How to Avoid a Competitive Life

In a capitalist society like ours, competition is woven into nearly every aspect of life. From a very early age, in fact, we learn that life is a competition where there are winners and losers.

The standard narrative that we’re taught—getting good grades leads to getting into a good college which leads to getting a good job which leads to success—is grounded in an ethos of competition. It is not an exaggeration to say that we continually battle each other in some way or another, encouraging us to think and behave in an aggressive and even combative manner in order to get an edge on our perceived competition.

We may think that this mindset is “natural” and that things have always been this way—but that is not the case. In his 1963 The American Idea of Success, Richard M. Huber described the dominant early American “gospel” of success as the “character ethic,” in which ambitious individuals were instructed to repress their personal desires and subscribe to the will of God. The making of money was a morally sanctioned act, according to popular works by Cotton Mather and Benjamin Franklin, with honest, hard-working Christians thus most likely to find success.

By the early 19^th century, however, the nation’s original concept of success was already becoming perverted as the forces of consumer capitalism started to dominate American culture. Money, power, and fame quickly became the primary criteria on the “scorecard” of success, accelerating the degree to which competition played out in everyday life.

A variety of external markers—income, home, occupation, education, and even clothing—became heavily relied upon to determine whether a person was or was not successful. Social and economic class was of course very much tied in with this more other-directed, externally defined concept of success.

Two centuries later, competition is more than ever woven into the fabric of everyday life. Standardized testing has become a pervasive component in education, teaching children that success is a function of quantitative measurement and rankings. As adults, we are constantly jockeying for position, trying to get on the shortest line or fastest car lane to save time. We not only accept aggressive thinking and behavior but reward it, something that has led to what might be described as an individual and collective psychological framework based on competition.

This is not surprising given the tremendous pressure we feel to be part of what is perhaps the most competitive and materialist society in history. We may chuckle at post-World War II Americans’ urge to keep up with the Joneses, but three-quarters of a century later, we remain entrenched in a comparison-based model of success.

There can be relatively few winners within such a model, however, making many of us feel like losers despite having much to be proud of. Most of us are engaged in the absurd exercise of trying to climb over each other to reach the top, an effort made all the more ridiculous because there is no real top to reach. There is always someone else who has more money, power, or fame.

Is there an alternative path of life that is rooted in a perception of ourselves as individuals rather than as contestants? Is there a way to define success that does not rely on the pursuit of money, power, or fame?

Happily, it appears so. For their 2006 book Success Built to Last, leadership and self-help experts Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery, and Mark Thompson interviewed 300 “remarkable human beings from around the world” in an attempt to learn what successful people have in common. Billionaires, CEOs, presidents of nations, Nobel laureates, and celebrities were strongly represented, although there were also some “unsung heroes” in the mix.

What was the key finding of this ambitious study? “When success just means wealth, fame, and power, it doesn’t last and it isn’t satisfying,” concluded the co-authors, maintaining that it was rather the pursuit of one’s passions and the continual taking on of challenges that was the “secret formula” to being a truly successful person. It is admittedly a mighty task given all the forces in play, but there is evidence to suggest that forsaking a competitive life for one that is personally defined can lead to greater fulfillment and contentment.