Things You Understand If You're A Competitive Person Who Hates Competition

I know it sounds contradicting. All of those who know me probably think that is the biggest piece of B.S that has come out of my mouth, (or I guess my hands since I wrote it)… Anyway, I am going to give it a shot at explaining myself.

One of the biggest reasons I hate competing is because for me it kills the mood, or at least my mood.

Before I truly started competing in sports, I remember that I used to go out to play soccer with my friends all day every day. Every time we went out to play all I used to think about was just how awesome of a time I was about to have with my friends. I went out without worrying about a single thing in the world.

We all simply played for fun, to entertain ourselves, without feeling the pressure or need to impress someone or live up to someone else's expectations. It was this way how I saw soccer, the sport I love, as my personal escape from reality to a sort of Utopian world where I could kick a ball around into a goal with my friends. Nonetheless, when I grew up, I began playing not only soccer but other sports at a higher level with each passing day; and with each passing day, we, the players, were forced to take the game more seriously.

We practiced for longer, trained harder, and the expectations from others rose quite steadily. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not trying to encourage you to not try hard, the moment you don't feel like playing. Heck, if you love something enough to become obsessed with it, do it every day and be the best at it! You do you.

Personally, however, I love working hard and getting better at different things, but only if I really do love those things. Sadly, I can't deny the fact that at least for me, it almost seems that the more serious I take the things I play or do, the less fun they become. To put it in simpler terms "si algo no me nace, no lo hago porque simplemente lo voy a hacer peor", which roughly translates to: when you don't want to do something out of pleasure, you shouldn't do it because if you do, you will never do it as well as if you did it with pleasure; you'll just do it worse.

Thus, the moment I began playing sports with the purpose of simply competing rather than that of enjoying myself, was the moment I started losing pleasure to play those sports; and as a consequence, I became slightly worse at them.

But why? I used to tell myself, "I've always been a competitive person, how can I not be enjoying myself as I did before? What exactly is making me hate competition so much, to the point it affects my game?"After a long time of asking myself the same question, I finally realized that I just simply hate to compete for the sake of beating others and bringing pleasure to others who see me play.

Instead, I like to compete for the sake of having a good time. It's like playing a board game. When people get together to play a board game, all of them want to win, however, the differences are that nobody is setting expectations on each other, and most importantly, the reason why they all gathered to play in the first place is that they simply want to have fun. Not because they want to beat others, or because they want to win at all costs.

Their ultimate want or intention is to just have a good time. In my eyes, playing a sport shouldn't be something that brings you stress, pressure or a sense of stringent obligation; in fact, it should be the complete opposite. It should be something that brings you joy; something you are constantly looking forward to.

Nonetheless, I've come to realize that whenever I compete with an excessive amount of competitiveness, my desire to play the sport slowly fades. It's like when you listen to a song you love too many times. You eventually grow tired of it and you don't want to listen to it anymore. It works the same way with competition.

Constant competition not only makes me get burnt out by the sports I love, but it also makes me lose the peaceful-happy mood that I usually have while playing them. I just think that something that is meant to be done for fun should not be overworked or seen as an obligation because when it happens it just stops being as fun as it once was. A little competition is okay, but I also know for a fact that nothing done in excess can be good for you.