The other problem with the focus on winning, is that once you've tasted it, you need more. It's like an addiction. The pleasure effect of winning does not last, unlike the satisfaction of having done the best you can. Finally, a focus on winning makes people focus outside themselves for validation of their worth. What is their value if they don't get the medals, media attention and wealth that goes with winning? In contrast, the satisfaction of success and doing the best you can through cooperation has been shown to be linked with emotional maturity and strong personal identity.
The most disturbing feature of competition to win is how it negatively affects our relationships. Competition in schools, sports, the workplace in families and among countries can be the thing that divides, disrupts and turn to negativity. While we like to preach that competition brings people closer together it is rarely the winning that does that, it is more often the personal journey, the shared experience and compassion for failure that is stronger.
The focus on competition and winning is now a fundamental part of how business is done. Businesses try to destroy each other either in court or by sales to be viewed as the winner. Countries are heralded as being the "best." Amateur and professional athletes and teams are glorified when they win and vilified when they lose.
Yet ironically, the world now more than ever requires cooperation, not competition to address our most pressing problems--economic woes, global warming, poverty, famine, crime and many others. And the new unheralded economic movement--collaborative consumption--may just be the tip of the iceberg of where we need to go.
Perhaps the final indictment of an obsession with competition and winning, is that it restrains people from engaging in a personal journey of self knowledge and finding one's place in life as an entirely internal and personal process, not one that requires the comparisons and constant competition with others as a measure of self-worth.
Author: Ray B. Williams
The most disturbing feature of competition to win is how it negatively affects our relationships. Competition in schools, sports, the workplace in families and among countries can be the thing that divides, disrupts and turn to negativity. While we like to preach that competition brings people closer together it is rarely the winning that does that, it is more often the personal journey, the shared experience and compassion for failure that is stronger.
The focus on competition and winning is now a fundamental part of how business is done. Businesses try to destroy each other either in court or by sales to be viewed as the winner. Countries are heralded as being the "best." Amateur and professional athletes and teams are glorified when they win and vilified when they lose.
Yet ironically, the world now more than ever requires cooperation, not competition to address our most pressing problems--economic woes, global warming, poverty, famine, crime and many others. And the new unheralded economic movement--collaborative consumption--may just be the tip of the iceberg of where we need to go.
Perhaps the final indictment of an obsession with competition and winning, is that it restrains people from engaging in a personal journey of self knowledge and finding one's place in life as an entirely internal and personal process, not one that requires the comparisons and constant competition with others as a measure of self-worth.
Author: Ray B. Williams