace we are comfortable with. Is death any different for a person who has won all the races in life? Is pain or suffering more for the person who hasn’t won a single race in his lifetime? No, right? It is the same for every single person.

We just need to aim at doing what gives us satisfaction. When this journey of life is about to end, we should just aim that, when we look back, we don’t have anything to regret about, as then it will be too late to rectify anything. Reflecting back on our days that has passed should give us pure happiness and no regrets. It is then that we may say that we have lived life in the best possible way, exactly the way it was meant to be. I feel that should be our sole purpose of life.

One amazing quote I came across that defines healthy competition perfectly, goes as follows: