Competition in life is inevitable; we are social creatures in constant interactions with others since our early years. We compete with our peers during play, for joy and winning; later, the competition gets fierce and complex during school, university, and work.
At each setting, the competition level differs, swinging between minimum to maximum depending on the importance of the activity and our perspective of competitiveness.
How a Competitive Mindset Affects Our Perspective
We compete for several reasons and are wired to the competitive mindset differently.
A healthy competitive mindset can shower us with good feelings and help us learn fast and develop resilience to bounce back from setbacks. On the other hand, an unhealthy competitive mindset that pushes us to a relentless constant desire to compete and never lose could be malignant and worsen our mental health. A competitive mindset, in general, has several benefits. However, hyper-competitiveness, the indiscriminate need to compete and win and to avoid losing at all costs, is linked to significant psychological issues.
Hypercompetitive people get motivated by external rather than internal factors and push themselves hard to take on too many roles and tasks that ultimately result in not meeting their goals and too much stress. They are obsessed with winning at all costs and want to be better than others whatever it takes, which is incredibly consuming. They deeply believe in the saying: “You do not have to run faster than the bear to get away. You just have to run faster than the guy next to you”.
Psychology of Competition
A competitive mindset is affected by several factors, among them social competition and diversity of the competition.
The social competition main purpose is to stand out from the crowd and it gets influenced according to the size of the group. For example, a study explored how competitiveness changes with the size of the group found that participants got less competitive when they had more competitors and more competitive when the group was small.
It is also more evident in individuals driven by social comparison. This means that highly competitive people are highly-sensitive to competition within small groups since they perceive it as an opportunity to stand out and become less competitive in large groups as the comparison will less probably be in their favor.
The other factor, diversity of competitiveness, refers to differences in the degree of competitiveness. Some people are more competitive than others and their behavior differs accordingly. Thus, highly competitive people seem more focused on short-term wins and less prudent in the way they profit from resources as they prioritize winning over efficiency. Conversely, less competitive people try their best to make the most of any resources.
How to Cultivate a Healthy Competitive Mindset?
Like habits, building a healthy competitive mindset requires continuous work to reap its benefits and detach the unhealthy habits it could feed.
Below are three strategies to create a healthy competitive mindset for good outcomes.
1. Connect Winning with Effort
The first step is to link positive outcomes to persistent work rather than good luck or talent. People succeed in their competition because they do their best.
2. Redefine Success
We can only control how we perform, not the outcomes. A performance-based, not an outcome-based, goal generates a healthy competitive mindset because you attribute success to work and learning from genuine experience.
3. Learn from the Competition
Getting inspired by competitors is more fruitful than feeling envious of them and comparing yourself to them. We can learn from their performance and get better at what we do.
Concisely, competition is an amazing source of motivation. While a healthy competitive mindset feeds progress and helps overcome setbacks through being laser-focused on performance, an unhealthy mindset can severely affect mental well-being and trigger too much stress.
References
online.eou.edu
standard.asl.org
biglifejournal.com.au