Competition
I was listening to an interview with Tiger Woods this morning and this question popped into my mind: Are you competitive? Do you have the desire to win whenever you compete?
It could be competition in a sport, a board game, a contest at work, or anything else that gets your competitive juices to flow.
Some people are spurred on to compete when someone tells them they can’t; others generate that fire on their own without prompting. Some never compete.
What causes you to compete or not?
My sense is the cause for competition is the same for everybody – a desire to let your spirit flow into what you do.
The best competitors let their spirit play them like a concert piano. They have the ability to let their thought process go on hold while they let the creative part of them compete.
That doesn’t mean they don’t talk trash or won’t attempt to psych you out or have an ego larger than mainland China. But notice all of that goes away when they are doing what they do best. The brashness may return immediately after they complete their spectacular feat, but it was gone when they were successfully competing.
I think the desire to win is overblown. That’s a lot of mind chatter. The real desire is to let what’s on the inside, out.
Every competitor knows that it’s not their training regime, alone, that gets them to compete at a top level. They also know that it’s not the strategy and tactics they’ve studied laboriously that brings out their performer. It’s mainly the innate desire and trust to let something bigger than them, take over for that brief moment to generate a work of art.
Paul Harvey tells a great story about football great, Rocky Bleier making a spectacular catch during a Pittsburgh Steelers win in Super Bowl XIII. Harvey recounted Bleier’s tour of duty in Vietnam where he received a wound in one leg and shrapnel in the other causing the doctors to tell him he would never play football again. He was awarded the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. He did return to football and competed at the top level, but there was no way he was able to jump in the air more than a few inches off the ground due to the lasting effect of his war injuries no matter how much he trained. Paul Harvey wondered, “What caused him to leap well over a foot in the air to catch that winning touchdown pass?”
All thoughts of limitation were suspended and Bleier’s spirit flowed through allowing him to defy doctors’ prognostications, physical limitations, and any self doubt he may have had. Everyone who played in that Super Bowl was well trained and wanted to win. Bleier let his spirit flow and helped the Steelers win what is known as “The Big Show.”
When people say, “I’m not competitive,” what I hear is someone not believing that there is something bigger than them able to flow through them and allow them to compete and win.
Everyone likes to win but not everyone is willing to open themselves up to their competitive spirit. They are mentally married to limitation and it causes them not to compete because they “know” they can’t win. This knowing keeps them from competing and they justify this position by claiming to be above all this competitive nonsense.
Your spirit is itching to get out. I wonder if you can suspend your beliefs long enough to scratch your competitive itch.
All the best,
John
http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan
http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301
Be Sociable, Share!
