Happiness and Competition
Sport, for example, basketball and football, can bring great happiness. Sport increases physical vitality and mental sharpness. Sport is a great pleasure with many benefits.
It is not sport itself, but how one thinks about sport that can get out of hand and produce unhappiness. Within the realm of sporting events, there is danger from taking the wins and losses too personally. One day you will win the game, and one day you will lose.
If you are emotionally attached to winning or losing, then it is like attaching your feelings to the stock market. One day you are up, another you are down.
Mindless competition in the realm of everyday life is also a source of great unhappiness.
Why must we compete:
- For the best race of people?
- For the best nation?
- For the biggest house?
- For the most fancy car?
- For the most fashionable dress?
- For the biggest TV?
- For the best political party?
We are simply creating winners and losers; and we create many more losers than winners.
What is the source of this mindless competition? I believe that it is envy. Envy is the presumed need to compare oneself to others. Comparative thinking, from an evolutionary perspective, was probably adaptive at one time. Whether or not comparative thinking remains adaptive is arguable. Today, however, it is clear that comparative thinking is the source of great emotional pain.
I believe that democracy and socialism, the great equalitarian political theories, were developed as a way to deal with problems of envy. Both democracy and socialism are ways of ensuring that every person get equal treatment under the law. They ensure that no one person has a larger share than others of political power or money. These political theories were developed to control resentment caused by envy, they were designed to prevent violence and political uprising.
Take steps to consciously control comparative thinking, your happiness depends on it.
March 8th, 2007 at 5:52 am
GREAT posting! Excellent thoughts!
The Biggest Barrier to Happiness is the Fault Finding Feel Goods – all those terribly tempting, universal desires to criticize, judge and complain in order to elevate our self esteem. The problem is that we’re focusing on negatives, that is not the way to happiness or spiritual success.
Michele Moore author of How To Live A Happy Life – 101 Ways To Be Happier http://HappinessHabit.com
March 9th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
funny, i just wrote a post on how we should exercise more to get happier
I like your blog and your thoughts on well being. It’s very important today as we all stress more and want more out of life and tend to forget what we have.