The Thrill of Competition
Up until a few months ago I spent most of my professional and creative energy in doubt, thinking I should be something I was not built to be. This came about from being fired from my last job a few years ago which forced my hand to take the jump into technology. I’ve always prided myself on being very good at what I do. This isn’t from a natural intelligence or abnormal skill, it’s from my ridiculous work ethic. I generally outperform my peers simply because I stay till the job’s done while they are clocking out at 5.
Up until losing my job, I was extremely confident about that part of myself, but when they fired me I thought that maybe it wasn’t enough. To be fair, I was an asshole about it. I had the only team actually meeting our goals, and beyond that we were crushing them. I got tired of them not taking my advice on how to improve and I was very vocal about my disapproval. So maybe I didn’t give them an option, but this post isn’t about placing blame, it’s about not taking the sole blame upon myself.
Ultimately I’m glad it happened because, though it was a tough journey, I’m in an extremely good spot in my technology development path and I wouldn't have made the leap if I hadn’t been forced. Yet I find myself having similar thoughts with companies I work with now that they are too slow and too stuck in their ways to change.
I wonder if I should just calm down and let them run their companies their way, but the honest truth is that’s not who I am. I love competition, not because I love to win but because I love the thrill. I love it when someone bests me because it means I have someone to set my sights on and better myself through the process. I have zero time or energy to wast on people who are fine with just coasting and bringing in their lucrative paycheck without actually trying to constantly improve their selves and their companies.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I look down on these people. I actually sometimes envy them because I could use that mentality sometimes to give myself a break, but I simply don’t have it in me. What I’m trying to say is that I’m refusing to feel bad about crushing anyone in my way that can’t meet my efforts. I say this because I fully expect to be crushed if I don’t meet my competitions standards. That’s the beauty of competition, not winning, but constantly improving.
As living beings we were designed to compete. We can see this through the entire animal kingdom and the human race is no exception. We love the thrill of battle and the euphoria of victory. The problem is that competition has turned into an abomination. We used to compete for scarce resources out of survival, but now we compete out of greed, because we’ve lost the mentality that simply being alive is precious enough. We’ve let ourselves believe that we constantly need more in our lives to be happy. I am here to advocate for the revival of true competition. Where we compete for the joy and thrill of it, and love losing as much as we love winning, because we know we gave everything we had, and now we can work on becoming even better.
I only hope to develop a team around me someday that has that same mentality and constantly pushes me to improve. I have yet to find that in any company I have worked for, which is probably why I piss so many people off. Who knows, maybe I am the asshole, but I have a partner that doesn’t put up with bullshit and friends who speak their thoughts to a fault. I’ve also had people in my daily life tell me how patient and thoughtful I can be. They wouldn’t be in my life if I was the villain in this story, so I’m pretty sure most people just don’t like having people in their lives that make them look bad. I’m on a quest to make this world a better place, so if you’re not going to join me, stand aside and don’t make me out to be the bad one.
