{"id":988,"date":"2009-08-10T09:50:46","date_gmt":"2009-08-10T17:50:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/?p=988"},"modified":"2013-08-20T14:28:30","modified_gmt":"2013-08-20T22:28:30","slug":"harnessing-your-competitive-spirit-to-spur-you-to-your-goals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/blog\/harnessing-your-competitive-spirit-to-spur-you-to-your-goals\/","title":{"rendered":"Harnessing Your Competitive Spirit to Spur Your Goals"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div><p><\/p>\n<p>In many situations in life \u2013 especially within a company or within a family \u2013 <em>co-operation<\/em> is a much more powerful principle than <em>competition<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>We all have a competitive instinct or drive, though, and many games make the most of this to ramp up the level of fun, excitement and involvement. (Sports, multi-player computer games, and board games all have \u201cwinners\u201d and \u201closers\u201d.)<\/p>\n<p>As well as enjoying being competitive in game and play situations, we can use our natural competitive bent to give ourselves an edge when we\u2019re trying to make gains in our personal life.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m going to give just three examples, but I\u2019m sure you can come up with more areas of your life to apply this to (let\u2019s hear them in the comments!)<!--more--><\/p>\n<h2>Eating More Healthily<\/h2>\n<p>Perhaps you and your partner, or you and your friend, have tried out various healthy eating or weight-loss plans in the past. More likely than not, these haven\u2019t lasted too long. One of you feels low on will-power, says \u201cForget it, I\u2019m having a slice of cake!\u201d \u2013 and the other person caves in too.<\/p>\n<p>It could go very differently if you introduced an element of healthy competitiveness. I\u2019d caution against competing on something like actual weight lost, as this is influenced by factors such as metabolism, gender and how overweight you were to begin with. Similarly, don\u2019t compete on how far you can both run, or how heavy the weights you can lift are.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, set yourself some competitive goals to reach like:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Who can hit five portions of fruit-and-veg a day, every day, for a week?<\/li>\n<li>Who can go for a week without chocolate (or alcohol\/cheese\/etc&#8230;)<\/li>\n<li>Who can stick to their planned exercise sessions for a month?<\/li>\n<li>&#8230;and so on.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You get the idea. <strong>Compete on things which are <em>under your direct control<\/em><\/strong><strong>.<\/strong> You\u2019ll be amazed how this can really boost your will-power: knowing that the other person is heading off for their gym session can get you up off the sofa and raring to go \u2013 you don\u2019t want to lose!<\/p>\n<h2>Saving Money<\/h2>\n<p>You might want to do this with a spouse, friend or colleague. The idea is to see who can spend the least or save the most over a period of time. As with eating healthily or losing weight, compete on things which involve meeting targets that you\u2019ve agreed with one another (you don\u2019t necessarily need to have exactly the same targets).<\/p>\n<p>For example:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Who can go for a week without buying <em>any<\/em> food out?<\/li>\n<li>Who can last a whole weekend without spending money?<\/li>\n<li>How long can you manage without spending a cent on entertainment?<\/li>\n<li>Who can meet their savings goal for three months running?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As with healthy eating, <strong>this can turn something that might otherwise seem like hard work into something fun. <\/strong>Trent writes about this in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thesimpledollar.com\/2008\/06\/06\/making-frugality-a-game\/\">Making Frugality a Game<\/a> on The Simple Dollar (a personal finance blog), saying:<\/p>\n<p>If you can turn frugality into a mutual challenge, you can turn something that you might otherwise view as drudgery into something quite fun.<\/p>\n<h2>Writing a Novel<\/h2>\n<p>There\u2019s an often-quoted adage that \u201ceveryone has at least one book in them\u201d \u2013 and you may well feel that\u2019s true for yourself. A lot of people have a long-cherished ambition to write a novel, but they never manage to get around to it \u2013 or they get started and quickly run out of steam.<\/p>\n<p>Back in 2007, I took part in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nanowrimo.org\/\">NaNoWriMo<\/a> (National Novel Writing Month), where participants take on the challenge of writing a 50,000 word novel in a month. You \u201cwin\u201d simply by reaching the word count: it\u2019s an easy measure, and no-one\u2019s going to complain about the quality of your writing, or say that what you\u2019ve written isn\u2019t very novel-shaped.<\/p>\n<p>The desire to get your name on the winners\u2019 list may be enough for you, but <strong>if you want to take the competition to a new level, get your friends involved. <\/strong>I wrote alongside <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/nickmb\">@NickMB<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/pddluke\">@pddluke<\/a>, and there was a lot of friendly but determined (certainly on my part!) competition.<\/p>\n<p>(I \u201cwon\u201d, by the way, pipping them both to the 50,000 word post ;-))<\/p>\n<p><em>Those are just three big goals which many people have: all of which could be achieved faster (and even more enjoyably!) with a bit of good-natured competition. What goals do you have that you\u2019re not progressing towards as fast as you\u2019d like? Who might you challenge to a competition?<\/em><br \/>\n<!--Start of the LivePerson Text Link--><br \/>\n<a style=\"font: normal normal normal 9pt Verdana; text-decoration: undeline; color: #46d65e;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.liveperson.com\/landingpages\/coaching\/coaching.aspx?desid=59,59&amp;catid=10359,10359&amp;sortby=9&amp;ver=1.00&amp;img=177&amp;kbid=7952&amp;sub=TL&amp;twid=3\" target=\"_blank\">Learn How To Get That Competitve Edge Here!<\/a><br \/>\n<img alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/myap.liveperson.com\/se.asp?e=177&amp;id=7952\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/><br \/>\n<!--End of the LivePerson Text Link--><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/pickthebrain\">Don&#8217;t Forget To Follow PickTheBrain on Twitter!<\/a><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Related Articles:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/how-to-turn-crisis-into-opportunity\/\">How To Turn Crisis Into Opportunity<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/are-you-rationalizing-your-decisions\/\">Are You Rationalizing Your Decisions?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In many situations in life \u2013 especially within a company or within a family \u2013 co-operation is a much more powerful principle than competition.<\/p>\n<p>We all have a competitive instinct or drive, though, and many games make the most of this to ramp up the level of fun, excitement and involvement. (Sports, multi-player computer games, and board games all have \u201cwinners\u201d and \u201closers\u201d.)<\/p>\n<p> As well as enjoying being competitive in game and play situations, we can use our natural competitive bent to give ourselves an edge when we\u2019re trying to make gains in our personal life. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/blog\/harnessing-your-competitive-spirit-to-spur-you-to-your-goals\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12163,"featured_media":12785,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[6],"tags":[61,4648,63,62,54,4629,4636],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Harnessing Your Competitve Spirit to Spur Your Goals<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Instead, set yourself some competitive goals to reach like: Who can hit five portions of fruit-and-veg a day, every day, for a week? Who can go for a week without chocolate (or alcohol\/cheese\/etc...) Who can stick to their planned exercise sessions for a month? ...and so on.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/blog\/harnessing-your-competitive-spirit-to-spur-you-to-your-goals\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Harnessing Your Competitve Spirit to Spur Your Goals\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Instead, set yourself some competitive goals to reach like: Who can hit five portions of fruit-and-veg a day, every day, for a week? Who can go for a week without chocolate (or alcohol\/cheese\/etc...) 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