How Competitive are You?

Seattle just hosted The Boeing Classic--and in true Seattle spirit it rained for most of it.  My office is downtown and I noticed early last week that the golfers must be staying at the nearby Westin because I private shuttles with the Boeing Classic logo on the side kept arriving and dropping off guests.  On Thursday morning I was walking back to my office from a few blocks away and ended up walking with a three of the pro golfers--who I will refer to as Larry Moe and Curly to protect their identities.  I asked LMC how much rain they endured the day prior and they said they had endured rain on 13 out of 18 holes and that rain gear really came in handy.  As we continued to walk they asked me about my work and I explained how I work with senior executives and help them with their strategic objectives.  As we continued towards my office, there are two options for entry.  One is to go through one building, the other is to go around one building to the other side.  I chose the going through--the three of them argued about what way was faster--two of them said it would be faster to go around and one of them wanted to enter in my direction and go through.  The two convinced the one and they all three selected the around the building route and I entered through.   What happened next is the point of this blog entry.  I went into my building, rode the elevator up to my office, dropped my bags, and then took the elevator down to then continue through the building to go grab a coffee.  As I entered the adjacent building, the three golfers noticed me and they came over and said, "We beat you in--our way was faster."  I smiled and agreed with them and then entered the coffee line. As I stood in the coffee line, I played the scenario back in my mind and have continued to be amused at the fact that these three guys could turn an everyday act of walking down the street into a competition.  I was also amazed at how pleased they were when they confirmed their suspicion that their way was faster after all when I emerged into their building after them.  I did not have the heart to tell them of my pit stop to drop my bags.   I just let them think they won the race I did not even know I had entered.  I then compared my approach to life with theirs and realized that I am just not a competitive person in that sense.  I do not look at beating other people or being better than someone else at something. I am instead competitive against myself and want to do better each day than I did the day prior.  On Friday I had lunch with a certain NFL player that I told him about my run in with the golfers and how it made me consider my competitive nature.  He went on to tell me that he was similar to me in his competitive nature so this made me feel better knowing how successful he is as a person and athlete.  Through it all, I have decided to stay as I am and continue to have the daily goal of doing a little bit better than I did the day prior.  

Comments

[Stephen]

I'm highly competitive but I'm also very much quietly competitive. I don't often let others know that I'm actually competing.

I like to use my competitive nature to motivate me to achieve.

For example I read an article just the other day about how a blogger achieved over 2,000 subscribers to her blog in just 90 days. I couldn't help but think that if she could do it so can I.

Now that I know it is possible I had to really up my subscriber targets and now I'm doing things that has taken me well beyond what my previous targets were.