At various moments in my life, I was the first at some things.
I won’t mention here my accomplishments, although I am proud of them, it’s not a nice gesture to say „I was first in so-and-so occasions.”
Of course, I wasn’t first all the time.
And, of course, when I got to real competition (some of the best students in the country pursued the same College with me), not only I was not the first anymore, but at times I wasn’t even in the first half.
Also, like in the movies, competition is rarely about fighting with an invisible hero, and mostly about competing against a person with a real figure.
You don’t want to be „better than most”, you want to be „better than X.”
What did I learn during the years?
Competition has little to do with life.
Maybe it has something to do with ambition, but it’s a rather poor ambition – you should strive to be first not against standard KPIs, but the KPIs that matter. You should work to be educated, for example, not get a good grade on the test. Those two are correlated to some degree, but good grades don’t show the full picture.
Success is more than ambition, it’s not just who knows 2 + 2 and who stays longer because it’s ambitious, it’s more than that.
How fulfilled of a person are you? Do you play a positive role in society? Do you have good relations with others? Would your grandma be proud of you?
Yes, if you are ambitious you will likely do well, but there are many factors for success.
