It's Not Evil To Be Competitive

For years, I tried to kill my competitive side.

I thought it was destructive and made me a bad person.

But of course, it didn’t work, as my competitive streak is still alive and well.

In fact, it burns much stronger than I expected.

Moreover, I learned that you can be competitive without being malicious.

Let me show you how.

A queer event that made me question everything

At a social event for LGBTQ+ folks, people laughed at me.

I told them that I dislike competitive sports, so I only do solo sports like cardio and swimming. Since I hate losing.

People laughed because I said I dislike competition, yet I hate losing.

Huh?

I didn’t see the contradiction. Yeah, I hate losing. So of course I wouldn’t put myself somewhere I’d be sure to lose. Sports is not my strong suit.

But I see what they mean. If you say you hate competition, this implies that you don’t care about winning, and don’t mind losing.

However, some of us hate competition because we know we’ll lose, so we’d rather quit.

After that conversation, I realized that I’m a pretty competitive person. But only if I:

1) Care about the thing

And

2) Believe that I can win.

My toxic high school environment

My high school was in Hong Kong.

The academic competition was extreme and unhealthy.

I was always thrilled to get top-of-the-class marks. I assumed this was because I loved my subjects and worked hard at them.

Yes, I did, but it was also because of how much I enjoy “winning” and “beating my opponents.”

Some classmates and I would get extra tutoring in secret.

Heck, I even practiced Mandarin and French with myself every day, for years, without telling anyone.

Our competition was so stupid and immature. But it did help me get great grades, and I got into my first choice university: McGill. This was the top university in Canada at the time.

My bad attitude towards sports

In contrast, I suck at sports.

So I detached myself and saw athletics as unimportant.

The exception was if my opponents were around my level, since I would have a chance to win.

In some badminton classes, my opponents were just as unskilled as me, so I felt more motivated to play.

For some swimming classes, I was terrible, but my classmates were somehow even worse, so I felt more fired up to compete.

Is this a good mindset for learning? No, but it’s demoralizing to play sports and keep losing. So I’d rather play if I can actually win.

The frenzy of writing challenges

In contrast to sports, I’m much better at writing.

So I’m gung-ho about writing challenges.

These are different from writing contests, by the way.

Contests have a judge to decide on the best story.

Despite my competitive nature, I rarely joined any writing contests. There was only one contest where I “won.”

I got second-place in a poetry writing competition.

There was only a small pool of participants, but there were some amazing poets here, so I was proud of my achievement.

Nevertheless, writing contests are subjective. I prefer objective competitions rather than subjective ones.

Writing challenges tend to be more objective. They’re typically based on how many words you wrote, how many days you’ve posted, etc.

A famous challenge was Nanowrimo (short for National Novel Writing Month).

The goal is to write at least 50 K words of a novel in the month of November. You “win” when you reach that goal.

The vast majority of people do not make it. Yet, I “won” every year from 2012 to 2018 inclusive.

I should have realized then that my drive to win, plus my confidence in winning it, was something that set me apart from most people doing the challenge.

It didn’t make me better than them. It just meant that I cared more about winning. (Or felt more repulsed by the idea of “losing.”)

During my gap years of 2014 to 2016, I challenged myself to write at least 2,000 words every single day.

I succeeded in doing this for 2.5 years. I often wrote much more than 2,000. The most I ever wrote was 10,000 words in a day.

Lots of people called me dedicated, persevering, hardworking, etc.

Maybe I am all of those things.

But if I were not such a competitive person deep down, I probably wouldn’t have persevered for that long.

When I got into grad school, I no longer had the time to do 2,000 words a day. So I cut down my goal to something more reasonable.

On the one hand, I felt genuinely proud that I wrote so much for so long.

On the other hand, if I’m being honest, it wasn’t just about the achievement itself. It was also the sense that I “beat” the vast majority of people.

Since most people can’t write 2,000 words a day, let alone for 2.5 years straight.

I kept writing even on weekends, holidays, birthdays, and sick days. Didn’t take a single day off.

In hindsight, I was very lucky that I was in good enough health to do this.

Though this big grind did lead to some chronic health issues later on. So now I write at a more realistic pace.

Fired up by intense challenges

Another writing challenge I “won” at, was called the Fearless Writer Challenge.

We had to write a social media post every day for 28 days. I did this challenge many times, and always succeeded in posting for the full 28 days without any issues.

I would feel too humiliated to miss a day, so I never missed a day.

Finally, I went to a writer’s summit. We had a guest workshop almost daily for five weeks. The workshops were in the morning too, and I usually get up in the afternoon. They gave us homework after every workshop as well.

They awarded us points for completing homework, and at the end, everyone voted for the most supportive member in the group.

I was one of the few students who completed all the homework, and I attended almost all sessions live. Despite my problem with mornings.

At the end, I won enough community votes to take first place. Second place was only 0.5 points behind me, so competition was fierce.

Huh. It made me realize…Yes, this was burnout lane. Most students couldn’t keep up with the ridiculous workload, of almost daily homework assignments for 5 weeks straight.

I was tired too, especially as I was still working as a therapist, doing my regular writing projects, completing the Fearless Writer Challenge, and progressing through a book coaching course at the same time.

But my desire to win the competition kept me going.

While the first place reward was nice, I mostly wanted the honor of being the “champion,” as conceited and dumb as that sounds.

The fierce battles in video games

Lately, I got sucked into a video game, Tokyo Debunker.

This is a visual novel with awesome characters and storytelling.

But it also has a basic arena battle feature.

While strategy does matter, ultimately it depends on how much money you spend. Free-to-play players have no chance of ranking near the top, unfortunately.

At first, I was unambitious and was happy being in the top 100. But over time, I got more and more into it. I even hit 1st place a few times.

Wow. I knew that I couldn’t keep up this level of spending in the long term. But damn if it didn’t feel good to see myself get #1!

This was terrible for my wallet, though. So I wanted to find something less costly to whet my competitive desires.

Shooting back to writing challenges

For a while, I felt like I didn’t need writing challenges anymore, since I already have a decent daily writing habit.

But I decided to get back into it, just so I can honor my competitive side again. (And discourage myself from overspending on that video game.)

Unfortunately, Nanowrimo closed down because of certain controversies and lack of funding.

When I googled Nanowrimo alternatives, I found Autocrit, which is like Nanowrimo, but you write 50 K words of a novel in three months, not one.

Wow, frankly, 50 K words in three months sounds so slow…But at least it’s realistic. You do have to pay $30 a month if you want to connect with community members, though, so I’ll pass.

Afterwards, I found the Pathfinders Writing Collective, which is free of charge. They have a Discord group for chatting and accountability, with writing sprints.

They also have an online tracker for word count, page count, time count, or however you want to track your goals.

And they have a leaderboard! So this will keep me motivated and stimulate my competitive side.

Don’t forget the reading challenges!

In the past, I did the Toronto Public Libraries Reading Challenge.

They gave you 24 categories of books to read for the year, e.g. A book:

-written by an LGBTQ+ author

-with a number in the title

-with a ghost in it

-in the fantasy or science fiction genre written by an indigenous author

And other examples.

Each book can only satisfy one category.

It was exciting to see myself “win” the challenge. Especially as I got to show off all the books I read at the end of the year to the group.

But for the following year, I couldn’t finish the challenge because I got too distracted reading tons of articles on Medium.

So I dropped out.

But lately, I got into the 52 Book Club Reading Challenge. They have 52 categories, but you’re allowed to use a single book for multiple categories.

So this gives me a great balance between challenge and flexibility, and room to read the books I want to read.

This new challenge already feels encouraging and exciting for me, and I’ve been reading faster as a result.

Deeper thoughts about honoring my competitive side

When I think about these competitive games, I suddenly feel so thrilled and energetic. This is such a contrast to my usual feeling of “I’m so tired I want to lie down.”

For the longest time, I believed that I was lethargic because life made too many demands of me, and I lacked energy.

But maybe a part of the problem, was that I was secretly bored. Or at least, the part of me that craves competition is bored.

To my surprise, I find this side of me attractive, even cool. Not at all repulsive, let alone evil.

This competitive side of me feels happy, like a purring cat. For the first time in my life, this part of me feels seen and actually loved and respected. Rather than scorned and deemed wicked.

I was wrong all along, and I feel bad for shunning such a normal human desire. The drive to win is a great source of energy, inspiration, and creativity. It can be a lot of fun. And we can do this without hurting anyone.

When you get territorial

Another thing I learned about competitiveness, is that it’s about gaining territory.

People talk about being territorial like it’s always a bad thing.

But if we think in terms of the animal kingdom, we do need some territory, or else we have nowhere to eat, rest, play, or even exist.

So as primal as it seems to want to “dominate” in something, it’s not malicious per se.

It’s like how you may feel good if you have a job you’re proud of. It doesn’t have to be prestigious, but just a job that you feel joy and pride in.

It could be a career that feels meaningful, challenging, and interesting to you. Maybe it’s something that contributes to a cause that you care about.

Likewise, you might feel proud of yourself for going to the gym regularly, since most people don’t.

You could feel good if you dominated the leaderboard of some video game.

Or if you consistently win in some writing or reading challenge.

Or you’re a highly respected player on your basketball team.

Or you’re known as an amazing chef among your friends.

We don’t need to be number one to be happy. But it does feel satisfying to be competent and even “superior” in some field or another.

This doesn’t mean hurting or sabotaging anybody, though. You can always feel good about yourself without trashing anybody else.

Over to you

What do you think about your competitive side? Do you have any ways to honor it and give it some love?

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