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A question I have often asked myself is whether performance and competition are linked?
There is no doubt they are correlated and we only need to look at competitions like the Olympics to see examples of this. World records tend to get broken when you put the best athletes in the world against one another, which causes individuals to turn in their best performances.
But are they linked, as in you need competition in order to bring out the best performance? Are we capable of performing at our best without the need for competition? This is a tough question to answer, as it is confounded by societal norms.
From a young age we are taught to compete with those around us. We compete at school, in sport and even socially. We are rewarded in many ways for being competitive and even criticised for not being competitive. But is the need to be competitive in order to perform nature or nurture?
If we took away the need to compete with one another, would we no longer push ourselves to be better? Would we all just end up mediocre and would society fail to progress?
Or would taking away competition lead us to find other ways to motivate ourselves? For example, would we motivate ourselves to perform simply because we would find fulfillment in performing at our best?
One observation I have made is that if someone has a passion then they will push themselves to perform regardless of competition. Not surprisingly, these individuals also tend to be the ones that win competitions because they are passionate about what they do!
I honestly believe that if we were free to follow our passions then we would all perform at our peak without the need for competition.
So why is competition drilled into us from a young age? I would like to believe its because its an easy way to try and get society to perform at its peak. The sceptic in me thinks that it’s a way to create tiers within our society given opportunities are limited. We cannot all be CEOs after all!
