Are you competitive?

I have a need to discuss something other than ***** climate change, and was interested in a recent ABC Radio programme about competitiveness.

It seems that we humans can be broadly categorised into "competitive" or "collaborative".

Possibly we might be competitive in some aspects of our lives and collaborative in others.

How do you classify yourself? And how do you think this has happened?
e.g. do you believe your genes determine whether you are competitive with others, or rather your life experience (i.e. having to struggle to survive for whatever reason)?

Do you think perhaps it's a characteristic instigated by demanding parents who wanted to see their progeny achieve what they themselves didn't?

If you are competitive, what are the satisfactions when you win, and what are the disappointments if you don't?

Is competitiveness something, perhaps, that can be engendered by a certain career path? i.e. if you are in sales, then you are effectively forced to be competitive to succeed, even if this goes against your nature.

Does the competitive person reach a level where he/she is no longer seeking to be the best? i.e. a level where further achievement is meaningless, and therefore perhaps happy to change to having a more collaborative approach?

Probably there are other points I haven't thought of.

humans just do what is 'best' for themselves individually

sometimes: competition > collaboration - fight over an apple

sometimes: collaboration > competition - work together to reach an out-of-reach apple that could not be obtained individually

I like to be competitive from the perspective of self improvement. I don't care that much for comparing myself with others, so long as I continually improve in what I'm doing.

What does comparing actually accomplish? It can give a bit of a headache. If you compare to the point of knowing where you want to go towards then it is fine. But if you obsess over it then that is a waste of energy. You could be spending that time actually improving what you're doing instead of going through the mentation of constant measuring and comparing.

If you keep comparing and measuring then in a way that means you are not satisfied. Sometimes it is good to not be satisfied so that you take notice and do something productive.

But other times it can be a waste of time and cause unnecessary grief. (It's a little like never feeling satisfied so you 'run' to the next thing, and then the thing after that etc etc.)--when will it end?

So that's the disadvantage of being competitive--You are never satisfied and keep running away from what may be 'good enough'.

It's difficult to assign a label of whether one is more competitive or collaborative. Because as you metioned--we can be both but it just depends on the situation. There is a time to be competitive and a time to be collaborative with some things. But if being competitive, it's better to compare mostly with yourself and not others.