The Truth About Competing

When I was growing up, my mom would always tell me how good looking I am.

Now this was clearly not a fact, but an opinion coming from my mother. Since she instilled the thought I am a handsome young man, when I first heard a girl telling me that I'm marginally ugly, it really put me down. It hit me hard and I would dwell on it for days feeling terrible. Weeks passed by and she again made a similar comment. Knowing that how miserable I'd felt for the past few weeks, I made a decision to trash anything that comes out of her mouth. Although her comment about my face was not so necessary, she did have an insight and objective view on many other things, which I could have gained from by closely listening to it. Because of the fear of being miserable, I decided to disregard every other piece of advice.

Obviously, I'm not here to talk about my childhood distraught rooting from someone's comment about my not-so-pretty face. Rather, as the title reads, I want to talk about the value of competition. Most people, shy away from competition because they are afraid to face the truth. The fear automatically kicks in because they remember the bitter taste of losing. They never want to experience it again because it makes them emotionally vulnerable.

OK, you don't need to feel sh*t or put yourself in a situation where you are exposed. But running away from the opportunity where you can learn the most because of temporary insecurity is the problem. Because of this habit, most of us fail to truly unlock our potential or better yet, improve at all.

We cannot afford to be delusional. Because the end of obscured view of our skill set, there is nothing. We'll never reach anywhere. Everyone who is reading this post has a goal and purpose. Whatever that might be, it requires certain level of skill set. And only way to up your skill is to constantly measure and assess it. Once you know where you stand, you make a plan and attack it to step on to the next level. Placing our feet in that next stage, we call that an improvement. It's the only way to advance our skills.

Competition is the perfect tool to achieve this objective of figuring out where we stand. I see it as a ruler to measure a skill. On top of that, it brings two other priceless gifts.

(1) A perfect time to hone our skills as we prepare for it:

Anyone who has intention to improve always goes into competition with preparation. That's when the real work is done. The intensity of work is usually much stronger when faced with upcoming competition. Your skills improve drastically because you go extra miles and push yourself further than what you would normally do.

(2) The result:

If you win, the taste of victory after hours of tears and sweat in preparation put up in front is the greatest satisfaction that human can satiate. Nothing comes close.

However, I'm not so much focused on the pleasure after the big W but rather, the L. In reality there is no L. Again, the one thing that we seek to leverage is objective assessment of our skill set. By receiving L, you get to find where you are deficient, hence, where you need to work on. If your goal it to improve, you've achieved what you asked for; accurate measurement. Time to get back home, go back to drawing board, and do whatever you can to improve on areas where you fell short.

As you climb back from a loss there's another bonus that's indispensable. You grow. Don't get me wrong, I really understand that a loss is a bitter pill to swallow. We all hate the letter "L". I hate it so much that it gives me a chill just thinking about it. As you climb from the feeling of sh*tiness and self-doubt, you develop certain character and grow immensely. This toughens you up for any adversity that life throws at you. You might have initially embarked to improve on a certain skill set, but you end up becoming more competent person outside of your game as well.

We might not always obtain a certain level of skill set that we shoot for. As we cannot be good at everything in such a limited time. So many things to improve on and we are given less than 100 years to work on it. So, it's a lie if anyone reaches a proficient level of skill in all realms of life. That's why we have to sort out and choose wisely what to focus on.

On that note, I want to end with this final remark.

Never in any case, measure your worth because you came short in obtaining your goal. At the end of the day, there is much work to be done but not enough time to master.

Next post, we are going to dig in so that we actually make wise decision on where to commit.

On to the next one.