Why It’s Good To Be Competitive 

You hear the word ‘competitive’, and you automatically think of negative things – it’s a word (and personality trait) that often gets a bad rap. Depending on the situation, some people might equate being competitive with being aggressive, unkind, cutthroat, or perhaps even dangerous. Whatever you think, you’ll always consider someone known as competitive to be a bad loser. 

However, although some competitive people will also have those other traits, it doesn’t necessarily follow that everyone will – everyone is different, after all. A closer look at what being competitive means shows that doing it in a healthy way with good intentions can have many benefits for you. With that in mind, read on to find out why it’s good (at least sometimes) to be competitive. 

Motivation And Drive

Competition is quite unique really – it’s got a fantastic way of truly igniting a spark under someone and giving them a lot more motivation and drive in their personal lives or their careers – and often both. The thing is, when we’re faced with a challenge or the opportunity to outperform other people (or businesses, for example), it makes us push ourselves harder and want to reach higher and get better goals. 

The great thing is that it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about sports, school, the workplace, or anything else – healthy competition can be a brilliant way to get some personal growth in place and achieve all the things you want to achieve. If there’s nothing to be competitive about, what’s going to make you want to move forward and do more? As you can see, having a competitive spirit can definitely take you places. 

Continuous Improvement 

Another of the very many benefits of being competitive is that it can help you become a better person and continuously improve so that you’re the best version of yourself you can be. When we’re competing against others, we’re always having to come up with new ways of doing things that make us quicker and more productive, and that gives us the edge in some way – that kind of thinking has to be spurred on by something, and it may as well be some good old fashioned competition. 

Although doing all of this is supposed to get you ahead of the competition, it can help with other things, too. If you’re always looking for innovative options, advancements, and breakthroughs, you’re always going to be at the head of the pack – that has to be a good thing, even if the only person you’re interested in working with or even outperforming is yourself. 

Accountability And Responsibility 

Competition can get out of control and become something very unpleasant if you allow it to, and that’s probably where many of the issues that come from competitiveness stem from – that’s what people see and what they remember most of all. However, as we’ve said, it doesn’t have to be like that, and in fact, when we’re competing, it’s a great chance to become more accountable for our actions and performance. 

We can then take that accountability and responsibility into the rest of our lives and make sure we’re being good people – we’ll take true ownership of our goals and actions, and whether it’s meeting deadlines, delivering results, or generally being decent members of society, competition and the things it can teach us will definitely help. 

Plus, this is something we can start early on – playing Minesweeper on your computer is a good way to hone your competitive skills by playing against yourself and trying to beat your previous score – when competition is something you’re used to, you’ll find it an easier mindset to get into and not something you want to shy away from. 

You’ll Get What You Want

Finally, being competitive is good because it essentially means you’ll get what you want out of life – or at least, you’ll give it a good shot (remember, being competitive isn’t the same as winning every time, and there’s no way to guarantee that). 

If someone is afraid to get competitive, they might walk away from something they want, and that would improve their lives drastically, which would be a shame. However, someone with a competitive streak wouldn’t do that – instead, they’d push for what they wanted and compete with others to get it, and in the end, if they win and improve their lives, that’s fantastic, but even if they miss out, at least they won’t have any regrets, and that’s almost as good.