Post No.: 0629
Fluffystealthkitten says:
It doesn’t need to be said that one wants to win in a competition… because it’s a competition! People should naturally give their very best if they’ve bothered to enter themselves into and show up in a competition.
So when someone claims to be ‘a competitive person’, they probably mean they’re going to be unbearably bigheaded if they win, and a sore loser who sulks and blames everyone or everything else for either cheating or ruining their chances of winning if they lose! They’re most likely to be the type who’ll say, “I didn’t really care” or have some excuse like, “I didn’t bother to revise” if something doesn’t go as well as they’d hoped, in an attempt to rationalise away their losses and protect their fragile self-esteems.
It’s like it’s only those who feel small (whether they are or not) who feel the need to make themselves look and sound larger and more imposing than they really are by walking with an exaggeratedly wide gait or by being aggressive to strangers to ‘assert their dominance’. Those who are ‘dominant’ don’t need to expend excess energy and bare their fangs unless they’re being challenged; thus to bare one’s fangs when one isn’t really being challenged by another individual is to admit that one is ‘lower in the pecking order’ to them and feels the need ‘to raise oneself in that pecking order’ – otherwise why waste one’s own precious energy?!
It’s more important to be a competent person than a competitive person because wanting to win something more – although this should increase drive – won’t alone mean one should deserve to more. Being competitive isn’t always good either because are you doing something for the intrinsic joy of the activity or only because of the extrinsic carrots and/or sticks? It can of course be for both reasons however. ‘Task-orientation’ (doing something for the sake of mastering and working on it) as opposed to ‘ego-orientation’ (doing something for the sake of comparing yourself to others) intrinsically motivates people more.
Competition can motivate growth and raise standards, but can result in zero-sum outcomes and incentivise cheating in some contexts – especially if one feels that winning is more important than literally anything else or must come at all costs (including one’s soul). We should compete and strive, but not to the point of literally ‘whatever it takes to win’, ‘enough is never enough’ or believing that it’s ‘kill or be killed’ – it’s just not worth it. Meow.
Also – if someone can stick dozens of marbles up their nostrils then don’t try to beat them(!) If someone can drink more alcohol than you then don’t wreck your own health by following suit. If someone loses more weight than you in a pro-ana group then it’s harmful trying to compete with them. The point is to choose your competitions wisely. It’s not about wanting to win all of the time. Let others win if it’s not worth it. Choose only competitions that are worthy or are meaningful to you – not those that are a myopic test of supposed self-worth.
Be successful in life overall rather than care for shallow victories. Know what your goals are (perhaps to learn or master a skill?) Be aware of what others do but mainly compete with who you were yesterday i.e. simply strive to improve yourself each time.
Cooperation is also more effective than competition in predicting success overall. This is because everything we do is ultimately a team sport when we think about it. And there’s enough scope for everyone on Earth to be successful – in terms of being happy in life – because life doesn’t have to be a zero-sum competition. We shouldn’t need other people to feel dejected for losing for us to feel happy for winning. The stress of fighting each other isn’t worth the ultimately non-existent prize in the grand scheme of the universe. We should strongly arguably ultimately try to all get along better and enjoy this very short time together.
Related to having an excessively competitive mindset – boasting is not proportional to ability. Some people boast about things that other people also have but don’t boast about because the latter don’t think much about it. Some people display every certificate or trophy of theirs up for all to see whilst others, who may have achieved even more, don’t. We might blow our own trumpets or exaggerate our achievements in an attempt to boost our image – to appear superior to others. And when there’s a (sub)culture of exaggerating our own (alleged) achievements or greatness, it creates an ever-increasing escalation of further exaggeration because most people wish to be perceived as ‘at least above average’. People boast because it does fool enough people – most of all themselves. So we cannot always trust what people say even if they believe in it themselves because of everyone’s pervasive unconscious biases of perception.
We might conversely display modesty though, but again for the sake of managing our image – to appear like a team player rather than risk being shunned from the group for being self-aggrandisingly individualistic, to not intimidate others, upset existing hierarchies or risk others asking or expecting too much from us when we think we’ve been over-estimated, as false modesty to hustle others into a false sense of security, or to make others feel sorry for us in order to procure their sympathy and perhaps help.
Those who are used to achieving the results they desire will take that as the norm, whilst those who aren’t will see those times they do as relatively unusual and worth writing home about. So a gloat speaks of the gloater – that they aren’t normally accustomed to winning or beating someone; otherwise they wouldn’t be so surprised or impressed about their result. So if you’ve got it, and this is quite normal for you – you don’t have to flaunt it.
Admittedly, it’s not nice for someone to have a low self-esteem – where they believe that talking big about themselves and mentioning every win they attain (to even people who don’t care) will make others notice and respect them more. All bigheads feel inadequate inside but try to over-compensate for that on the outside. But boasting is a misguided way to gain respect because most people actually find people who boast tiresome and egotistical. Humility – without being too self-deprecating – wins more respect in most contexts.
Self-compassion (accepting that it’s okay to occasionally fail but one can improve) increases resilience far more than self-esteem (constantly telling oneself ‘I’m better than them’ even after failure) too.
There’s no correlation between blaming others for something and the ratio of blame that can be fairly apportioned between one person and another (for some people constantly make mistakes but don’t get called up on them – perhaps because of forgiveness, or futility because they make mistakes so often that others have low expectations of them – while some will try to pin blames on others at every single perceived opportunity they can!)
There’s also no correlation between those who like to or are quick to criticise others and those who are competent at a task in question themselves (for it’s easy being a critic). There’s no correlation between the amount of talk and the amount of knowledge one holds or the amount of work one does (unless one’s job is to talk!) There’s no correlation between complaining and the amount of things to complain about (for a lot of perceived problems are ‘first-world problems’). And there’s no correlation between the confidence in one’s correctness and being correct.
There’s no correlation between the size of the fist-pump and the objective size of the achievement. However, it’s good to celebrate one’s successes and not take them for granted. And I suppose there’s a difference between mentioning an achievement because one is personally proud of it rather than because one believes that others should be impressed by it. Perfectionism or being too harshly self-critical that nothing one does is good enough for oneself can be crippling to one’s mental health too. So try to be happy for your high standards rather than beat yourself up if you don’t match them. You can be hungry for more yet also grateful for what you’ve already got.
Therefore both a lack of self-belief (where one generally self-inflicts pain but can be a mental drain on others too) and an over-inflated belief in oneself (where one generally annoys others but it can reveal a private insecurity too) are plights. We shouldn’t denigrate and should perhaps applaud the genuine personal achievements of people who are giving their very best efforts. But for those who make bragging a habit by pointing out the same achievements repeatedly, or like to boast about every little thing they think they know or can do – we can tell where their levels of standards are according to what they find worth gloating about that others exceed yet don’t find special enough to mention. We can balance being humble and being easier on ourselves, and being proud and celebrating our achievements but never smug.
Some might avoid something because they lack the furry confidence to try it. But others might not try something because they wish to protect their perceived image. Because of their fragile egos despite the externally-displayed sense of superiority over others – they might harbour a fear of failure. We might fear trying new things in case we lose since this would dash our perceived image of greatness. We might boast at home but are timid outside. Better to simply assume that one is a winner than to risk losing, especially in front of others. Better for others to wonder if one can or cannot do something than to prove to them once and for all that one cannot. One has possibly set other people’s expectations of oneself up so high (or so one believes) that one mightn’t be able to match those expectations (or so one believes). One doesn’t need to prove that one is at least above average to believe that one is, but if one proves conclusively that one isn’t then it’d be harder to continue upholding that belief.
But then again, we do have an amazing ability to blame other people or things, claim we had a rare off day, claim a test wasn’t fair, deliberately sandbag or self-handicap, or otherwise post-rationalise bad results away in order to continue upholding our illusory superiority bias!
People who love to boast are generally regarded as unattractive. It’s also moronic to try to boast about how modest one is(!) In some cultures, we don’t like peers who are doing far better than us – we feel that they don’t belong on the same team as us. Thus showing off about how wealthy one is, for example, can alienate rather than inspire others.
In some limited contexts we do need to sell ourselves. But those who like to constantly boast about themselves or belittle others to raise themselves up reveal their own vanity. There are those who strategically boast by claiming, “My children think I’m the greatest mother/father in the world” or, “My friends call me clever” when no one asked to know! There’s no problem in striving for and hopefully achieving success (whatever success means to you, as Furrywisepuppy conveyed in Post No.: 0627) – just don’t boast about it or exaggerate. Acknowledging and being happy about one’s achievements is good for one’s self-confidence but it’s socially intelligent to not push this in the faces of others.
We virtually all have some kind of insecurities about ourselves but it’s how we handle or express them that matters – hopefully with social and emotional intelligence, humbleness and empathy (this connects people), and not by coming across as vain and overly self-focused (this divides people).
Meow! In my own opinion, we should knock down those who think too highly of themselves and lift up those who judge themselves too harshly.
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