The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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To me the sting of defeat is always worse than the joy of victory. I’m a very non-competitive person, usually the first to turn down any kind of casual tournament or game. I never play PvP. I always concede first where it’s an option, unless I know with great certainty that I’m going to win.
It’s not that I don’t like winning, it’s that to me the joy of it is far more fleeting than defeat Where I Really Tried, which stings and which I think about long after the event. Recalling defeats hurts as if the loss was yesterday, while recalling triumphs doesn’t seem to capture any of the pleasure of the moment of victory. Being a loser in some competition doesn’t make me angry and aggressively motivated the way it seems to do to a lot of people. I can concede and feel no seething jealousy, no particular resentment, and whether I win or lose I usually forget about it quickly, unless it really feels serious in which case, as mentioned, losing is always worse than winning is great.
I don’t mean to sound like one of those depressives for whom every happiness seems temporary and every setback permanent, because I’d say I’m a pretty happy person. It’s more that I think I just don’t get as much out of both victory and defeat as other people do. Neither particularly motivates me, my happiest memories are all things like conversations with friends and loved ones, entertaining experiences, falling in love, that kind of thing. I can’t recall one real moment of personal triumph in the competitive sense that sticks with me, stuff like getting the job I wanted or getting into a good college was ten minutes of happiness (although really more like relief) before I continued with my day.
I think I’d like to become more competitive, but this attitude is holding me back from doing so. Has anyone made themselves more competitive?
I understand your hatred of defeat - I hate losing as much as you and I've lost an awful lot! This has lead me to a few mental frameworks which can make losing less painful:
Losing is a huge motivator for me not to lose - it forces me to critique what I'm doing, seek help, and actively make adjustments to 'lose less'. Losing is a motivator!
Losing means I'm learning - assuming you can repeat losing, if each time you 'lose less' it means you're winning more - 'winning' and 'losing' are not binary but rather ranges and distributions.
Losing is risk on behavior - seek to increase risk outside of your comfort zone. I've been on this forum enough know that you work in finance to some degree which is an institution where risk-seeking is dangerous. Too much risk causes all sorts of problems so so much of what you do is mitigating risk while maximizing growth. Your hatred of losing can also be a dislike of risk - as other people mentioned in responses this is largely female encoded. In many ways losing is a sort of risk tolerance - are you willing to lose more as an accumulation of risk?
Identify where you hate losing. Some activity you might lose in won't hurt you emotionally as much as others. For example, losing professionally could carry a huge risk. What about learning something new? Trying something new? Cooking something you never tried that's outside your wheelhouse? There might be many things you're less worried about
Change the framework - focus on trying to win instead of trying not to lose - rather than worry about, risk focus on trying to beat out other people. This is largely antisocial behavior but it can come at success - by being better at someone in a thing that's moderately important than you, you're worrying less about 'I hate losing' and more about improving yourself to be able to get ahead.
Ask forgiveness not permission - Once again it requires in engaging in more antisocial behavior, but just going ahead and doing things without first asking for permission or coordinating with others can be a useful competitive mindset - of course it isn't always useful in certain areas, but this sort of choice can allow you to more opportunities and to be more competitive without the 'I want to get ahead' mentality. Sometimes it's 'I want to get things done quickly'
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The trick to competition in my experience is building up an internal mythos for why one loses while absorbing other intuitions for how to actually win.
Every person I know who wins a lot that also loses a lot has this ability to shunt the pain of losses into the ether. They may also just know exactly why they lost and what they do to correct it.
Still, I find myself in a similar boat as you. I avoid public competitions, as I am not very competitive, though for me it's not the pain of losing- there's no personal investment when losing. But if I think I have a chance, I'll give it a shot.
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I do not consider myself competitive at all, but people I know, and some I know well and who arguably know me well (including my wife) have routinely made the throwaway comment about me that I am. In that vein, I would suggest, despite your protestations, that you may be more competitive than you think--at least this is what I suspect from my reading your posts here. It's true, you do not rise easily and irrationally to challenges (as many, many do) but if that is competitiveness, I have to reluctantly echo f3zinker and ask what the attraction to such a trait might be.
You do not like PvP. Why not? Because it enrages you to lose. Might I suggest that is indicative of the strong desire to not lose, which, arguably, is one definition of competitiveness. You probably control yourself well enough that you simply avoid this darker pathological part of your character. I suspect if and when real challenges arise and you are equipped or potentially able to equip yourself to deal with them (e.g. anything involving thinking) you'll do fine without whatever particular Ehrgeiz you imagine you are lacking.
This does not answer your question and is of course presumptuous as a reply, so for that I apologize.
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I don't really have a strong competitive instinct, but then, I don't really care about most things. Like, losing a video game or boardgame doesn't bother me because I don't care about those things. But I do find myself caring pretty strongly about keeping up with others at work and particularly in the gym (I have a lot of insecurity about how small and weak I am).
(And yes, I think I do have pretty low testosterone levels).
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Another comment mentioned testosterone and I will add n=1 that when I supplement testosterone (Cistanche or Tongkat Ali) I feel slightly more competitive.
I will also add that I don't like artificial competitions like sports or video games. I do things because I enjoy them not because I need to compare my results to others. I focus on collaborative non-hierarchal endeavors such as attending support groups and book clubs. That makes me much happier. IMO building things together with people feels better than winning competitions. Sometimes there is a small competitive component such as wanting to your local organization/club to be held in higher esteem than similar organizations, but that would never preclude me from helping out my competition if they asked nicely.
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I believe I have.
I'm similar to you in that I've far more muted responses to victory and loss than my contemporaries. I had a hard time genuinely celebrating with the team when we won tournaments and I never cried or lashed out in anger when we lost.
I of course still prefer winning to losing but it's not at all the same intense reaction that some people have.
I've found two ways of getting myself invested despite this:
Beyond that i often just like competition, not for the sake of winning or losing but because competition is fun on its own, since it increases the level and intensity of play.
Thanks - your 1 is definitely true for me, I think my primary motivation in a lot of things (especially at work) is not letting down people dependent upon me.
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In other words, you are closer in temperament to the average woman than the 75th percentile man? Why must this be changed and for what? Especially along male coded traits.
You are also probably more neurotic (I would wager 60-70th percentile for women). But negatives feel disproportionately worse anyways for evo-psych reasons, given you know the worst thing that can happen is literally game over.
My unsolicited advice? Accept yourself for who you are rather than who BAP or some greek philosopher says you should be, after all that is one of great things of being a woman, your status and worth isn't tied to how how good you are in the global sense.
Or to be less condescending ----->
------> Do more of ^. Have kids, look after them, be a good mother, wife, friend, etc.
Also like the other guy said.. Dose testosterone, this is probably as innate as anything could be.
Also try starting a business or taking a risk, I've seen few people work harder and being as much on the sigma grindset as business owners, but I would once again wager its survivorship bias, the ones not willing to be ruthless and work their fucking asses off and don't feel joy at merely winning and taking market share, etc, don't make it.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=KTLw2vM3N6I
^ Also what do you think of this woman?
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I'm wired similarly, not taking much joy from success, but now that my life is in decline and even small victories are behind me, I keep returning to them to warm myself a little at the faint embers of past glories. Once upon a time, I fought. I entered the ring and fenced and wrestled, and though losing mostly, I won at times. I am not a lost cause then, though I sadly turned away from fighting almost entirely. And once upon a time I studied, and studied hard, until I passed the tests and made my degree. I put in the effort and I understood things that would now boggle my mind. I am not truly an idiot, though I may feel thus nowadays. And once I had friends, and did much with them, and they enjoyed my company and I theirs. Now I may be alone, but it is good to recall that I am not beyond friendship. And so I can make believe that if my fortunes turned one day, or I found a way out of my situation, I might again fight, and learn, and be in good company.
So go out there and push yourself, because a time may come when memories of past accomplishments are most of what's left of you, and that's far better than nothing.
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What an interesting prompt, I'm sure you will get a lot of feedback on this one.
For some context, I have always been a very competitive person myself. Where other people enjoy hiking, creating art, or unstructured socializing, I always wanted to play sports and games. Something with some level of competition with a clear winner and loser. I've lost many such contests over the course of my life, in soccer, tennis, golf, baseball, board games, card games, poker, debates etc. And every time, I have been unhappy to lose. This doesn't make me enjoy the competition any less, it just makes me want to play again and win.
One of the interesting things about this aspect of my personality is I don't enjoy games where I don't have at least a fighting chance to win. For example, I don't terribly enjoy basketball, it's a sport I've never been good at, and I lose frequently. So I don't play it. I've never been good at chess, and I don't particularly like being overmatched intellectually, so I don't play it. So my recommendation (if you could call it such) would be to find a competitive event where you have potential and are actually interested in. This might be something as simple as a card game like Hearts, or it might be something more nebulous like debating. Do you have any interests that have a level of competition? If so, I would focus on those activities and see if it can be transferred to other areas of your life.
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I think this is the crux of it, I notice the same aversion to Really Trying in myself. If you win without really trying, then it doesn't feel good because that means that your achievement was well below your means, you might as well feel good about putting on your socks in the morning. And if you lose without really trying, it doesn't feel that bad because you can still imagine yourself winning if you really tried.
This is all an ego-protection mechanism. If you're like me, then you started conceptualizing yourself as "smart" somewhere in adolescence, and from that moment on you started trying to avoid any experience that would imply not being worthy of that label. I think the key to enjoying competition is letting go of this fixed mindset that thinks every True Loss is evidence that you permanently suck, instead of just being evidence that you temporarily suck.
As for actual practical advice, I think it's hard to practice Really Trying on the big, long-term stuff. You need a hobby you care about with a really short time-to-feedback. I started Jiu-Jitsu a few months ago, and I think it's perfect for this. The prospect of actually getting chocked out in a match of physical dominance against another man really brings out the competitive part of me, in a way that no other sport I've ever tried managed to do. Though as a woman Jiu-Jitsu might not be ideal for this unless you find a gym with a decent number of other women, against whom you actually have a chance of winning.
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I am naturally very competitive, so I don't have much advice for changing your base level of competitiveness, but I have sharply improved my acceptance and happiness in defeat. When I was young, I really, really, really hated losing. Intensely. To the point where losing would make me angry, make me lash out verbally in stupid and unpleasant ways. I'm mainly thinking of basketball, where I'm lucky that I never got punched in the face on the court for not knowing when to just shut up and take the L. Nonetheless, it was bad enough that I find it outright embarrassing in retrospect. Not in the, "who cares, it's just a game" sense, because games matter, and being passionate about them is good, but because taking an L with some grace is an admirable trait in and of itself.
Anyway, fast forward to my 20s, when I picked up endurance sports. One of the great things about running is that it's incredibly humbling. When you lose, you lose. You can't tell yourself that you should have made that jumper, or that you got fouled and it was bullshit. You're just slower, and it's obvious. Nonetheless, if you're racing against someone that's at a similar talent and training level, it's going to come down to a combination of tactics, pain tolerance, and determination. As corny as it sounds, sometimes whether you win or lose will come down to who wants it more. When you suffer that way in a race and know that the other guy did too, it changes your relationship to either winning or losing to him, because you know he went through the same thing. Whether I win or lose, I always feel a deep sense of camaraderie with the guy that I'm racing against.
Along the way, something funny happened. In learning to lose with grace and be quick with a fist bump for an opponent, I also learned to admire what someone is doing when they beat me. Maybe they paced better, maybe they had more kick, maybe they're just plain tougher. This spilled over to other things. Lose at a video game? Wow, gg, quick reflexes bro. Lose at trivia? Lol, how wild that you knew that. Lose at pool? OK, that one actually still pisses me off, but we can't be perfect.
So, my advice would be to try doing something really hard, whether winning or losing is a genuinely taxing experience that you will feel some sense of triumph for having partaken in at all.
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Dose testosterone.
What dose are you thinking of?
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