Yours Competitively

 

What I Can, I Will

What I can, I will.
What I can’t, I will still try.
What I never can, I will still struggle to try.
But I will never give up!

This motto is what I see, experience, and feel around me. Why lie? To an extent, I see it within myself too. I know my capacities and limitations where my expertise begins and where it ends. Within this spectrum, I exhibit various frequencies of results -some good, some satisfactory, some improvable. There are no bad frequencies; you simply fall off the spectrum. But that’s not bad either.

So I flap, waddle, and swim in safe waters where every wave is known, every tide is gauged and measured. Safe, because these are my well-practiced and over-practiced skills. I’m a potential competitor to every new urchin forming on the rock- a threat to the larva that’s just hatched or still carries part of its shell, fearing to slip back into it.

My interactions with these fledglings decide whether I become their predator, guide, or competitor. Whoever I am to them, I remain superior. What I do with that superiority determines how the waters, and their survivors, will evolve. But trying to outdo the weaker is no mark of superiority or competition; it’s merely the act of a loser who eventually falls in her own eyes.

The Faces of Competition

Today, big or small, old or new- every aspiring contestant is competition. A bold competition that looks you in the eye and pricks your sight.

As I see it, competition exists at three levels:

1. With your peers
2. With your superiors
3. With yourself

Competition with peers yields two outcomes. If you win, it brings satisfaction and a desire to strive for more. If you lose, it may bring hopelessness, with or without the will to try again.

Competition with superiors often leads to a false sense of dejection if you lose, because you’re competing outside your own spectrum — you fall off it. If you win, there’s a sense of pride in conquering the impossible, and you move to higher realms of competition.

Finally, the competition with self- the purest of all. Here, you compete with an older version of your own strengths, capacities, and limitations. You’re competing with your sixth minute at the seventh, today with yesterday, and this year with last year.

For believers in karma, it’s a step ahead- outdoing yourself with every birth.

If we wish, we can internalize the other two competitions. Instead of competing with peers, let each of our abilities compete with another. My writing competes with my medical skills — to see which delivered better: whether the reader was satisfied, or the patient.

Each skill learns from the other what it takes to succeed. The struggle may move from healthy to unhealthy, if one ability destroys the other and wins, I’m still the winner in a narrow sense. But if one carries the other along, sharing the winning space seasonally and timely, then I become the undisputed winner.

External vs. Internal Competition

External competition implies scarcity, of commodities, opportunities, or growth factors.
Internal competition, on the other hand, explores your abundant, untapped, and productive zones.

External competition sets a false upper limit defined by someone else’s capacities.
Internal competition redefines the horizon — ever broadening, ever growing, never ceasing.

It transcends age, trends, and market analyses. It’s your own movement, whether it starts after four months, four years, or four decades. It’s comforting, yet not cosy; reliable, yet not laid back; passionate, yet not destructively aggressive.

It’s a rat race where no cats are competing. Only one rat runs to achieve its own dreams and desires.

Lessons from Nature

In an internal competition, I don’t encroach on someone else’s survival. I mark my own boundaries and shift my paradigms according to need and convenience.

Let me share one of nature’s finest examples.
A leopard never hunts in a lion’s territory. Leopards are solitary and elusive. They ambush or stalk their prey. The strongest of all jungle cats, they can climb trees, camouflage, and hide in the densest bushes, very different from their cousin, the lion, king of the jungle.

Yet, a female leopard will never give birth to her cubs in even a hospitable lion territory.
Whether you see this as a losing weakness or a winning strength is up to you.

Final Thought

Talent may be the base for competition, but not its cause.
I’ll leave you with a wonderful quote I came across recently:

“You may not be the most talented in the room, but you can definitely be the most competitive.”