Your Competitiveness and Your Performance

Your definition of the word "competitive" influences how you show up on the golf course.

It shapes your level of competitiveness.  A healthy level allows you to perform your best on a more consistent basis.

In this episode, I share with you how to look for signs that your level of competitiveness is not serving you and allowing you to use all of your talent. You learn about red flags when your desire to win is too high or too low.

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Above Par. I'm your host, Kathy Hartwood. I show you how to take more of your talent to the golf course without practicing harder, taking more lessons, or buying new equipment. I show you how to end the frustration of underperforming so you can start playing to your potential. This is where you are going to learn how to think above par so you can play below par. Hello, my girlfriend, and welcome back to Above Par. I hope you're doing amazing. I wanted to talk to you this week about competitiveness and being competitive, what it means to be competitive, whether we're too competitive or we're not competitive enough, and how you know, how you decide whether you're being competitive enough. I know a lot of people have a little bit of drama around the word competitive. I certainly did, and I'll tell you a story about that. But it comes up a lot in conversations I have with students and clients about sometimes feeling not competitive enough or feeling too competitive and what we make that mean. So this is the thing that I want to tell you is that in my formula, S-T-E-A-R, the E stands for emotion, right? Where the T stands for thoughts. Competitive is an emotion and it's a desire to want to win. And it comes from a thought. So your competitiveness or how you perceive it comes from your thoughts about a certain situation. So we might be competitive in one area of our life and maybe not competitive in another area. That's totally fine. I get a lot of people who tell me that I just, you know, I really don't care that much about golf. I'm just not that competitive. I really don't care if I win or don't win. And I'm like, okay, that's fine. I'm just saying though, if you're listening to this podcast, you probably care enough about golf that I'm not gonna buy that story so much. And I'm gonna explain to you on different ways that we let ourselves, we give ourselves a pass on with that story, and then when to know if you're gone, you know, maybe over the top. So let's start with a definition, what the Google says. The Google says that competition or competitive is other relating to a situation in which people or groups are trying to win a contest or be more successful than others. Also having a strong desire to win or be the best at something. So there goes into that desire to win. And desire, again, like I said, is an emotion. So my first experience with competitive, trying to figure out what being competitive meant was when I was 16. I was playing in junior New York State junior girls tournament, which was a match play event. And I was on the putting green practicing after a round with another girl who was very successful, and I would deem her very competitive. And I had thoughts about that, what that meant, because I didn't think she was super nice or friendly, or she came across kind of mean. And she made the comment to me that she was gonna go home and think all night about how much she hated her competitor, and I was kind of blown away by that. I was like, if that's what I need to do to be competitive, that's then maybe this game isn't for me. Maybe that's not what I need. Maybe that's it's not right for me because I don't have that much hate in my heart to go and try and hate a person just randomly so that I can have and drum up that desire to want to win. So I had a conversation with my father at the time about that, who was a golf pro. Thing is that what I need to do to be competitive. He luckily he talked me off the ledge. But it is a story that we create that did create a little bit of a vision for me on what it meant to be can competitive. And I think a lot of people have that story too, that maybe competitive people have a certain image. Maybe they are mean or ruthless or aggressive, and thus I choose not to be competitive. Maybe that's their story that I choose not to be competitive because I don't want to be that person. I don't want to be like that because that's the image. Other people would perceive a person being competitive as having that persona or personality. It might be a reason why someone is conceiv or considers themselves not competitive, is because they don't want to offend people. Maybe they're a people pleaser. They want everybody to like them. They don't want people to know that they actually really do want to win. They're holding themselves back. And this is the thing: being competitive is actually quite natural because we need that really for survival, right? We needed to fight for food to live. We need the skill just for advancement and innovation, right? You definitely know people are competitive, especially the ones who are claiming they're not competitive, when you have a pandemic and a toilet paper shortage. You find some very competitive people. You find competitive people when they talk about their kids and their grades and how they're playing in soccer and football or whatever sport they're playing, right? That competitiveness comes out. So I don't know that there's anything wrong with it. Um, it's just the way that we can perceive it, the stories that we create in our heads about it and how we use it to our advantage when we go out there and play. We can either, it can either work for us or it can work against us. So I talked a little bit about that feeling of lack of competitiveness, right? Which I think is again a feeling driven from how we we our definition, our own definition of what competitive means. So I encourage you to ask yourself what it means to you. What do you think being competitive means? What's the visual that you have of a person who is competitive? Is it negative? Because if it is, that's a reason why you probably are suppressing your competitiveness or you're choosing not to show up in situations that you might be perceived as being competitive, right? So you'll go out and play golf, and instead of trying to excel and win and succeed and perform your best, you're giving yourself a pass, right? So you're not showing up, which doesn't feel very good either, I must say, right? When you know you have more in you and you're suppressing it because you don't want other people to be worried about or to perceive you in a certain way. We can also give ourselves a pass with competitiveness when we quit or we stop trying. So that shows up in the I call it the I don't give a shits, which happens when you're playing and you're trying, and then finally you're like not you're not having any success, right? You're struggling and you're frustrated and you have all these emotions because you want to win and do well, and then you give up. You're like, I don't care, right? I give it the I don't give us, right? I try not to swear. So that's when we we don't care anymore. We because what we're doing is we're taking the path of least painful emotion, right? Which is worse? Is it easier to give ourselves a pass because we decided to quit, or to have that feeling of disappointment because we tried to win and we felt like we failed, right? We beat ourselves up on the other time, other side of it, rather. So that's another way that we can kind of suppress or give up on our competitive nature. So let me talk a little bit about being overly competitive or being competitive for the wrong reasons, by being motivated by the wrong things. One of the first ones is jealousy or envy. So this is where you compare yourself to someone else or you want what they have and you're jealous that you don't have it. This, my friend, will never serve you. If you're ever coming from a place of negative emotion towards someone else that you would wish that someone else would do poorly so that you can excel or win, it is never going to serve you over the long haul. You're never going to show up with most of your talent. In essence, you're saying that there is just not enough talent or wins or success to go around. It comes from a very lack mentality, right? You're comparing yourself to someone else, wishing you wishing things were different, and at the same time saying that there's just not enough to go around, right? Instead, you want to say, I admire your skill and your hard work and your talent, and it should inspire you to move forward, to want to excel to that level. I think there's a great example of this when the on the PGA tour, when the players hang around after another player has an amazing round to congratulate them after the 18th green. I think I think Jordan Speith is an amazing example of this. He always seems to go up and say, Hey, well done. Nice round, good playing, congratulations. Right? There's plenty to go around for everybody. You want to admire other talent and use it as a way to inspire you and motivate you to go forward. Obsession is another one. So if competition becomes all-consuming, if you eat, drink, and sleep it, if you're sleeping with your putter at night, which I have known people to do, right, we might have an obsession. Your relationships also can get affected. Your health can get affected. The balance that you have in your life is very affected. This is a very stressful form of competition that will not bring out your best talent for sure. I actually went through a little bit of an obsession with practicing. I think I was in college actually, maybe playing in a bunch of tournaments uh in the summers, and my sister tried to encourage me. I was living in Miami at the time, my sister was encouraging me to take some time off and just take a day off of practicing, and I could not let myself take a day off. I just couldn't. Like to me, it was like I needed to practice. I think I've said this before. I was always trying to outpractice the next person. That was just coming from a totally wrong energy. And so I went to the beach. I conceded, okay, so fine, we'll go to the beach. And I showed up with a basket of balls and my sand wedge, and I hit bunker shots in my bathing suit, trying to even out my golfer tan along the back of the condos. I'm sure that was a sight. Thank God there weren't cell phones around back then, or I wouldn't, it would probably be, it would probably not have very pretty sight, actually. Miami Beach at that time was not the way it is right now. It was kind of a dump. But anyway, so obsession is another thing that is you're if you're coming from a very obsessed uh nature when you're competing, that's not going to serve you. Also, your ego or your self-worth. So if you have to win or play well or succeed so that you can feel good about yourself, that's coming, that competition or that competitive nature is not going to serve you either. That's so much pressure to put on your game so that you perform well so that you can like yourself or feel better about yourself. So that drive and that need to win, that competitive nature to win, is based solely around how you're going to treat yourself on the other side. And that's not going to work. That's not a healthy way of competing. Also, your values, right? Your personal values. If winning means so much to you that you're willing to forego your values, such as cheat or be unsportsmanlike or lie or any of the things that you could do so that you could get ahead and win, right? You're compromising your inner values for doing that. That's just not a healthy way of competing. I think that stuff's going to come back and not serve you in the long run, right? You basically know what you're doing. You're right, you're lying to yourself. If you um, in essence, think that that's a productive way of winning and you really do know the truth inside. I don't think that's a very good way, clearly, of competing and trying to win. And then with that in mind, if you end a competition at any given moment feeling bitter or depressed or wanting to quit, you're competing for the wrong reasons. You're competing and putting a pressure on yourself that is not serving you, that should be a red flag, that you've gone through this competition. And instead of feeling motivated and enjoying the process and willing to fail as you go through it, you're beating yourself up on the other side of it. You're making it mean too much by not winning, right? There's always going to be winners, and there's always going to people be people who don't win. When you play in a tournament, I mean, there's a hundred or so people started, and only one person wins on any given week. It's what we make that mean about us not finishing number one. There's nobody finishes first every time. So if your sense of competition is that the only way that I'm going to be satisfied with this outcome is if I win, then we end up being very judgmental about our own results and we can feel that bitterness, depressed, or like I said, wanting to quit. Right? You want to be willing to fail and know it is part of learning. Watching others perform well and use it as an inspiration to improve and learn and grow. You want to enjoy the competition for testing your skills. How can you learn more? How can you use your talent? How can you manage your brain better? Be open and curious to how you can move. Competition should motivate you to be the best that you can be in a healthy way, in a way that is inspiring, a way that drives you towards your goals, to help you work harder, but from a place that you can still hold compassion for yourself when things don't work out. And then you get up and you sign up for the next tournament and you do it all over again. I hope you found that helpful in defining what competitiveness means to you. What is a competitive person? Paint that picture in your head. Is it negative? Are you creating it in a negative light or is it a positive light? And do you have any of the red flags that you're getting yourself towards an unhealthy competition? Listen, this is what I teach people and coach people on all the time is really how to balance out that pressure and stress that we put on ourselves to wanting to win, to trying too hard, to pushing towards results, and then also being able to take all of our talent out there. You want to find that balance between what is healthy and not healthy so that you can really excel on the golf course. So I hope you found that helpful. And I look forward to talking to you next week. All right, my friend, if this is something that resonates with you and you'd like to work more with me or learn how you could work with me, head over to KathyHartwood.com and you can find some more information there. All right, talk to you soon.