This can be a visitor put up from Michael Laurence. Beforehand at Get Wealthy Slowly, Michael has shared his ideas on funding threat and what occurs when more cash makes you depressing.
You hear the phrase “the sport of life” on a regular basis.
There are books on Amazon instructing us on learn how to win on the “sport of life”. Hell, Milton Bradley’s “The Recreation of Life” from 1860 — nonetheless bought immediately — was the primary standard board sport in the US.
Within the Actual World, the sport of life’s guidelines and standards for achievement are obscure and by no means explicitly acknowledged. However everyone knows what they’re. To win, you want:
- cash (or, extra precisely, conspicuous consumption)
- bodily attractiveness
- children who go to nice colleges and are athletically profitable
- and so forth
“The sport of life” has turn out to be greater than a metaphor. Many individuals — obsessive about their standing, profession, or the place their children go to highschool — have internalized this concept and actually view their life not as one thing to get pleasure from, however as a contest to be gained.
This can be a tragedy. Life is not a sport.
A sport is an exercise the place you compete in opposition to others. In video games, gamers pursue targets with no intrinsic worth. It does not actually matter who places a ball by a hoop (or over an arbitrary line) extra regularly, proper? Video games are ruled by exterior guidelines that the gamers don’t have any function in creating however which they however should comply with. In most video games, there’s just one successful participant or crew. Most members are “losers”.
Earlier than I am going on, let me say I really like sports activities — each enjoying and watching. Video games are numerous enjoyable. They’re nice hobbies.
Video games are, nonetheless, a horrible template for all times.
The Good Life
For one, that which is essential in life can’t be competed over. Whereas every of us has our personal particular imaginative and prescient of the nice life, we are able to all agree a very good life tends to have sure traits: residing by a set of ethics, sustaining significant relationships, time to pursue hobbies, and fulfilling work.
Curiously, these are all summary, subjective targets that don’t match right into a aggressive framework. It is not possible to measure and examine whether or not Tom Smith or Jane Doe have extra significant relationships. How will you say who’s extra fulfilled at work? How do you quantify how nicely you (or I) adhere to a code of ethics?
Alternatively, it is easy to match the tangible, goal standards of “success”: who has a nicer automotive, a much bigger home, a extra prestigious job, and youngsters at higher colleges.
In the event you view life as a contest, you naturally prioritize these issues that may be measured, these issues that may be competed for. Which means you give attention to goal — however in the end petty — considerations. The competitors subordinates what’s significant in life to trivial prizes that may be competed over.
Select Relationships over Competitors
What’s extra, competitors corrodes relationships.
Whereas relationships are advanced, at their core all wholesome fulfilling relationships require real mutual affection. Merely put, you ought to be rooting for the folks in your life to succeed, glad in the event that they get a promotion or their child will get into Harvard. That is subsequent to not possible should you view your life as a contest and the folks in it as rivals.
While you view life as a sport, you need others to fail — or at the least to be barely much less profitable than you might be. Viewing life as a contest converts family and friends from folks you care about to those uneasy, ambiguous relationships the place you’re partially rooting for these folks…however concurrently additionally attempting to beat them on the sport of life.
Evidently, this isn’t conducive to real closeness.
Play by Your Personal Guidelines
Following different folks’s standards for achievement negates what you worth.
You’re a novel particular person, with your personal strengths and weaknesses, your personal targets and preferences. The nice life is about attempting to reside in line with your values and make the trade-offs that maximize your happiness. This merely isn’t attainable if you abide by what the sport values: cash, consumption, tutorial status, youth athletic excellence.
The second you enter the sport, you’ve surrendered your autonomy and are prioritizing what others deem essential. You’re chasing life targets that you just had no function in formulating however which now you’re pursuing for the sake of “successful.” Any “victory” in a sport the place you’re residing life on different’s phrases will in the end show to be Pyrrhic.
Put together to Lose
You possibly can (and sure will) lose the sport of life, which like all video games is zero-sum.
Perhaps you’re one of many .01% who’s extremely good, prosperous, charming, and bodily engaging, who finds an exquisite partner, and has a bunch of cute children who find yourself within the Ivy Leagues. If that is the case, I’m glad for you.
For the opposite 99.99% of us, the unhealthy information is that we’re going to cope with frustrations and setbacks and plenty of issues we merely don’t excel at and by no means will. The excellent news is that we are able to nonetheless have an amazing life if we merely cope with these issues as they arrive, snug with who we’re, surrounded by folks we care about and who love us unconditionally.
Nevertheless, it is tough to have a very good life when each time we fail we really feel disgrace and embarrassment as we examine ourselves, unfavorably, to folks we deem extra profitable. In the event you’re enjoying a “sport,” the stakes of life’s inevitable failures and disappointments are so excessive that it makes life a terrifying ordeal, haunted by a specter of public defeat on the sport.
That is no method to reside.
Last Ideas
Evaluating your self to others has no good end result. Both you go searching and contemplate your self inferior to your friends (which makes you insecure and sad), otherwise you deem your self superior (which makes you conceited and egotistical). Neither is conducive to happiness or to being a very good individual.
Video games are enjoyable and competitors is fulfilling — supplied they contain trivial issues. By all means, go all out to win if you golf, run a 5k, or play fantasy soccer. However when these issues are over, go searching at your loved ones, buddies, profession, and worth system and understand that these issues are means, means too essential to be trivialized by turning them right into a sport.