Tag: competition

The Competitive Edge

As the game ended, my team got into a single-file line. We approached our opponents, who were also in a single-file line.

Good game, we exclaimed to each opposing player as we gave them a fist bump. Good game, each opposing player replied.

The handshake line has always seemed like another order of business to many athletes. It was just another part of the game experience to get through.

But to me, the handshake line seemed like an opportunity. It was a chance to honor the achievements of others — even if those achievements might have come at my expense.

We go at each other tooth and nail on the field. But at the end of the day, we can show each other mutual respect.

I’m writing this in the wake of another Olympic games. And while the memories of these Olympics will likely stay with us for some time, there’s one moment that will remain front and center for me.

This moment came after the final round of the high-jump competition. An official approached two of the competitors — a Qatari and an Italian — and let them know they were tied for the top spot on the podium. The two men would need to jump once more to decide who would get the gold medal.

Upon hearing this, the Qatari turned to the official and asked Can we have two golds? When the official replied it was possible, the erstwhile competitors embraced, setting off an emotional celebration.

It turned out the two men knew each other well. They’d trained together before and were close off the track. One had even attended the other’s wedding.

Still, that doesn’t make the decision to share the gold medal any less remarkable.

In the heat of the moment, two men from opposite parts of the world seeking acclaim decided to share that glory. And we all won for witnessing it.

The story of the high jumpers stands out to me, in great part because it’s so different from my understanding of competition.

I grew up watching Michael Jordan, an uber-talented basketball player who told himself his opponents were slighting him at every turn — even when they weren’t. Jordan played these tricks on himself so that he could maintain a Dominate and destroy mindset.

That’s what competition was supposed to be, I was told. It was about getting the upper hand. And that meant vanquishing any obstacle in our path.

Such an approach had its benefits. Edgy competition raised the quality of the games Jordan played in, providing premium entertainment value.

But there were some costs as well. Jordan’s Chicago Bulls found themselves in nasty rivalries with the Detroit Pistons and New York Knicks over the years. And two of Jordan’s most iconic moments included him celebrating over defeated opponents.

This was not the best look, and it did not provide the best example for the next generation.

No, what that generation — my generation — needed was precisely what those Olympic high jumpers displayed.

I have a strong competitive spirit.

I loathe the participation trophy trend that’s pervaded our society. I believe accolades should be earned, not mass distributed. And I do my best to prove my worth each day.

And yet sometimes, my best is not enough. Sometimes, there’s someone out there who’s faster, stronger, or better.

Am I supposed to resent their success? Should I treat their achievements as a personal slight?

I shouldn’t. And I don’t.

I know to tip my cap when I know I’m outclassed. I understand the importance of giving others their due.

Of course, it’s easier to do this when the stakes are low. Losing a recreational sports event is not the end of the world. Getting beat out for a job that would cover my rent? That’s a tougher pill to swallow.

Nevertheless, I make a point of not villainizing my competition for wanting what I want. I don’t blame them for executing their game plan more masterfully than I.

If there’s something I could have done better, I focus on how I can improve going forward. But if I gave my best and it wasn’t enough, I show my respect and move on.

This approach has worked well for me over the years. But I wonder if those at the top of the pyramid would find similar success with it.

After all, competitors like Michael Jordan are in another stratosphere. They’ve reached the pinnacle by harnessing the edge that others couldn’t. They’ve refused to accept that their best wasn’t good enough.

I can’t find that gear. I know that as well as I know anything.

And yet, I’ve long questioned whether such an admission is a knock on my ambition.

Now, finally, I believe I have the answer.

Most mornings start the same way for me.

I get up, put on workout clothes, and lace up my Nikes. Then, I go for a run.

Running gives me great peace. In the still of the early morning, I can be alone with my thoughts. I’m carefree as my feet hit the pavement in rhythmic harmony.

Still, this solitude can get monotonous at times. So, I joined a running club to change things up.

My first workout with the club was a bit of a culture shock. I simply wasn’t used to running in a pack.

Every other time I’d encountered a group of runners on the sidewalk, I’d tried to breeze past them. This wasn’t so much for bragging rights as to satisfy my self-competitive spirit.

If an entire group was running at that speed, surely, I had it in me to surpass it. At least that’s what I told myself.

But now, I was supposed to stick with the group. I was meant to follow the pack, not lead it.

I struggled with this notion for a couple of miles. But then a revelation hit me like a thunderbolt.

Running with the group wasn’t weakening my running prowess. It was making me stronger.

Sure, everyone was going a bit slower than I liked. But their steadiness helped me build stamina, and their camaraderie helped me build confidence.

This activity wasn’t going to close the gap between me and the top finishers at 5K races. But it was making me a more well-rounded runner — one who could look on a fifth-place finish with acceptance rather than self-loathing.

This is the spirit that the Olympic high jumpers were tapping into. In a world that often divides us into winners and losers, they proved that giving our all can represent an even sweeter sense of victory.

So, let’s put away the yardsticks. Let’s turn off the scoreboards. Let’s ease off the comparisons.

We don’t need to stay one step ahead of everyone else to maintain our competitive edge. Our best is enough.

Double Edge

I was furious.

On my parents’ TV screen, I was watching the Ohio State Buckeyes celebrate wildly. Meanwhile, the Miami Hurricanes looked on, stunned.

It wasn’t supposed to go like this.

In fact, moments earlier, the Miami players were mobbing the field in jubilation. Fireworks were going off above the stadium. The game appeared to be over, with the Hurricanes victorious.

But then, in the midst of the celebration, a referee threw one of his yellow flags onto the field. He then proceeded to call a dubious penalty on a Miami player.

The game would continue. And Ohio State would come from behind to win the game and a national college football championship.

The result was bad enough. But the way it all went down left me in a rage.

I was 15 years old when this game took place. About 3 and a half years after the final whistle, I would attend the University of Miami and become a Hurricane for life. But as I watched Ohio State players celebrating on TV, I had no affiliation to the school they’d just vanquished. I was simply a fan of the Miami football team.

I shouldn’t have gotten so worked up. But I couldn’t help myself.

For years, I held a vendetta against The Ohio State University. I rooted against their football team in every game. When their basketball team played a road game in Miami, I jawed with Buckeye fans in the arena concourse. And, when my family drove through Columbus, Ohio — home to the Ohio State campus — I urged them not to stop the car.

Eventually, the anger subsided. But it was quickly replaced by shame.

For it turns out that Ohioans are kind-hearted, salt-of-the-earth people. I’ve worked with several over the years, and I don’t have a bad thing to say about any of them.

I was wrong to paint them as villains for so long, just because of the results of a football game. It was foolish, shortsighted — and strangely predictable.

Competition. It’s an American hallmark.

A nation built on the promise of an elected government and a capitalist economy relies on competition. On straining for scarce resources. On gaining an edge.

We compete for employment, for housing, for influence. We even compete for acclaim as the best spouse or parent.

Ostensibly, this makes us better. It keeps us motivated to give our best at all times. It inspires us to produce more. And it allows society to reap the benefits.

But hyper-competition is not foolproof. The edge we require can cut both ways.

Going head-to-head with others is a zero-sum game. There are winners and losers. Rising up means another gets pushed down.

When we’re in the fray, it’s hard to ignore this dynamic. And it’s tempting to denigrate the competition in order to swing the odds in our favor.

Some of these efforts can be mostly harmless. For example, athletes often trash talk each other to gain a psychological advantage. While this can be obnoxious, the hostilities normally don’t extend any further than that.

But other times, denigrating the competition does cross the line. It can lead to us othering our competition. It can cause us to act in racist or misogynistic ways.

Scenarios like these can cause lasting destruction. They can tear our society further and further apart. They can leave countless victims in their wake.

Scenarios like these beg the question: Is competition more destructive than good?

There’s an image that I’ve long struggled to reckon with.

It’s a portrait of Adolf Hitler as an infant.

I despise Hitler. I have always viewed him as the epitome of pure evil. Even writing his name here makes me feel squeamish.

And yet, he doesn’t look like the devil incarnate in this photo. With curiosity written on his face, he simply looks like a child.

This image is important to consider. For it reminds us that society’s greatest ills are not innate. They’re cultivated through the structures we encounter.

Hatred is a learned behavior. One forged by our experiences and our misconceptions.

And the kiln that turns us from respectable to rotten? It’s fueled by competition.

The very idea of duking it out for a limited resource — be it property, influence or accolades — is fraught with danger. For while the rules of chivalry help keep things respectable, it’s on each of us to abide by them.

Generally, such guidance is sufficient. But if desperation takes hold, or our emotions get the best of us, we toss aside good judgment. We revert to jungle law — to winning at all costs.

The dark side of competition gave rise to so many dark chapters in our planet’s recent history — the rise of the Nazis in Europe, the spread of terrorism in the Middle East, the advent of brutal drug cartels in Latin America.

But those are just the grim headlines. The real story lies under the surface.

The images of an angry mob of insurrectionists rushing the United States Capitol will always be chilling. But one image is doubly haunting.

It’s of a rioter darting through the capitol rotunda with a Confederate flag in tow.

Such a flag once flew in parts of America, after the southern states seceded and plunged the nation into a bloody Civil War. But even during those trying times, it never flew in the seat of the United States government.

Much has been made of that flag over the last 150 years or so. There are varying opinions on what it stands for, and even what to name it.

(While many have dubbed it the Confederate flag, southerners have often called it the Rebel flag.)

In my opinion, the Confederate flag symbolizes competition gone wrong. Of an error compounded by calcification of time.

You see, the southern states didn’t try and leave the union on a whim. They did so because they felt left behind.

The earliest decades of our nation were defined by two economic models — a northern one, teeming with cities and industry, and a southern one, dotted with rural plantations.

The southern economy was built on slave labor — on the bondage of Black people. The northern one was not.

Slavery and the plantation model were not invented in the south. But they became ingrained there. So even as the world evolved, white southerners found themselves irrationally attached to a system where hierarchy was determined by skin tone.

As the United States expanded westward, adding new states to the union, the South saw its influence shrink. Threatened, it responded with a stinging act of defiance — secession.

But the Confederacy was not long-lived. Barely four years later, the Civil War ended in a southern surrender.

Even so, the scars of the conflict would linger.

For in the wake of the bloodshed, white southerners were forced to compete with freed slaves for land and prosperity. The stakes were high and the resources were strained.

In the wake of such challenges, the disgraced southerners demonized their new competitors. They formed posses to kill young Black men. They set up a system of sharecropping to keep black families in poverty. And they codified segregationist policies in every state they inhabited.

Such abhorrence  — forged by competition — helped spawn an ugly legacy of racism that persists to this day.

And yet, the post-war South was not alone in this endeavor.

Indeed, as immigrants flooded to our shores and filled our cities, they were met with similar resentment. The newcomers — be they Irish, Italian, Chinese, Arab, or Mexican — faced resistance from the established, who abhorred the competition.

Xenophobia has a long shadow even in the most enlightened bastions of America. Add in the growth of the business sector and globalization in recent decades, and the issue has only intensified.

That is how we’ve gotten to where we are today. To a polarized America where millions of people support blatantly racist positions.

Building walls isn’t about making our nation more secure. Dissolving global trade isn’t about making our nation more prosperous. And typecasting people based on skin tone isn’t making our nation more equitable.

No, such actions are self-serving. They rig the competition so that those with a track record of prosperity remain victorious at all costs.

And in doing so, they threaten to eat America alive.

It’s time that we take a fresh look at competition.

It’s time that we more closely consider its limitations and moral dangers.

For while competition will continue to exist — Adam Smith’s invisible hand can’t exist without it — it doesn’t need to exist unfettered. It can’t exist unfettered.

Such introspection will not be easy. Rehashing our core principles never is.

But it’s a process that cannot wait.

For the next calamity lurks in the distance, and its underlying cause is already known.

It’s on us to do what needs to be done. It’s on us to put a sheath on the double edge of competition.

Let’s get to it.

The Competitor Within

Is competition a zero-sum game?

I say no.

Sure, there’s plenty of rhetoric out there about vanquishing our rivals. On how There Can Be Only One or If You Ain’t First, You’re Last.

We’ve taken that to heart more than ever these days. From the ballfields to Capitol Hill, from the job market to social media feeds, partisanship is as vicious as ever.

Competition has brought out the worst in us. It’s poured lighter fluid on the vitriol of groupthink. It’s caused us to dehumanize anyone who’s not on our team. It’s eviscerated any empathy we might otherwise have for those who lie in the path of our selfish desires.

In the relentless quest to win, it appears we have all lost.

Yet, it doesn’t have to be this way.

We can still compete without causing each other carnage. Without drawing lines in the sand and causing further chasms in our society.

We just need to shift our focus.

I’m a highly competitive person.

I grew up playing baseball and watching Luke Skywalker lock light sabers with Darth Vader. The win at all costs mantra was strong within me.

Then, things changed.

I was 13 when the Twin Towers came down, and the skies above New York and Washington filled with fire and smoke. It was a horrifying, unfathomable event. Amidst my grief, there was confusion. How could the free world I knew have suffered such a brutal loss, out of the clear blue sky?

Of course, I wanted to punish those who took thousands of innocent lives. I supported the U.S. military’s operations in Afghanistan, and still do today. Petty as it was, I smiled when Seal Team 6 took out Bin Laden a decade later.

But my view of competition had changed. Going after the terrorists didn’t constitute winning. We had already lost something we could never get back.

As I moved into high school, I was lost. Disillusioned with the Zero-Sum game of competition and the horrors I’d seen come from it, I held myself back. I did my best to blend in at the expense of standing out.

By the time I was 16, my mother was fed up with my act. You’re lazy, she told me.

Those two words lit a fire under me.

The competitiveness that was long-dormant in my soul roared back to life. And I sprung into action.

I improved my grades enough to get multiple acceptance letters from colleges across the South. But upon choosing which school to attend, I didn’t let up.

I continued to strive for greatness through college, and the two careers that followed. Good enough wasn’t sufficient for me. I could always do better.

In fact, I was obligated to do better.

You see, I came to realize that by bringing out the best in myself, I could provide more to those around me. That I could help make the world a better place.

I came to realize the best kind of competition isn’t a Zero-Sum game.

When we shift our competitive focus inward, we change the game.

Think about it.

By demanding the best of ourselves, we play the role of both coach and critic.

We achieve what we might not have thought was possible before. We push our boundaries. We grow. We iterate.

Better yet, by turning the fires of competition inward, we can connect with others. We can respect our rivals, embrace our differences and focus on helping each other through a common drive for better.

Everyone wins in this scenario. In fact, the only casualty of self-competition is complacency.

So, let’s stop the blood feuds, the name calling, the nastiness. Let’s shift our competitive focus to a more productive place.

Let’s embrace the competitor within.