Enthusiasm > Competition

Do you do a lot of self reflection around the new year? I do! I actually love New Years Day and the motivation that comes with it. When I found myself thinking about 2017, there were certain questions going through my mind. Did I grow? What did I experience? What do I regret? What was exciting/disappointing? What were the highlights? There is one question I’ve thought about more this year than in past years. The question: “What did I learn?”. My personal answer for most important lesson learned this year: I learned that enthusiasm is greater than competition.

I’ve always described myself as a competitive person. I’ve said it in a way that describes my strengths, even though I was aware that the word “competitive” can come with negative connotations as well. I was right… I am a competitive person and this attribute of mine has benefited me in many ways. However, after being taught by example, I’ve learned that the same pros that come along with “competitive” also come along with “enthusiastic,” and the cons don’t.

Like I said, being competitive has it’s benefits. Because of my competitive nature, I typically stay motivated, work hard, achieve my goals, and consider myself successful. However, a competitive mindset also comes with set-backs. Set-backs like: making enemies, becoming tunnel-visioned, offending others, comparing myself and ranking myself lower than others, feelings of anger and worthlessness when someone does better than me, and heart-break when I don’t win.

I started learning this “enthusiasm > competition” lesson when I played lacrosse in college. Long story short, as a freshman I was feeling very enthusiastic to have made the team and to get any playing time at all. Over the next year or so, I felt like my hard work wasn’t paying off because my improvement was slow and my playtime wasn’t increasing. My competitive nature kicked in and I started comparing myself, beating myself up, resenting teammates’ success out of jealousy, and was miserable while doing something I loved. It took a long time for me to pull myself out of that mentality. Like… a really long time. I started enjoying the sport again, not when I got more play time, but when I realized something. I realized that in the long run, what really mattered (A.K.A. what God cared about), was not how many goals I scored, but how I treated my teammates. How hard I tried. The lessons I learned. and how whatever I was doing could bring me closer to Christ. I became enthusiastic again, and success and playtime followed that.

Looking back, I didn’t take that lesson to heart like I should have, evident by me falling into the competition trap time and again.

Confession: When I first started my Instagram account about my adventures, I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was me competing. I loved following high adventure blogs, and doting on their images. I wanted to portray that “I could hang”, even though my experience and expertise was/is pretty minimal. I never lied about my adventures or anything. Obviously, I LOVED getting out and into nature. Exploring with my friends and family is honestly such a passion of mine. But making that account, that was me trying to prove my passion, prove that I was more into the outdoors than my peers, and I’m sure I looked like an idiot. By competing, I was sucked into the comparison game. My images weren’t as good, my hikes weren’t as intense, and my adventures weren’t as frequent as what I saw from some of my favorite bloggers. Eventually this comparison had me feeling empty and crappy about life even though my feed was full of fun times, and pictures of me doing things I genuinely loved.

Moving to Dallas was so good for me. I’d never been in a situation before where I had to start my social life from scratch. I was SO nervous. So nervous that (embarrassingly enough) I cried my first week at church because I was too anxious to talk to anyone. Despite that rough first impression, church is where I met a lot of girls close to my age, with kids close to Owen’s age, in a similar boat of trying to find new friends, figure out a new place, with a new career in the family. I can’t say enough about how big of a blessing these girls have been in my life. They showed me first hand what it’s like to be inclusive, supportive, non-judgmental, and enthusiastic instead of competitive. I credit a few things to finding friends like this. 1- age and maturity. You’d think/ hope the older you get, the more kind people you meet. 2- the girls really are the cream of the crop and I won the jackpot by meeting them at church. 3- that’s just the Dallas vibe, which I wrote more about here.

I decided to start a blog because I was a new stay at home mom, with no mountains, and was starving for a hobby. I do believe I started this blog with good intentions. I knew that me blogging needed a purpose other than to try and show off, so that I didn’t get sucked into competing like I did with Instagram. Wanting to inspire and uplift others is something I really stand for. Exploring and writing are hobbies I’ve enjoyed since I was a little kid, so I knew that blogging would be a fun outlet for me.

By putting this blog out there, I’ve been invited to attend some really cool events and meet-ups. (Side note: two years ago, you wouldn’t have caught me dead going to a meet-up alone. Just needed to pat myself on the back for that real quick.) I’ve met other Dallas bloggers at these meet-ups and seriously even though this blog is just a little baby with a few followers, everyone I’ve met at these promotional meet-ups has seemed nothing but genuinely interested and excited about what I have to say.  Even the bloggers I met who had a tinier corner of Instagram than my account were excited for me if I had more followers than them. Another exhibit of how I was taught by example.

Anyways let me come full circle here and try and tie this all together, because I feel like I just went 15 different directions. This lesson has been working on me for a long time and it seems to finally have hit home. I’ve learned the hard way- by competition getting me down, and the easy way- by being blessed with examples. And I just want to state that even though this lesson has hit home, old habits die hard. I’m now trying to live life in a more enthusiastic and loving way, but my competitive nature still kicks in sometimes. A quote I love and try to remind myself of often is “the next best thing to playing and winning is playing and losing.” It’s about the love of the game… or whatever you’re doing. I’ve also heard the phrase “community over competition,” meaning build each other up instead of step on each other. I think that goes hand in hand with “enthusiasm over competition.” If you have enthusiasm, you’ll still do things to the best of your abilities, there’s just less negative emotion that comes along with someone else succeeding at any specific thing. Also, I know that with any trait: competitiveness, enthusiasm, etc, too much or too little of it can be a problem. Have you ever met someone who’s just wayyyy too enthusiastic? Yah, that’s not what I’m suggesting haha. So I guess it’s more about finding the balance than anything. If this hasn’t inspired you to live less competitively, hopefully it’s at least inspired you to keep me in line when I start focusing too much on the win. If you’re still here, thanks for reading. Let me know your thoughts! and, I’m really curious as to what you learned in 2017??!!