What's wrong with some healthy competition?
I was 12 years of age, sitting in the back of my Dad's new car just a few weeks before the end of a school year. My Mum had a brainwave, then went onto state that there would be a prize for either myself or my younger sister, whoever came home with the best school report card that year.
Even though I was always up for a bit of healthy competition, there was a huge problem with this competition and I had a huge disadvantage. Throughout my school years (as I have previously mentioned), I was a fidget, a gossip and was sometimes known to be a little bit naughty and cheeky to the teachers at times.
Some days I would even bunk off school to go my friends house, experiment with his Dad's whiskey and eat cream cakes from the local shop whilst watching MTV on the TV that my friend had in his bedroom.
My sister was very different. She was a conformist to the rules, she had her homework handed in on time and always sat quietly in class to her teachers delight.
I was doomed for failure in this competition before we even got started!
I guess that a huge problem we may or may not be able to identify in our great Western culture is how society makes us rather vulnerable towards turning success and achievement into something holistically profound and life enhancing.
You may be able to identify as you read on how from the earliest years of infant hood, we have an informal allegiance of well intentioned parents, family members and educational professionals creating for us a pressure pot of competition between our siblings and our classroom peers.
This pressure pot seems to be specifically designed to churn out and produce the highest calibre of student that will strive for excellence in everything they do - or alternatively be a mediocre underdog. Identity Crisis.
The common cultural belief is that society demands this.
Our cultural norms tell us that in order to do well in life and succeed by getting a good job someday, it's imperative that we conform to the rules, speak when spoken to and simply do our very best not to think for ourselves whilst regurgitating the information they present us with in as an effective and competent a way as possible.
To do this we must conform, sit still, listen carefully, pay attention, and don't ask questions unless they are asked at the right time and in the right way.
The institution is no longer the safe haven in a cruel and demanding world that it once was. Whereas many years ago the family home may have offered a counterbalance to the brutality of 21st century living where society openly embraces the concept of a dog eat dog culture amidst the educational, business and career worlds.
The institution of family seems to have become little more than an incubator for nurturing the cravings for success and significance during our infant hood, that sets many of us up for failure as adults.
But this is our norm and just the way things are... right?
So, returning to the friendly family competition. I didn't win that year and my sister brought home a far greater school report than what I did. All I can really remember about the whole scenario is how much I hated being beaten by a girl who was younger than me.
I just wasn't good enough.
Was this who I was?
The profound emphasis that is placed on high achievement in schooling, the arts, the music industry and sports, in business, in financial standing and social status has always taken its toll, leaving countless numbers of people feeling helpless despite their best efforts, useless, worthless and without hope of ever being better.
Is this who we are?
In 2009 I returned home to Scotland after spending over 3 years living in both Australia and New Zealand. From the glamorous lifestyle of Queenstown New Zealand, I found myself in High Valleyfield in Fife, Scotland - literally apposite ends of the earth with not one similarity between them.
Within only a few weeks of my homeland return, I had began to notice a rather peculiar thing. Everyone looked so similar!
Now I've always understood the importance of street credibility, fashion awareness and the cruciality of 'fitting in', however this was possibly the first time in my life that I'd ever questioned my own desperate need for social and cultural approval.
At this stage of my life I had returned back to full time education for what was the first time in years, I was mainly surrounded by teenage students who were mostly up to date with the latest hairstyles, trends and fashions. Where I may previously have considered myself relatively 'cool' in terms of my fashion sense and general appearance, I found myself with some severe doubts over my degree of cultural relevance.
In the lad's mags and health subscriptions, David Beckham (even over the age of 40) was still hugely influencing male grooming on a national scale. In Fife, within a few months of the latest billboard advertisement being publicly presented to the masses, an extremely high percentage of the 18 - 30 local male population would begin to groom themselves in a similar manner.
As for the girls, the R & B Queen of the time, Rihanna had taken a momentary downwards life spiral and has hitting the press for having had 'gone off the rails'. One moth Rihanna was in rehab, the next was back on the international stage with dyed bright red hair.
In the months that followed, approximately half of the local Fife population between the ages of 16 - 24 also had dyed bright red hair.
Although as I must be honest, I quite liked the most recent David Beckham combover and Rihanna's most recent shade of red, I did begin to question whether this rapid change in style was nothing more than the expressional of a cultural belief that conformity to the latest trends will win the favour of peers, further social acceptance and the might sought after adoration of others?
If my assumptions are accurate that our Western culture of competitive conformity is nurtured from within the walls of the family home, from our parents, amongst siblings, or through the attempts of not just 'keeping up with the Jones's' but completely outdoing them financially, materialistically and relationally. Could this 'learned competitiveness nature' also become a cultural norm through the other institutions throughout our society?
If so this is a pressure pot indeed, where there is little room for the individual, the non conformist or the free thinker to simply survive, little own thrive!
Who could ever just be 'good enough'?
In 2014 Scotland, some may say that we're still in the midst of an economic downturn. What I'm about to suggest here isn't necessarily new thinking, but could a reason for the downturn even happening in the first place be in part due to the greed of the bankers through loaning people money that they they would be unlikely to ever be able to pay back - alongside the consumer mentality on a nation in it's attempts to simply keep up with the Jones's?
Could the same sibling rivalry that gets nurtured in the family home be the same power hungry rivalry that penetrates the exclusive networking groups of the rich and financially affluent?
Could the same driving force behind the human races adulterous desire for more wealth and self status simply stem from exactly the same childish desire to compete and win amidst our siblings and peers?
The elusive temptation to compete and win will often govern us to the point of complete self consumption, bitterness and spite towards others and jealousy towards those we deem to be 'better than us'.
Reflect up the countless stories of murders, rapes, paedophillic acts and other violent crimes that take place within the family home and even long term relationships. Could a reason for one persons need to overpower another and 'come out on top' be again, nothing more that a perverse desire to win?
If one person grows to believe that the amount of love and respect they receive from another is in jeopardy of being lost to a rival or competitor (a schoolyard rival, a business competitor, a company colleague or even a sibling), would this feel like an act of war in need of some desperate retaliation?
Whether we're used to winning or losing in life will determine the amount of fight or resistance we put up towards our competition, and unfortunately, if we're driven by the desire to protect what we currently have, we stand at risk of never even felling content or satisfied with what we have due to fear of losing it.
In the introduction, I mentioned a highly destructive relationship that I entered into upon my exiting the armed forces. The consistent fear I experienced throughout this relationship was of losing my partner at the time to another guy with bigger muscles, a larger bank balance, a bigger house or more significant career to which I would be unable to compete.
I guess all this stemming from a deep rooted fundamental belief that I wasn't 'good enough' by just being myself.
Although we'll be exploring this belief at a later stage in the book, this pattern of thinking held me hostage for years and played a he part in keeping me on the outside of my relationships for years. I lived in constant fear of losing whatever I had, so much so that keeping hold of second best or even an abusive relationship would be better that going back to being on my lonesome once again.
People will seldom do the things they do for the reasons we think that they do them.
Winning the competition and coming out on top is an ingrained part of our Western make up, as is plentiful sex, instant gratification, easy relationships, financial wealth, dog eat dog, and an abundance of materialistic possessions. These things are always sneakily marketed in a way that leads us to believe that they will win us the favour of others and ultimately make us the consummate insiders.
Many of these things when won, can often guarantee us into the most exclusive social circles of which others would envy and look up to. We win!
Many people in life pursue success as a means by which to overcome the painstakingly horrible feelings that accompany being the outsider.
I never got the golden stars or the glowing report cards, and I never won any prizes for being particularly special at anything I enjoyed throughout my school years experience. I never won the competition with my sister that year in question and a girl came out on top. I didn't believe I was good enough.
Upon entering working age and joining the army, I had grown to believe that I had to do whatever it took in order to work my way through the ranks in view of reaching the top someday. I had this innermost need to succeed and be seen as significant, to achieve and win, to smash my targets, win the races, master the classes and find a way to manipulate the prettiest of girls into bed with me. Why?
Because from a very young age I grew to believe that I wasn't even good enough to beat my younger sister in a stupid competition.
I believed that if I could find a way to reach the tops of the pyramids, win the competitions and master everything that I touched, I'd get access to the 'special people clubs', the top social sets and become able to merge myself in with the people at the top who I believed inspired me the most.
I was wrong.
I've spent years coming up with conclusions as to why I was so driven by success and achievement throughout my life, maybe the only person I ever really wanted approval and validation from was my dad? After all, I spent years in the attempt of gaining approval from countless other people who meant nothing to me, so who knows?
I'm not saying that my Dad ever openly declared his disapproval of me or claimed that he wasn't proud of my achievements or accomplishments, but for some reason I always found it difficult to believe that he ever did.
This was just my experience in reality but by no means an expression of truth in actuality.
I'm not a Dad yet, but 'God willing' I will be within the next few years. I don't believe for a second that any parent could express the approval of their children too much as it's in our early years that we grow to develop our fundamental beliefs about who we are - whether we're good enough, not good enough, winners or losers!
I grew to believe at an early age that beating the competition would enable me to find acceptance in the people that I thought mattered, and to date, all my greatest successes and achievements have never ben able to deliver what I've always needed the most.
Unconditional acceptance.
Winning the competition will seldom win you this prize.
