Healthy competitions are like a base and a good rocket for propulsion to growth. Goals and aims and great strides can be achieved if people imbibe them. I have had my part in a number of healthy competitions, a lot of which the other party(ies) had no idea I wss in with them. You may say that I used them as some sort of motivation to see me putting in the work and getting at it.
Sometime last year, I think I shared the story(even recently) of how a pal and I studied for a course that we had little knowledge of, only days shy of the examination. I told how in the two days that we studied, we kept pushing ourselves, giving speeches, we'd run through physical studies in the day and still hold virtual studies by evening. When the result came, it was one of the best scores we'd gotten ever.
Well, that incident opened our eyes even more to the capabilities we had and things we could do as a team. This year, we went down to business, wrote down every course we would be offering for the semester, and the grade we hoped to get from the results. In the end, we made an agreement of a certain number of units we are expected to add up to our individual current cgpa. Say, I have a cgpa of 2.3, and hers is 2.5, we agreed that it's expected that we each add a 0.5(as an example). Which would bring mine to 2.8 and hers to 3.0. You get?
Now, here's where it becomes a competition... albeit a healthy one. We both agreed that whoever gets the mark stands a chance to get apoiled silly and/or pampered to a treat or ehatrver thry please by the person who didn't hit the mark. And if we both hit it? Then we owe ourselves a trip. Yes, like, pack our bags and travel where we can even just for a few days.
Now, the reward isn't anything too big as either of us can afford our own treats and cover our bills for a journey, but then, this is like a catchy proposal. Plus, thinking about how our grades would go up and we can brag about hitting our academic goals is something.
Now, this can get unhealthy is either or both of us becomes selfish enough to hide important notes, important points the other missed, failure to help with assignments and to help the other understand and even by hiding other updates that may be beneficial. Oh, there are many ways i can think of that this could be bad. I remember one incident when my friend said something, and i thought to myself that maybe i should be a little conservative with the resources that i have. There's been incidents where either of us could put the other back by some steps, but we don’t see the good in that. We're often tell ourselves how it'd be amazing for us to grow together and be the circle of friends with the sweet grades. Do you get what i mean?
Unhealthy comprtition is draining. It takes up more time and energy from a person that they could put into good use and into working towards being that person they choose to tear down or even achieving that feat. Goals are achieved faster, and growth is made possible with lesser burdens to bear alone when competition is healthy.
I hope that this was interesting to read.
Thanks for gracing this post.