Our desire to win has been with us since the beginning of human life. Nobody likes to lose when competing with someone in a crocket or basketball match or exams. The biggest competition that we face is the competition of life, and it is not about winning. It is about the living experience to become a better person. The world is not always good for us. Many times it is very mean, and no matter how competent, how tough, we are, it will still beat us to our knees and will keep us there permanently if we let it. No competition will hit us as hard as life will. The true essence and spirit of this competition of life are about how hard we can take a hit, fall, get up and keep moving forward. That is how we should compete in our life. We create many imaginary obstacles in our daily lives. We keep blaming life, circumstances and people and use them as an excuse not to take any action at all. We must not turn everything into a contest but a learning experience. Why do we give winning so much of importance? Perhaps we do it to gain recognition, after all, nobody likes a loser, and everybody loves a winner. However, the people who genuinely love us and care about us will love us the same even when we lose and will be there to keep our morale high when we need them.

Competition stands for a platform to get inspiration from people who are performing better than us so that we push our limits and become better performers. As we keep playing better, we develop self-confidence. We must keep in mind that we must never acquire a ‘win at all cost’ attitude. That will not be good to us and the people around. Any victory is achieved by unfair means does not count as a victory. We must develop an attitude of ‘keep trying’. In the movie ‘3-idiots’, a student kept on progressing with ‘rote-learning’ strategy while the central character was focused on achieving excellence. Short cuts to win never take us far while working on excellence does.

Our parents and friends often lead us to victory. Some children seek approval of their, elders, and if we see their mistakes more than their excellence, we are not a motivator. A single word or sentence of appreciation can change someone’s life. At the same time, it can go in someone’ head so we must be careful. However, in any competition, we must focus all our energies into giving our best and not think about winning. If we do that, we enjoy every bit of competition and winning or losing does not matter to us. Winning is temporary, while the experience stays with us forever.

Whichever competition we take part in, be it in school, in the neighbourhood, it should be a healthy competition. Our focus must not be to defeat an opponent but to try harder to give our best. A child participating in a 100-meter race and 400-meter race cannot apply the same strategy to win in both races. In the former, he must learn how to give his best performance and learn how to win that race. Once learnt, he must apply that knowledge in the other race and create a different strategy for it. Learning of one competition can be used in another that can happen after a long time. Therefore, the impact of competition stays for the long run.  Competition is not about winning. It is about living the moment and making progress. We learn to succeed in competition but more that we learn that winners don’t always do different things, they do things differently. Champions are not supernatural; they fight one more second when everyone else quits. Sometimes, one more second of effort gives us victory.[1]