Welcome to the Our Moral Compass Podcast. Each daily reading focuses on a different quote on how we can best apply it to our own moral compass and one of the five areas in Social Emotional Learning: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills and Responsible Decision Making. Thank you for listening and we hope you consider subscribing to the podcast for future episodes.
The Downside of Competition
“The problem with competition is that it takes away the requirement to set your own path, to invent your own method, to find a new way.”
-Seth Godin
As we all know competition is the process of trying to get or win something whether it is on an individual or team level and this competition can also just be within ourselves. It is sometimes said that competition can bring out the best or worst in people. It can either drive people to reach new heights or have them crash down pretty hard if they do become victorious. In today’s quote American author Seth Godin who has written books such as This Is Marketing and Linchpin reminds us that when we are engrossed in the daily grind of competition we need to be mindful of what is not only going around us but what is happening within us. Are we keeping a sort of checks and balance on ourselves? Are we controlling our impulses, our thoughts, our emotions. The key is that when we are competing we don’t want to lose ourselves in the process.
Seth Godin expresses that when we are competing there is always the danger in that it will take away the requirement in setting our own path. What this means is the script in essence is flipped in that often times the competition itself becomes the central focus and not really what the original intentions may have been: to help develop ourselves and grow in certain areas in order to continually improve. We all set out on this journey of life trying to establishing ourselves in all that we do, what we believe and what we hope to achieve. This is our path, our calling. Competition can sometimes derail this if we do not continue to maintain our focus on what our why is. It can also unintentionally put a damper on your level of creativity as you may become so consumed with competing you just focus on the end goal and not so much of the process. It is through your engagement in the process, that new ideas or methods are created. Don’t lose sight of this as it helps you to find a new way to solve a problem whether it be for yourself or to help others. Competition should be a well intended self motivator allowing us to set goals for ourselves. If we look at it from this perspective it can provide us the opportunity to better ourselves along the way.
What does this quote mean to you and how can you apply today’s message towards managing yourself better?
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Music from https://filmmusic.io
“Relaxing Piano Music” by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
A special thank you to Feedspot for recognizing the Our Moral Compass podcast as one of the Top 10 Social Emotional Learning Podcasts on the internet. It is an honor to be amongst the other podcasts on this list as we all strive to make this world a better place.
Becoming The Change 