I have personally found that(most times) it is safer, easier and better to compete against oneself in any area(s) of endeavour. The minute you consciously begin to measure your progress against another person, and use that to decide whether or not you're doing well, you (might) do yourself more harm than good for two reasons:

1. Your standard or reference point becomes that person. So you may tend to only push yourself as much as it takes to keep up with - or stay ahead of - him/her! Now that's not good enough because you might have much more potential to do better than s/he might ever be willing to do - going this way will therefore make you miss being your possible best.

2. Jealousy or other bad emotions could build up between both of you over time because you are likely to eventually betray the fact that you measure yourself against him/her. People who do this often say things like "Well, I'm not doing badly. After all so and so hasn't even done as much as I have yet!".

Some people believe it is good to maintain a healthy rivalry with another person. Sometimes however, the line between rivalry and negative competition can get dangerously thin - depending on the mental attitudes of the parties involved. How they deal with defeat (or indeed how they handle success!) when it comes, is often a key indicator. My personal experiences make me believe not all of us are ready to practice healthy rivalry - yet! Too many of us seem to thrive on measuring ourselves against others as a means of judging our level of success or otherwise.

Below, I present a number of perspectives(A to E) from which the problem of negative competition can be looked at, proposing - where appropriate - alternative approaches that those involved can adopt.

A. Do You "Use" Your Children To Compete With Others?

In my article(based on an ebook) titled "How To Help Your Child Discover His/Her Purpose In Life" I suggesed that parents resist the temptation to use their children to impress peers, colleagues, friends, relatives or rivals, listing some symptoms as indicative of the fact that they were doing it. Below, is an excerpt :

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a. You choose to put them in a specific school because you do not want xyz to think you cannot afford a school as good as the one she sends her kids to.

b. You buy expensive clothes for your kids in order to make sure xyz's kids don't "out class" them.

c. In general, your decision to do anything for(or to) your kids is often determined by how you think it will make you look "better" or avoid being outdone by others you feel you need to impress or keep up with.

As you will have noticed, none of the above listed symptoms has anything to do with your child. They are all about you - the parent! Search yourself. If you think that you are guilty in any way of even ONE of the above, make a change today. As responsible parents, the decisions we take about what to do for our children should always be in THEIR best interests at all times - for obvious reasons.

Children, as earlier stated, watch us adults more closely than we realise - especially comparing how what we say conforms to what we do. And they subsequently act accordingly, based on their observations. If your kids notice that you like to "keep up with the Joneses", they are likely to develop an appetite for similar behaviour.

Once a person begins comparing herself to others, she stands a chance of losing her sense of individuality/self-esteem. A person who lacks self-esteem is VERY unlikely to WANT to discover her purpose in life, talk less of pursuing it. People who lack self-esteem often never want anything for themselves(and hardly ever believe they can achieve anything worthwhile on their own) - instead preferring to find out what so and so wants, and then deciding that they also want it.

There is a quote that underscores the need to avoid developing this kind of mentality:

"You were born an original. Don't die a copy!" - Anon

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B. Negative Competition In School - And Society

In his book "If you want to be rich and happy don't go to school?" Robert Kiyosaki gives the reader a brief glimpse of his experiences in the corporate world. Among other things he explained that people displayed the same