Whether its in business or athletics competition is all around us. It's something you will face everyday. Competing is one of the greatest things in the world. The challenge that competition provides is unmatched anywhere else. The feeling you get after making a sale or winning a competition is a feeling of bliss. Once you obtain it, you want it again and again. I'm not just referring to competition in sports, there are many benefits when competition is present. Competition creates innovation through better products. Competition creates cheaper prices. Competition also creates variety. Americans love to compete. More Americans strongly agreed than any other surveyed country’s residents that they like situations where they compete. Praised in various contexts, competition is the backbone of US economic policy. The US Supreme Court observed, ‘The heart of our national economic policy long has been faith in the value of competition. The belief in competition is not only embodied in the antitrust laws. Every US executive agency, for example, is legally required to have an advocate for competition. (Journal of Antitrust Enforcement)If you are human you will also experience fear and doubt, its normal everybody does…but how you handle that fear and doubt makes all the difference in the world. As Woody Hayes used to say, "Fear makes cowards of us all." Learn to be bigger then your fears. Fear is your friend, use it to motivate you. The fear of failure is what drives everyone to work harder and push themselves to be the best they can be. No one likes to lose. I love this quote from Michael Jordan, "Fear is an obstacle for some people, but it is an illusion to me." MJ is arguably the greatest athlete in team sports history. Mentally he believed he couldn't lose.
These statements below from Michael Jordan might be some of the best advice I have ever read. Read this, understand it and use it to your advantage.
"I never looked at the consequences of missing a big shot. Why? Because when you think about the consequences, you always think of a negative result.
Some people get frozen by the fear of failure. They get it from peers or from just thinking about the possibility of negative results. They might be afraid of looking bad or being embarrassed. I realized that if I was going to achieve anything in life I had to be aggressive. I had to get out there and go for it. I don't believe you can achieve anything by being passive. I'm not thinking about anything except what I'm trying to accomplish. Any fear is an illusion. You think something is standing in your way but nothing is really there. What is there is an opportunity to do your best and gain some success. If it turns out my best isn't good enough, then at least I'll never be able to look back and say I was too afraid to try. Failure always made me try harder the next time.
That's why my advice has always been to "think positive" and find fuel in any failure. Sometimes failure actually just gets you closer to where you want to be. If I'm trying to fix a car, every time I try something that doesn't work, I'm getting closer to finding the answer. The greatest inventions in the world had hundreds of failures before the answers were found.
I think fear sometimes comes from a lack of focus or concentration. If I had stood at the free-throw line and thought about 10 million people watching me on the other side of the camera lens, I couldn't have made anything. So I mentally tried to put myself in a familiar place. I thought about all those times I shot free throws in practice and went through the same motion, the same technique that I had used thousands of times. You forget about the outcome. You know you are doing the right things. So you relax and perform. After that you can't control anything anyway. It's out of your hands, so don't worry about it. "
If your athletic career is over and you still want that thrill of competition then I encourage you to try CrossFit. There's no hiding its a pure gut check. I have always enjoyed fitness and weight training, 2nd of course to actually playing a sport, but what drew me to CrossFit was the aspect of weight training and competition combined in one. Not only is CrossFit a killer workout and you will get in good shape but you literally compete every day!! "Biological competition creates survival of the fittest, which makes an ecosystem where only the genes of the most fit creatures are passed on. This makes the species stronger as a whole. " (askmen.com)
The video below explains CrossFit and the history behind the competition.
LET'S RECAP:
SO WHO'S YOUR BEST FRIEND???
I'm sure you would name a person very close to you, someone you trust and have known for awhile…. No no no no no no, no, your best friend is a guy named Frankie Fear. You see Fear is a fighters best friend you know, it ain't nothing to be ashamed of, you see Fear keeps you sharp, it keeps you awake you know what I mean it makes you want to survive, you know what I mean. But the thing is you gotta learn how to control it alright, cause Fear is like this fire alright, and it's burning deep inside, now if you control it Tommy, it's gonna make you hot! Or if you see if this thing here controls you... it's going to burn you and everything around you up. That's right.
Check out the scene below from Rocky 5. As the quotes state, never-mind the overacting and hand gestures LISTEN to what he has to SAY. Some of the truest words ever spoken.
Are you into biking? Well, here is a great example below of mind over matter, that I used from PsychologyToday.com website. Its a clear example of how your mind can manipulate you to become successful. You can do things that you never thought were possible. As I stated above let the competition and fear of failure propel you into action, use that fear as motivation and convert that into extreme energy and pure focus!!
CASE STUDY
Out of the 14 cyclists, 12 performed significantly faster—1.7% faster—than their previous best time when they believed they were facing an opponent. Despite their exhaustion after this intense series of exercises, lead researcher Jo Corbett found that "only in the last race, when they were unknowingly competing against themselves, they were able to race even harder."
Corbett reasons that such head-to-head competition specifically provides enough motivation to instruct our brain to delve into this anaerobic energy reserve.
He explains, “Whenever you do exercise you’re likely to think ‘how much am I willing to hurt myself?’ and there’s usually a point which holds you back because you don’t want to do yourself irreparable damage. But when racing someone head-to-head the athlete’s brain can manipulate this signal and keep on going.”
Put yourself in the right position. Feed your body what it needs to be successful and compete at the highest level. Your diet is one of the most important aspects in helping you reach your goals. Below is a great link to a natural health forum about vitamins, supplements, nutrition, exercise.
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