To all of my loyal readers, all three of you, I would like to apologize for my lack of Sunday Specials the last few weeks. Circumstances arose that complicated my writing and for this I apologize. Especially to Bret who I know was mad at me for not doing them. So, without further ado
What is it that causes some people to be competitive and some people to simply not care about winning or losing? It is genetics? Is it social surroundings? Is it a combination of the two? Or is it something far less comforting and agreeable? I personally feel that a person's competitiveness derives from the success they achieved at a young age. Or, if you will, a person's competitive nature is reliant upon the success they achieve as a child. Why do I feel this way? Because there are not a ton of competitive people out there who continually lose at everything. People who win, continue to want to win while people who lose simply tend to have fun playing the game.
Now, there are multiple types of competitiveness, and I will try to explain them by grouping them into four sections. First of all we have the non-completive people, those people who when they actually decide to play something with a winner simple do nothing or talk about how it doesn't matter who wins or loses. Those are the type of people who have no stress when doing something competitive and yet at times are unmotivated because they simply don't care.
Secondly there are the socially competitive people. These are the people who enjoying playing games or competing with a group of people in a social environment. They enjoy winning but are still OK with losing as long as everybody is having a good time. They might be motivated to try hard but since winning is not of the utmost importance they only have low levels of stress while playing.
The third group would be considered your average to above average competitive person. They play a game wanting and trying hard to win. They don't want to lose and will work hard to make sure that they win. They are competitive in most areas of their lives and when competing in a competition get upset or annoyed when they lose. These people have higher levels of stress when playing and can take it personally when then lose.
That leaves us with the last group of people, the group of must win at all costs people. This, fortunately and unfortunately, is where I reside. These are the people that everybody else gets mad at because everything we do must have a winner and a loser. Not only do we like to win, we have to win, losing is not an option. You can say that not only do we hate to lose, we simply cannot accept losing. We get angry, we yell, we make everything about winning and losing and our high stress levels show it. We sometimes have an unhealthy fascination with winning that drives those around us crazy. We can't help it, its who we are, and in some case, what defines us.
So I ask you, is it possible that this is a genetic trait? Well, I can tell you right now that if you compare my sister and I you will see that is not the case. If I am at one extreme then she is at the other. This same comparison can do great damage to the idea that it is our social surrounding that makes us competitive which leads me to the conclusion that while those two things may play a small role it is our early success and reinforcement of that success that drives us to become the win at all cost people that we are. Is it good? Probably not. Is it changeable? I'd have to say no. It is what it is. You either let it drive you crazy or you embrace it and live with it. As for me, I embrace it and move on, to win another day. Or every day.
