Healthy And Unhealthy Competition

• Competition among peers is one way to channelize their energy into better school life. But it is important to understand and differentiate between healthy and unhealthy competition.

• With healthy competition, one learns to improve themselves and grow to learn new skills or progress in their performance. While unhealthy competition focuses on winning and putting competitors down. It leads to a lot of negativity in their environment which reflects in their behaviour towards others as well.

• Competition can be categorized into two types; healthy and unhealthy competition. When students are competing healthily, there is an added effort to learn new skills and techniques to work towards the common goal or result.

• It helps in disclosing their strengths and weaknesses and helps them to compare their performance with their peers in a positive manner. This adds to their zeal and excitement to win the competition and overcome their fears of failure or insecurities of not being good enough. While unhealthy competition leads to added pressure on the student to perform better than the other. 

• This comparison is very unhealthy for a student since they are not working harder towards a goal that benefits them rather than achieving a sense of pride over another person. This leads to arguments and bickering among students, and a sense of power is also recognized at the end of such competitive discussions.

• A sense of power leads to bullying and disrespectful arguments. The essence and motive of competitions die down in such scenarios.

• Students have fun and enjoy the process of competing.

• They learn new skills and techniques to perform similar tasks by noticing their peers.

• They learn to work effectively and efficiently under pressure and time constraints and learn problem-solving skills.

• Competition helps students build their self-confidence and learn to face fearful challenges.

• They also learn to tackle competitive situations in the future with less anxiousness towards the outcome.

• They learn to take risks and deal with their consequences.

• They are provided opportunities to be more innovative and creative in their approach to tasks given.

• They learn to work and adapt to changes in a team and find the best way possible keeping in mind the strengths and weaknesses of each team member.

• Participation is usually very low with students in their teen years, due to fear of judgment or feelings of insecurity. Competitions pave the path for them to deal with such insecurities and fight them gracefully.

Here are some effective ways to promote healthy competition and develop a growth mindset:

• Compare yourself to only your past self rather than others: It can be very challenging to not compare ourselves with our peers or competitors in such an environment. But to understand that we can only control our behaviour and actions and for effective performance, the focus should lie within ourselves.

• Acknowledge and celebrate the success of others: It is important to be a team player and appreciate the effort of the winners. This helps in developing empathy and emotional intelligence towards others. The friendly competition encourages the idea of inclusion and diversity while keeping the zeal of competitiveness active.

• Focus on the journey and not the destination: We need to take away the learnings from the preparation and involvement in the competition rather than the idea of winning or losing. Participation in competitions only helps in setting our goals to achieve higher milestones for ourselves or to rework our existing methods of accomplishment.

• As parents, we need to acknowledge the uniqueness of our children and appreciate them for their different qualities and talents instead of comparing them to their siblings or classmates to encourage them to do better. Helping them focus on their improvements and enjoy the journey of competition is the key to their emotional mindset.

The healthy competition gives us a reason to work harder than we are capable of. It helps us in pushing our boundaries a little more than what would be comfortable or safe. It also teaches us to be happy with our achievements and to learn from our losses. Loss in competition helps us to develop the vital quality of resilience. The ability to jump back up and pump up our performance a little harder than before is a way to achieve personal growth and satisfaction.