By Anne Moon. Sao Paulo, August 30, 2019.
Enmity and competitiveness are very common in our lives, but we have to be aware of how toxic it becomes, how it affects us negatively.It is common to compete among ourselves, this also exists in the animal world. Animals compete with each other for leadership, for hunting and it would be no different between humans, we always enter into competition and enmity, since childhood we compete, whether for attention or in children's games and we are encouraged to compete among ourselves in various areas. of life, on the professional, personal side… So, in this whole scheme, the comparison arises.
We enter into a rivalry, because we look at each other, the position, occupation, lifestyle, personal achievements should be our reality.
Surely you've looked at such a person and thought of several possible reasons for her to have conquered the career, lifestyle, "boy" or "girl" you wanted, because she's good at something you're not. well, the aesthetics of the body or face, for not being in that standard… Or even because this person is in the expected standard, for being within the expectations that were imposed on her life.
And in this it is very common for us to enter into a rivalry to create a very strong enmity, there is again the question of competition being something natural for all living beings and for society to give more strength to this competitive side, sometimes even above the healthy.
There's no escaping it, we always want more, we look at someone and think “I want to catch up with them or surpass them”. It's okay to use this person as inspiration, as they are like our mentors, they activate our ambition to achieve some goal.
Yes, it's not wrong to be ambitious, to have something in life that you aspire to be and when you have people who represent you, it's much easier to achieve. Bruno Gimenes once said that it is important, in addition to having some ambition, something we were born to be, we need method (setting goals), training (putting what we learn into practice) and mentors (thriving people in the area in which you want to thrive and who will be your inspirations).
That is, if you want to be successful in something, you have to seek advice, learning, knowledge from those who have already prospered in it, get inspired and use it as motivation.
Did you see how ambition is not something negative, but that people put a very strong weight on that word? If we don't have ambition in life and seek those who inspire us, our existence would have little or almost no meaning, so we wouldn't even have to wait for any good change, we would be skating or as I've heard a few times, just to "fill space in the Universe" ” or “stealing oxygen from the planet”. It is unnecessary to be afraid of being ambitious, because this is what moves the wheels of the world and this idea is a little contradictory if in society, in the media, they always encourage more and more competition and rivalry for various reasons.
What we cannot allow is for this to be greater than our moral and ethical principles, blinding us, creating an unbridled and unfair dispute.
The issue is the comparison we make, whether with ourselves or with others. This puts us in a situation of totally unfair judgment. We judge ourselves for not being like a certain person, or for not being like someone else. This comparison is not enough, we lower ourselves or others to make a certain someone great, and that is when competitiveness exceeds all the limits of healthy and still leaves our vibratory frequency very low, bringing sadness, frustration, low self-esteem, so we are stuck in this circle of unhappiness and dissatisfaction.
It is on top of all this that society and the media work. Excessive competitiveness that brings enmity and with it dissatisfaction, unhappiness and frustration, which is profitable for a group of people, thoughtless consumerism. Just imagine how many companies wouldn't go bankrupt and close their doors if we weren't so dissatisfied? There would surely be thousands, and the world economy would be badly damaged.
Worst of all, the reason this is really a vicious cycle is that it was not enough to be contaminated by this energy of lack, we still contaminate the next, sometimes we create aversion for those who feel satisfied, they are seen as an affront.
(I want to clarify that being satisfied is not the same as being accommodated. Satisfied people are grateful and always want to evolve.
Anyway, nowadays people preach so much about what it means to be happy and prosperous to the point of being a dictatorship, the dictatorship of the perfect life, that we cannot have moments of sadness, anger, anguish, insecurity or fear, that it is wrong to feel these emotions, that everything has to be 100% perfect, be the best in everything, flaws are unacceptable, your life has to be built on what is said nowadays, the expected, the standard. There is still a lot of outside scrutiny to make sure there is no step outside that fine line and even curious to catch up on your life, it's a minefield.
This has become even more common with social media. People are always happy and their personal lives are always wonderful, just love, love and more love. Always confident, secure, on a good day, life filled with parties, drinks, lovers, friends, a rosy world.
The reality is not quite like that. I'm not saying that we should fill social networks with tragedies, but that the "pink world" is an illusion, which does not reflect life in its entirety. We should rather seek to be happy (our fulfillment), what makes us happy, emanate love, light, be confident, safe, make our day good, go to parties (if that's your taste. I like it myself from time to time ), drink from time to time (responsibly, of course) and a good circle of friends is important.
(I repeat, no problem with that)
However, there are also times when we are asked to be more patient with ourselves, when we are not doing so well and that's ok. We are not always happy, confident, secure or courageous… Sometimes we even need someone to give us a dose of security and confidence, to feel that you can count on that someone.
From the moment you rebuke these negative emotions, they accumulate in your subconscious and become a time bomb that can explode at any moment, that is, if you don't make good use of these negative feelings and channel them, they will corrode until it affects your physique.
Social networks, nowadays, make it clearer that there is unnecessary competition and enmity, the fight for followers, likes, views, to the point that people do crazy things to get that attention, the social network Instagram even removed the “likes” from the posts, the absurd and controversial things that have appeared in videos on the internet just for the purpose of getting those likes.
Deceptive advertising has also been spread on social media, in addition to the unreal lifestyle, bodies with a humanly impossible aesthetic, being propagated as real, natural, that only physical exercises and healthy eating are necessary to achieve such a model of body, even if every physique is different and that many times to get such a body, she has to undergo invasive procedures that if she had rationalized one or more times about, she would not have accepted. Or we fall into a "deep well" when we see that we don't have the same skill or life as a certain person.
Do we have to be the best, perfect in everything? Do we really have to be happy, safe, strong and confident at all times? Wouldn't inhibiting negative feelings be a form of oppression with yourself? Ignoring when things are bad, wouldn't that also be a way of deluding yourself? So it would be covering the sun with a sieve, right?
You can try your whole life to be the best, perfect in everything, happy, safe and strong, that won't be possible, and I don't say this to upset you, but so that there is no excessive self-demand, unrealistic expectations that only push you further the bottom, we have to have “head in the clouds” and “feet on the ground”, without putting ourselves down and not putting ourselves on a pedestal, without extremes.
Allow yourself to live light by being a little more empathetic with yourself, creating your own expectations for yourself and not living from the perspective of others, it's not worth it, I assure you.
Competitiveness gives us a parameter to live our life, it gives us this desire, this ambition to live, what drives and moves us. The gratuitous enmity and hatred that is propagated by competitiveness is why we stay alert and use our conscience and common sense, choose our battles, filter which ones will not steal your time and energy, which are the hardest things to recover. In fact, energy is something that affects your life in a very profound way, since lost time is never recovered. As I said in a previous article, time does not stop but always flows progressively, so understand the seriousness of the misuse of time, the consequences are noticeable in various areas of life.
Some competitions are unnecessary. Who has more money, more likes, views, who has the highest grades, the most beautiful face or body (and/or close to the expected beauty standard), the best relationships (family, dating, marriage, friends), passing the image of perfection, of all these relationships being impeccable, nothing out of place... Lives based on status, only with the aim of having the approval of others, a very unhappy, empty life, because no one who is happy and filled with love -self would lend himself to this role, because this person is busy making his own history, investing in himself, putting himself first, making his own existence pleasurable. May life be pleasant and light, right?
I can't forget to say that we ourselves are our only enemies. That is, you are your biggest and only enemy, there is no other opponent but yourself, because the power to control your life is not and shouldn't be with someone else.
If someone sees you as a rival, an enemy, that's up to her, so let her resolve it with herself. Don't get in that pile, don't take that karma for yourself, it's not worth your energy or time.
Oh, don't even take it personally, even if it's personal. I had said in an article that it is part of maturation and emotional intelligence for you not to take any provocation to iron and fire, for the simple sake of not being reactive. It is not to have “cockroach blood”, to be passive to everything. I'll say it again, it's choosing your battles and trying to be less affected by these things, maintaining balance, filtering what has to do with you, because when someone says something about you, it usually just reflects what they think about themselves. So don't give this person a social value, greater than he deserves, a social value greater than yours, don't give significance to what that person says.
Worse than anger is indifference. Calm down, it doesn't mean you have to be a snob, if you think you're better than others, but also not to think you're worse or equal to others, a middle ground. OK?
Keep this in mind: If I love and accept myself, I am not my enemy, there will be no external enemies. My only and biggest competition is with myself, to overcome myself every day. Overcoming fear, shame, pride, ego, failures and my ignorance (lack of knowledge).
You might also like:
- Competitiveness in life leads you to success
- Productivity: It's smart to make a fool of yourself
- What is the advantage in destroying the other?
Everything I wrote seems cliché, you must be reading and thinking that it is obvious that I would never let the competition go to my head, create enmities, waste time and energy on unnecessary things... But I ask you to reflect if it really happens in practice.
There is so much this concept of enmity and very strong competitiveness in the female world that today it is common to hear "the enemies", "the girls I don't like", there are even the famous "memes" playing with these phrases, "I/us against the enemies/girls I don't like”, everyone shares, I've shared and I'm sure you've also shared posts like this. Even without knowing who these enemies are or the motivation for this enmity, if there really is a reason (usually there is not) for this competition and enmity that are out of the ordinary, we have to police ourselves so we don't get into "battles" and create pointless rivalries for free, any one of which steals your time and energy. Choose one that is really worth it.
