My Introduction to Sport
Where do I start? My first introduction to sport was as a small child watching my mother play tennis. She was very competitive. I saw it in her reactions to a shot that put the ball into the net or when the ball landed outside the lines that defined the playing area. My mother also played field hockey and my father played rugby league. All my siblings played sport, as did many of my uncles, aunties and cousins on both sides of my family.
My grandfather played lawn bowls and, as my family shared the house of my motherâs parents, I would experience him coming home most Sundays always affected by alcohol, and sometimes with a gift for his performance on the greens or a tray of meat from the raffle.
At school we had swimming and athletic carnivals. I didnât learn to swim until a little later, but I loved the athletics. It was a little different back then: as well as the running we had the three-legged race, where two people standing side by side would have their ankles tied together, meaning that they had one leg each free and the other two legs had to work in harmony with each other. We also had the sack race. We climbed into a potato sack and then had to jump our way to the finish line. Such fun! Even then I was very competitive and good at all the events in comparison to others. I was surrounded by sport.
At the age of seven I started playing rugby league. I had two years in the Under 8âs, winning the competition the second year with me scoring all the tries. The attention that I received from all these experiences when young reinforced my competitiveness and showed me that sport was the way to satisfy my need for recognition, allowing me to feel a little more comfortable with myself, albeit only temporarily.
The seeds that were planted watching my mother play tennis were now starting to shoot.
At 11 or 12 I started playing cricket. I tried tennis but was not as good as I was at the other sports so âI did not like tennis.â The cricket and football continued at school and for the relevant clubs, and of course every year there was a school athletics carnival. Swimming was another sport that âI did not like.â Success in the sporting area as a child and during my early teenage years gave me what I was looking for, being able to feel better about myself and have people like me. But that need was never fully satisfied.
Pushing to be âBetterâ at Sport & Becoming a Brat
It was at the age of 11 that I started to learn that I could punish my body, which allowed me to be âbetterâ at sport. I needed to lose some weight to make the 5 stone 7 pounds (or 35kg) school representative football side, so every day I would run 3 miles or 4.8 km. I lost the weight. I liked doing that. My introduction to fitness was another distraction to continue my journey away from whom I truly was, progressively changing me from that tender, gentle and loving boy who came into this world six decades ago.
At school I was never top of the class as a student, the exception being in PE at high school. Otherwise, in classes of 30 plus students, I always finished in the middle, which started to feed a line of thought that I was âMr Just Above Average.â I knew that I was good at sport compared to my schoolmates, but not really good. Later on, this would feed into every part of my life.
Through my early teens nothing really changed. More success on the sporting field, my parents willingly paying for numerous trips all over the state of NSW. I was turning into a spoiled brat. I was always demanding more from my parents: I had perfectly good shoes but desperately needing the much more fashionable Nike or Adidas. I remember having a big dummy spit because they would not buy me those shoes. I always needed the best football or cricket equipment. I showed no appreciation for what I received; in fact, I expected nothing less. My parents got what they wanted but I was making them pay for it.
I started playing first grade cricket at the age of 16 and mixing with older men was a whole new experience. I had to become tougher than I already was, both physically and mentally. I was fortunate enough, again, to be successful and allowed myself to continue feeling good about myself.
Three years later I was playing first grade rugby league in a high-quality competition. Physically and mentally this demanded more of me. I had to train harder and there was more competition for a spot in the top team. This did not go well with my nervousness and anxiety. On game day I was not a nice person to be around. I would spend most of the morning in a room listening to AC/DC and other rock bands of the time. The purpose? To rev me up, make me feel more aggressive which I needed to be. Aggression was not natural to me so I had to call that energy in to survive in the coliseum, something I needed to do to feel better about myself and have people like me. The truth is they liked me for what I did more than who I was.
Travelling to the game I would be feeling nauseous from the nerves and in the minutes just prior to the game, dry retching or vomiting. This was all a part of my preparation. In fact, if I did not start dry retching I would start to question my preparation for the game â self-doubt big time. I had been successful in reaching this level with only a couple of levels to go: every child who plays sport has the dream of representing their country. I was no different.
Selling out at the Expense of Tenderness
A select few reach that level and they do that because they are willing to sacrifice what tenderness remains from whom they were as very young children. Yes, there is the physical aspect and talent side to it, but some are more willing to sell themselves in exchange for further developing those talents and physical requirements.
I knew by this time that, as mentioned above, I was just better than average. I would never reach the top because I never thought that I would. In saying that, I never played that way â I always pushed myself to my physical limits, whether at training or in a game. I still believed that punishing myself physically was a way of getting the results that allowed me to feel good about myself. People would like me for what I did, for what I was able to achieve.
You might have picked up a thread through this article that I did not like myself very much â and you would be right. I was a very nervous and anxious man, and this carried through to how I played sport. I was not a risk taker. I was very conservative in how I played, not wanting to make a mistake. This was always going to cap what I would achieve. There is an old saying â play to win. I can look back now and say that in most cases I played to not lose. This was my everyday life being played out in a sporting context⌠or was it the other way around?
Playing sport comes with the potential for injuries, and I have had my fair share, although I always regarded myself as doing pretty well as far as injury was concerned. I can look back now and recall the torn ligaments or tendons in the ankle and knees, the torn hamstring, groin or displaced hip, broken bones in my back, broken or dislocated thumbs or fingers, dislocated collar bones, head concussions or the many stitches inserted into my head and face to close up lacerations. If I was doing okay, how were the others doing?
Our willingness to play with injuries and put up with the pain is a measure of oneâs toughness. Men, and now women, are identified by their ability to ignore what their bodies are telling them and sometimes play with serious injuries. Did you know that women play all of the football codes these days, including rugby league and rugby union, two very tough contact sports? Is this really the equality that women are seeking?
Sport, Competition & Drinking
Sport is about winners and losers. For every winner that gets to celebrate, there are many who suffer the hurts of being not good enough, beating themselves up because they should have done this or not done something else. Even those that win need more â an athlete that wins but wanted a faster time, for example.
Why would we willingly and deliberately do this to ourselves and other human beings who are no different from us? Sport is competition, no different from two countries fighting over land, water or commodities that lie beneath that land. In that sporting competition I hated the people I was playing against. They were my enemy. They were the ones trying to stop me from being recognised. It was war, but with who? Who was my real enemy?
To complicate things even further I started drinking at the age of 17 and the sports that I chose to play had very ingrained cultures around drinking alcohol. I was playing with much older, more experienced men, and not just on the sporting field. We pushed ourselves to the limit physically and then rewarded ourselves by going to the pub or club for a schooner or ten. I usually lost count before that stage. Drinking a schooner was the standard glass size â I think from memory 15 fluid ounces, while a middy, the next size down and being 10 fluid ounces, was generally for those who werenât real men. I was not all that good at drinking.
There was always competition in the drinking. Some men claimed their authority by drinking faster than others or by how many beers they could drink. You had to try and keep up â you were defending yourself as a man. Some claimed a short-lived notoriety by sculling (drinking the whole glass in one go) their schooner of beer, or what was called a half-yard glass.
The drinking is designed to further entrap us, and in my case, it allowed me to escape any responsibility, any issues or problems that I may have had. They were always still there the next day, trapped in a cycle of train, drink, play, drink. The culture around alcohol in sporting clubs at that time was poisonous. I am quite fortunate to still be here in this life having narrowly avoided a serious car accident on more than one occasion when driving after drinking. I was still living at home with my parents. It must have been horrible for them knowing that I was out drinking and then driving home.
This pattern of behaviour remained the same whatever the sport. A new sport came along for me, touch football, not as demanding on the body as rugby league, but had all the same trimmings as the others. I could feel better about myself because I was good at playing the game, then drink to forget the fact that the real me was hiding behind this magical show. Everything was short-lived and just a temporary fix for the problem that I had. It was never going to provide me the opportunity that I was searching for: to return to the qualities that I had when I was born and to leave behind all the ideals and beliefs that had been imposed upon me by the world and reinforced by sport.
Life without Competition
My very competitive mother is in her 80s and stills hits a small, mostly white ball around a golf course. She is very hard on herself if she plays a bad shot and still loves to get a lower score than others. On a recent visit to see them we had a discussion about the changes that I have made to how I live, and sport came up â naturally, as that was how my parents identified with me, as a sportsman. Sport is still a big part of their lives. They will spend hours watching golf, tennis, rugby league, cricket. Dad loves the trots on the T.V.
I was able to explain to them what I now know was my real purpose for playing sport â to receive recognition and be liked by people. I was looking for other people to make me feel better about myself, to hide the pain that I felt from withdrawing from the qualities that came with me when I was born. My motherâs response pointed out to me something that I already knew all those years ago but conveniently ignored, and that is that people already liked me â my real problem was not liking myself. My father sat quietly to one side, understanding the conversation but not ready to accept that sport is used as a tool to pull us further away from our Soul and God.
This was no different from myself when I came across the teachings of the Ageless Wisdom presented by Serge Benhayon. For several months I stoutly defended sport and competition and today, six years later, my ears will still prick up when the word âsportâ is used. Competition? Did I mention that competition is also present in our relationships at home as well as at work? For some, it dominates their life. I know it still exists in me, albeit at very low levels and it affects my relationships with myself and other people.
Sport â competition.  Life â competition. Perhaps there is a way of living that has no competitionâŚ
What if we could live a life where everyone was equal, where we would need nothing from others because it was already within us. What would our world look like if this was the case?
By Anonymous
Further Reading:
My Turnaround from Competitive Running to Connection with Me
The Body and My Relationship with it
My Reflection on Competition and Sport
Anonymous you are shining a light on the falseness of sport that you have to psych yourself up to bring in a force so that you could be more aggressive because you are not naturally aggressive. Everyone knows that this aggression then has to go somewhere and very often off the field the families of sportsmen are abused either verbally physically or both.
Years ago one famous football player was asked by a sports television reporter, what was he going to do after loosing the championship game and he said he was going home to beat up his wife and at the time no one batted an eye lid because everyone knows it goes on but it is considered to be the downside of competitive sport. Sweep it under the carpet, and promote instead the glamorous side of the game the money and fame of the big time players.
I loved the three legged races and potato sack race and egg and spoon race because they were so silly, then it just seemed like it was about fun and having fun nothing to do with winning or actual competitiveness.
Competition of any kind take us on a merry-go-round path of comparison and jealousy as we are always trying to be better than another and this competitive nature is not innate within us but has to be learnt by suppressing our essences or soul one in the same.
“people already liked me â my real problem was not liking myself.” Competitive sport as a means to attract attention from others is equally likely to invoke comparison and jealousy.
Last weekend I watched the last set of the Wimbledon final on TV – something I havent done for years. What surprised me after some initial reacting was how much I could see the energy at play as the possibility of winning swung between the two players. They were being played like puppets.
” I still believed that punishing myself physically was a way of getting the results that allowed me to feel good about myself. People would like me for what I did, for what I was able to achieve.” You see so much of this in schools and colleges and it is celebrated by the media. It never ceases to amaze me now how the most gruelling feats are endorsed and rewarded. However ten years ago or so i too may well have been supporting such endeavours.
What is great about sharing a story like this is that it is like an invitation to be really honest with ourselves (without judgement) about where competition has a hold on us – whether at work, home, in relationships, even silently with ourselves which I find manifests as a hard push in me to do, achieve, be more and dishonours me greatly.
Yes I agree and even competing with oneself is supported when other forms of competition are not endorsed. Something for me to watch for more.
Sport is not so innocent, you only need to attend a football match to feel the tribal pack energy that curates and instils separation.
Wow we really put our bodies under lot of stress and compromise by pushing it and driving it through something that is really not natural to us.
So very true Gill, I myself played hard, contact sports to fit in, as this is what my friends were doing, so I went along not wanting to be left out, going against my true sensitive nature
As I walk around a sporting ground near a place where I live there are varying age groups of kids starting from the youngest ones who seem playful and have a lightness about the way they play, up to the older boys with a coach screaming orders. These older boys have started to become serious and hard, no longer is it about playing, but now playing to win.
True, people already liked you, it was you not liking yourself, no need to punish yourself, ‘I still believed that punishing myself physically was a way of getting the results that allowed me to feel good about myself. People would like me for what I did, for what I was able to achieve.’
Selling out at the expense of tenderness is something we virtually all do, whether itâs on the sporting field, the field of academia or simply giving up. I the strive for recognition with anything out side of us we harden and true away from our true essence.
Recently I’ve realised that I get into a competitive streak while driving. I’ll want to get into a gap before another and it does bother me. The more I connect to the qualities I was born with the more these adopted behaviors get highlighted. I don’t like these streaks but I am glad I am becoming aware of them.
We champion sport as a great place to learn lessons which will support us in life but in fact it is setting us up to repeat things which have not served us for many years.
“What if we could live a life where everyone was equal, where we would need nothing from others because it was already within us. What would our world look like if this was the case?”
The world would certainly not have to have any big sporting events, people would put money and resources into things that were evolutionary rather then something that prompted separation between families, friends, towns and cities.
Sport encourages us to become competitive and then we use this competitiveness to establish some sort of security in our lives, without really appreciating just how harmful a behaviour it is. In more recent years I have come to realise there is absolutely no need to be competitive, as it only ever favours the individual not the whole. Real security is established by learning how to cohesively support each other, to build a cohesive and stable community, something that can never be established by out doing each other.
Selling out of our tenderness because we want recognition – be it in sport, music, drama or academic work – is so common in school systems currently, fuelled by the competition engendered there. What if we were taught to value, appreciate and love who we are – just as we are- would we still need to try to beat and be better than others?
This belief is unfortunately still strong in society, ‘I still believed that punishing myself physically was a way of getting the results that allowed me to feel good about myself. People would like me for what I did, for what I was able to achieve.’
This is key – we often seek competition and recognition and hence fall into comparison when we do not have the foundation of self love and appreciation of all that we bring. “people already liked me â my real problem was not liking myself. “
It is key, so important to have a strong foundation of love, and appreciation, for ourselves.
Competition is rampant in society and I certainly grew up seeking attention through competition – though I did not like feeling how my friends felt when I won, I did briefly enjoy the short celebration and attention that I got from parents or teachers etc. But even this was not long lasting and then came the pressure of having to perform again in order to get noticed or to get attention. This is not a fun way to live ones life and though I understand it more now, and have not actively engaged in it, there is a part of me that still buys into the competition though I am trying to shake it completely from my life.
I thought I loved the camaraderie of being part of a team sport, the being together and being on the same side, but I always hated the competition element; the high drive, the push and the disappointment of losing; winning I felt the hollowness after the short elation.
And its not just the players who are affected. I had a football mad boyfriend who went into very low moods when his team lost. It was unpleasant to be around. Equally the highs after a win, which were very short-lived.
Sport, especially when it is competitive seems to contract the body and bring more tension – stretching and ways to bring more space to our bodies allows for greater expression and connection.
A once of competition is an ounce of disharmony as we are no longer in union with another and it is felt instantly.
Thank you for sharing Anonymous – this very much exposes how our ideals/beliefs can control and dominate our lives.
‘Life without competition’… I come to realise more and more that not only is this actually totally innate and natural for us but it is, more so than ever before, essential that we explore and re-introduce a way of living that is devoid of competition.
So true Matilda. I was recently involved in a group interview process in which we were asked to collaborate on an exercise. It was interesting to see how competition undermined true collaboration in the group.
The understanding that competition undermines true collaboration is vital. We do people a disservice and shoot ourselves in the foot as society when we ingrain it in people from young that they need to compete and whoever achieves ahead of others is favoured. We could instead encourage and foster the ability to collaborate with the interest of everyone at heart.
When in competition we often have adrenalin levels coursing through our blood, and hence if we sustain an injury, we are less likely to feel the pain or the impact on the body immediately. There is a disconnection from the body which means we can injure ourselves more and more severely and then still continue with the sport than we would if we maintained the connection and knew exactly when to stop and how far the body can go. This seems pretty crazy in reflecting on it!
Sports in general is a very competitive arena, in fact I cannot think of a sport that is not competitive in some way. And in addition to this the competition spills over to many other areas in life, and many see this competition as a good thing in that it ‘drives’ us to improve or better ourselves. But at what and whose expense? It is always in comparison to another and being ‘better’ than another….does this not set us all up for failure in life in terms of connecting and deepening our relationships with each other? In truth, I feel that competition does not lead to improvements, but rather sets us up for failure. Why not instead allow ourselves to be all that we are and have others be inspired to express likewise. Now that is a different scenario that does not involve competition but in fact involves supporting others to express what is naturally within even if it means that they might ‘surpass’ what you have been able to express in that moment in time. What a way to grow together! Note: I feel we are not yet at a point in society where we can all be doing this, so the transition to this inspiration with absence of competition does need to happen in increments and gradually. I know there is much I have learned to let go of in terms of competition around sports, but there is yet more for me to let go of in all areas of life when it comes to competition!
Well said Ariana, further to this even those who are perceived to be good at sport and who have some form of acceptance and recognition for it are driven by this and it is far from healthy. They too will also experience the same feeling of being crushed when they are not successful in that which they are invested in.
Spot on Michael – it is a game of yoyo – you feel great for being picked first in the team or for coming first, OR you feel crushed for being last. Then after this you are left with the goal to strive again to be first so that you are not last…and so it continues with the same tune…
It is interesting to observe how many people see competition as heatlthy when it is in fact the exact opposite…
So true Gill, it is the longing and knowing how we are here to work together that gets us into sports in the 1st place as we feel united but when we actually truly come together to work and be it feels completely different and the whole ‘team sport’ mentality shows itself for what it is and it is merely a substitute for the truth we know.
To be liked for what we do at the expense of who we are is one of the greatest punishments we could possibly endure.
That really brings it home Henrietta of how devastating and demoralising it is to have what you do championed at the expense of who you truly are.
Comparison is a killer – if we win and prove to be ‘better’ than those around us, this recognition only lasts a very short time and we are back to the same position of fighting tooth and nail to be the best next time around again. If we come second or 3rd or 4th this is never good enough, and we feel like we have failed. We judge our worth based on our physical accomplishments and process and based on our comparison to where we sit amongst others rather than looking at our true qualities and our natural capacity to be where we are at given our make up – both physical and beyond. This gets us no where other than to stunt our true growth – it is in fact a brilliant tactic to distract from any true evolution for most of us fall for it hook line and sinker.
Yes. most of us buy into this which takes us away from the bigger picture and our multidimensionality. As you say comparison is a killer.
As I was reading your blog Anon, I became aware how I too ‘did not like’ certain sports based upon how good I was at them (or not) and with what ease it came to me (or not) – all based upon results achievable and the recognition that came with it. What a revelation!
‘Selling out at the expense of tenderness’. Definitely not worth it since I am discovering that not only is tenderness one of our greatest strengths but also it is with tenderness that we access our other great natural qualities – sensitivity, awareness, openness and connection as examples.
There is a hardness that our bodies must go into to engage in sport and all the time we bury the innate tenderness that we are.
I remember having to go into the hardness to play Rugby when I was younger and I hated it, so would run as fast as possible to not get tackled as it felt so crushing on my body.
Celebrating or the celebration of the tenderness of our bodies is not a romantic ideal like something we play with on special days but is what is felt by all the people who live in a way that allows our-selves âto love and be loveâ for without the latter how can we Love another. So celebrating life is something like a fashion or approach to life we live for and with true love we all are then also living with the natural tender person we innately are! And could it be that all sports loving people âso calledâ are having an affair with shutting down our true tenderness for the sake of competition?
I never liked sport as a child mainly because I hated the competition and would never push myself to beat another. It just didnt feel right. However its hard to survive in a culture that encourages this kind of attitude in children when the majority are going along with it, and without the true support to not get pulled in, thats what inevitably happens. And the competitiveness continues to reveal itself in other ways as we get older until we make a choice to stop it.
Same here and yet we have society divided over sport on a daily basis, perhaps we should listen to the feeling we know deep inside.
Well said Sandra for competitiveness is alive and thriving in all its various ways even away from the sporting arenas – such as competitiveness and comparison amongst women and dressing or make up etc, or with businesses and with cars etc etc. It is rampant in our society and the question is simply how much do we play into this game and allow it to control our choices and lives?
Our bodies are such a great reflection of whether we have been living in harmony with our innate essence and the flow of the Universe we are a part of. Although we are not educated or brought up to do so, whenever we sense we are running at odds with our body, it is worth stopping and unpacking the greater awareness available to us.
Love this Gill, lets not sell out for anything. Lets be together in truth not in arrangments of any sort. Not in competition but with the purpose of evolution.
The effects of sport on our bodies and the harshness of competition in the world is something not to be celebrated for the harming it causes us and the reality of what is really going on and the way we are living is so far from the love and tenderness of who we truly are.
So true. We already are liked by people we just have to like ourselves.
I love your honesty in the blog anonymous, ‘I showed no appreciation for what I received; in fact, I expected nothing less. My parents got what they wanted but I was making them pay for it.’ Perhaps this shows us what can happen when we invest in our children and ‘want the best for them’?
It is a huge thing, parents pushing children according to the model prescribed by society because we ‘want the best for them’. Yet I have come across so many who later in life realise they were pushed into areas that they would not have chosen for themselves and are holding on to the resentment that comes with that.
I imagine it must be one of the worst things ever, ticking all the boxes of being a great parent and yet watching your child end up nowhere near the great life you imagined you were pushing them into, and in fact sometimes the opposite.
True Rachel and you highlight something which stands out for me – that investment in what’s best for our children can also be what parents want for themselves too due to ideals and beliefs.
When we punish our own body it is easier to punish and bully others.
This is true, Christoph. And straight to the point. It is only when we disregard, abuse, dismiss or judge ourselves that we can do the same to others… so it makes things very simple. Our responsibility is to build a respectful, caring, honest and one day loving relationship with ourselves so that we can take these qualities into every aspect of our lives.
These days even driving past a venue where sports are played one can feel the feelings that come with being competitive, as they can be easily felt. When young and playing these sports one thought that this feeling was normal but now it is simple to feel the hooking ill energy that comes from being competitive.
‘I can look back now and recall the torn ligaments or tendons in the ankle and knees, the torn hamstring, groin or displaced hip, broken bones in my back, broken or dislocated thumbs or fingers, dislocated collar bones, head concussions or the many stitches inserted into my head and face to close up lacerations.’ Gosh! This sounds severe and we champion elite sport as a good thing?
There is the championing of those who get up and carry on despite of the injuries(!). Yet I wonder if at the beginning someone read this list to us without the other pressures that push you into such activities, would so many of us jump to get involved? I know I certainly would not.
Golnaz it really reminds us of the Roman colosseum, which shows that as a race of human- beings we are still stuck in a certain mentality which is so abusive. Is it possible that we have these competitive sporting events as a way for the spectators to vent their pent up emotions in one place so that an energy can just feed off all that emotional pent up energy in one go. What if this was actually what was happening that humanity is being played with by a for now unseen entities that feed off our emotions so that we go to these stadiums which can hold over 50,000 people and they can syphon off all that energy in one go. Is it possible to just stop and imagine just how much energy is being generated by the people of opposing teams. What if we are being played by this unseen energy but we think it is us that are calling the shots? How intelligent is our intelligence?
Looking back I can say honestly that by far the biggest tension and source of anxiety I used to feel when participating in elite competitive sport was not the pressure from the crowd or team-mates or from my opponents but it was the tension of forcing myself to be competitive when there is not a single cell of me that is naturally that way.
There are many pressures and tensions which we can often accurately point out as impacting our experience of life, but I wonder how much of our stress and anxiety is in fact far more deep rooted as exposed by this comment.
I can completely relate here to the theme of having to change, distort and contort yourself not only physically but in every way as a person in order to achieve success in a competitive arena such as competitive sport. If it changes us to the point where it effects our relationships with others and with ourselves for the worse then is this a price worth paying for some temporary fleeting success and accolades?
Well yes Andrew it is worth the payment for the recognition and fame, American Football is one such example of a game that all young children aspire to. It is the dream of so many American boys to become the famous soccer player or basketball player. A few years ago a young woman was raped within the grounds of the college she was attending by one of the male students. He allegedly was not charged because it was felt it would ruin his promising career in football. We are so lost as a race of human-beings where we can place sport above another persons human rights of just common decency. There is so much money to be made from sport that all standards are lost to the colour of money.
Incredible how we smash through life to be the champion this and that without anyone ever mentioning that quality is what actually counts.
We get so much feedback from being good at sport – I remember the fitting in and camaraderie in particular as well as the pleasure in winning. But that is also a pleasure in beating someone else (and feeling like my world had ended if I lost to someone else), and having my team as a safety net, rather than realising I was quite awkward around others and quite shy, because I did not have any self confidence back then. Basically I used it as a sticking plaster to make me feel better and cope with the social pressures I felt so acutely at school.
‘There is a way of living that has no competition’ – I know this to be true and this fact blows the common misleading myth that competition is natural when in fact it is the opposite.
Competition is natural when there is no love. When there is love, competition is much less than love and I have not seen any point in engaging in competition.
The other day, two friends waved at me as I was driving in. They both looked so tender and sensitive, it made my heart melt. These two friends were men in their 30’s. Men who have let go of the sport competition thing and are willing to open up their hearts and be truly loving with those around them. In a world where it is all about being the toughest, strongest and hardest, it is truly touching to see the realness of what is natural to the masculine gender.
It’s no coincidence that some very sensitive people have chosen the most disregarding sport to harden up and feel protected and less affected by the world.
We do go into all kinds of activities in life to get recognition and rewards all because we do not appreciate ourselves for who we are when we are in comparison with people around us.
At times when I am asked what sport I do and tell them I donât do any, they find me a little weird as it is so common to do a sport possibly because it is being promoted as healthy and something that should be part of your activities in life.
It is ironic that often such ‘healthy’ activities go hand in hand with injuries, aches & pains. Pushing my body past its limits and competing to win at the expense of others who become the losers is not a pleasant experience in my books, so not my choice of activity either.
Interesting you mentioned âto survive in the Coliseumâ which gives me the impression that sport is still about life and death. Although not physically I can feel that energetically it is still the same as in the old days in Rome where these on life and death fights were common.
Although we can sometimes say that when we are very young there is not the same type of competition as in elite sport, which is true, this is the seed where it starts, and it is all from the same place. No competition is healthy or innocent.
I’m not sure Michael – I’d say same same but different level of intensity. Like you say definitely where the seed is sown.
‘It was at the age of 11 that I started to learn that I could punish my body, which allowed me to be âbetterâ at sport…’ Where are we at as a society when we punish our body to be better at anything to get ahead of others? Is this true success?
The reality of sport with its competition with one another is so huge to truly see what is going on and the effects it has on us and society as a whole is something to look at as shown here for its changes who we are and the love and oneness to a life of separation and striving that will never be enough.
I never really enjoyed sport as I hated the competitiveness of it, and I was not particualrly ‘good’ at any sport. I just enjoyed certain acitivites for what they were. But becoming aware of the competitive nature of people as I got older only encouraged me to shrink away from anyone who behaved in that way. However it is surprising how competition can sneak into our lives in much more insidious ways without us really noticing, and this can be just as harming as the more obvious examples such as sports.
What would the world look like if there was no competition? Many assume competition is needed, since for example in a capitalist economy it is assumed that competition driving force for creative innovation, and that may be true in a society where survival of the fittest rules and is deemed to be a natural thing.
Yet I have seen in the example set by Universal Medicine, and many businesses set up by those inspired by its reflection, evidence of how it could be a different way. The desire to truly love, care and support humanity in itself promotes creative innovation that has people at the heart far more than when such endeavours come as a result of wanting to compete.
When we push our body to those limits, we can’t but disconnect ourselves from feeling it and when sensitivity is lost, we are at the mercy of any force we choose to continue escaping from feeling. Sport is clearly one of those activities in which we can find that kind of fuel, when is practiced in such way. The question would be, why not feeling? What are we escaping from? Which is the compensation we are looking for in return?
Sports is a safe hiding place for us to be comfortable and not push any boundaries. It is a way for us to put on a face like we are doing great when in fact competition is not in our bodies one bit.
This is such an important myth to overturn – I have heard it all my life that competition is innate and natural and it so isn’t… it is in fact absolutely against our true nature of working together and supporting each other to grow and learn.
During the time I played sport I encountered few injuries however the list here is not uncommon and indeed the attitude to them is one of frustration that they occur such is our drive to keep on playing. This would not be possible if we allowed ourselves to feel the tenderness in our bodies and all they communicate to us, but then that in itself is half the reason we seek to bludgeon them, less we feel the truth of what we know.
How would the world look like, if we would not measure ourselves on skills and talents but how amazing our individual qualities are, that make up together the whole picture? We would support each other in raising our vibration constantly instead of competing in functionality, which only can crush your vibration and quality.
How much do we deny our own grandness, when we have to be better than another?
I am very up for a competition-free world. Like enough of the ‘character building’, ‘it’s natural’ rhetoric… it is totally in conflict with our natural way of being and causes more division and unrest than we can possibly imagine.
Gentle exercise while you are aware of your body, honouring of it and choosing each movement with care is great for the body. What each gains from taking part in activities that include others and as one, in support of one another, you work towards something that is for and enhances the whole is invaluable. Competition sports at best mimic these, but in reality they tend to take us miles away from the true essence of these and make such an expression normal.
When we miss love in our life we look for a substitute. Sport works quite well – team sports give us connections to people, solitary sports allow for an almost infinite amount of effort. It is not love but it passes the time.
Sport will never be healthy, when you do it and disconnect to your body. True sport does honour your body and its delicateness and don’t put it under extreme tension, shock, pain and strain. Our body is there for us to access a higher intelligence by its movement and not to function for our own desires and pleasures.
When you look at competition in a general sense: you might geht a number or achieve a certain level and get either celebrated or not being recognised at all. How sad, that actually every system has this kind of hierachy and measurement. We are more “numbers” and functional roboters than the soulful, precious being that we are. What an exhausting way of being always needing to achieve something, instead of being and supporting each other in everyones quality.
What do we actually truly fear, when we always want to be the best?
I recently saw a post being shared on social media relating to running injuries which reads ‘Why isn’t the answer to a running injury ever “Just keep running a lot, it will go away.”‘ This highlights the mentality of those heavily involved in running but also in sport that even though they recognise that their chosen sport has caused an injury, they do not consider whether it is a wise choice to pursue in the manner they have been, but would prefer to carry on regardless.
That cure to keep running through the pain till it goes away, makes as much sense as hitting yourself with a hammer because it feels good when you stop! Why do we willfully push our bodyâs past the pain messages it sends us? Has there ever been a small child that has touched a hot stove twice?
It is a joy watching you children play and the tenderness with which they move and respond to one another. So how come we donât foster this further and as described in this blog we introduce competition and pushing to get recognition and even teaching what leads to âI started to learn that I could punish my body, which allowed me to be âbetterâ at sportâ. It is not so surprising that in later years so many people are constantly abusing their bodies as a norm, with the dire consequences we face as a society.
Sport will never take us to the real me.
We do know, even when fully immersed in it, that sport does not feel great and therefore the reason why drinking after the match, game or event is almost synonymous with it.
We think we can âgameâ life to get what we want but what we donât realise is like the figures in this photo weâre just being controlled by something much bigger – that lets us think we are a free player.
I was into horse riding. My dad thought it kept me away from boys and so begin the massive expense of horses and all the bits that go with them – which was filling a need in both of us and a total arrangement.
Competition creates a tension in the body that we consider to be normal. It’s only until we have something still and full to compare it with that makes this tension feel awful.
Rachel great point, when what we have is normal even though there is great illness, uncomfortableness then its only when there is something that is different and true do we realise and feel the extent of what is not true but we thought was true.
Very true. In fact we seek that tension as the price seems small compared to the distraction from how we feel it offers.
Hmmm. I like this because it makes me wonder how many other things we normalise that only in their absence do we realise how abnormal they are.
If we do not have the experience of the alternative, stillness, we feel something is ‘wrong’ if we do not have the tension. It is therefore an addiction, an addiction to adrenalin, one of the most addictive addictions there is.
Even spectating creates an awful tension in the body. A tension that not only felt normal to me when I used to watch my son play football but one that I used to say that I enjoyed. Now however I can’t bear the feeling of agitation in my body, the increased heart rate, sweaty palms and the inability to breath properly. It seems odd to me now that I used to enjoy feeling like that and even felt slightly cheated if the game didn’t provide me with the ‘buzz’ I was hoping for.
I once saw a selected group of professional rugby players walk past me and what struck me was how distorted their bodies looked. Very, very strong but the bodies felt very out there.
I remember that feeling of being competitive but not at the top. There is something comforting in both regularly winning and losing as there is always more to aspire to but there is also something missing as neither winning nor losing feel in any way nourishing.
Winning or losing are like an anti-climax – you get built up to this thing and yet both feel empty and in that moment, that instant that you feel the emptiness of what you have ‘achieved’, it is too much to admit and so we ignore the empty feeling to the best of our ability and simply play the game of society in celebrating the winner, because this is simply what everyone else is doing too and this means that at least we ‘fit in’ and can deny the loss everyone is feeling.
âI can look back now and recall the torn ligaments or tendons in the ankle and knees, the torn hamstring, groin or displaced hip, broken bones in my back, broken or dislocated thumbs or fingers, dislocated collar bones, head concussions or the many stitches inserted into my head and face to close up lacerations.â If this is is all the result of sport and competition how come we still celebrate it and think itâs good?
Competition spoils everything and pits us against each other rather than enjoying the activity as such and sharing that. And competition is rife, from the fastest car to the most money to the trophy to who can eat the most. It seems we’ve turned everything into a quest for security, survival and thus competition.
I’ve been to many schools as a child and one, in particular, stood out because everything was about sport and competition and I hated both of those things. Getting from one classroom to another was even made into a merit badge situation, and sports day and competing against other schools across the country became more important than learning the three r’s. This overemphasis on sport was quite a worry for those of us who were not particularly athletic.
The frustration I observed in adults playing sport when i was a child always felt like despair or desperation to be something by doing something, rather than just appreciating all that we can be just by being us without doing anything.
This is such a great example of how we see so many things as ânormalâ simply because the majority of the people around us are subscribing to that way, and how that is often enough for us to also start to relate to that aspect in the same manner. However when we choose to stop, reassess and reconnect deeper we can start to sense that there could be another way.
A great exposing and understanding of the effects of sport and competition on our lives and the seeking of it for recognition and achievement when all along not liking and loving ourselves truly from within. We are all love and come from a oneness and the ancient wisdom and The Way of the Livingness brings this clearly and simply to our lives and simply exposes everything that is not love.
Getting past… ‘ a little bit of competition is good for you’ is a tricky one as we are all so invested in competing against one another to stand out, to succeed and achieve and get that recognition we are all so desperately seeking.
Very true, competition is never good as there is always a winner and a loser which creates divide and separation no matter what the outcome or result is.
“I can look back now and recall the torn ligaments or tendons in the ankle and knees, the torn hamstring, groin or displaced hip, broken bones in my back, broken or dislocated thumbs or fingers, dislocated collar bones, head concussions or the many stitches inserted into my head and face to close up lacerations.â And the broken jaw that happened, just after half-time and I had to finish the game because we had no more replacements left to take my place. It seems the tougher we are the greater the accolades and the more free schooners were made available, it was like the free drink would somehow make the benefactor a tougher person.
We can sometimes seek to be part of sports team as a way of belonging and yet we still are pitting ourselves against another team all for the sake of winning.
I successfully avoided sport my whole life, shunned it in fact. However it was not so much the physical exercise I was rejecting as the energy that fuels it. I could not stand the competition and subsequent divisiveness it produced amongst people. Ironically, my anti-sport stance led to me holding a judgement over those that chose to engage in this way and thus the very thing I accused âthemâ of was the very act I was guilty of myself â living in separation to people. If we truly want to see more equality being lived in the world we do not need to get upon our soap box and preach it, we simply need to live it so that what is being lived gets âfed back into the gridâ so to speak and helps lay the foundation for a different way of living that does not have us competing against and shunning each other.
I always thought I played sports because it was fun. But going deeper I realize that I got recognition from it.
We as a society are probably not quite ready to have conversations about competition and what it truly means. At this stage we think its great as a tool for self-improvement and empowerment. But where is the self empowerment when someone is faced with losing something that they have worked so hard for and the winner is faced with the after effects of everyone they have beaten.
Boasting about sporting injuries and being able to carry on or not even though you had them until the end of a match or later date is common, especially in contact or combat sports. Crazy that we find ourselves in such a position as to be able to champion the harming of ourselves or others…
I also remember growing up in Australia and sensing that competition was everywhere in society and so it must be the way to go and I can see retrospectively how much pressure and tension that puts on people to constantly perform and measure up to something.
Reading this blog reminds me of how I was at school I used long distance running as my way of being by myself but gaining attention at the same time. Here was something I was good at as field sports for me were a disaster. Getting positive attention from the P.E. Instructor and the whole School was a balm to my body because most of the time the attention I was getting from my family was negative, I was never good enough, and girls would never amount to much anyway. Hang on, look at me Iâm representing the school and the county. Looking back it is easy to see how we get hooked by our current education system into believing it is all about our competing with each other and only if you are successful will you get any recognition and you have to continue to succeed or the feeling of being special will quickly disappear as they look for and encourage the next person to succeed hence the competition to stay top of your game. It’s a complete set up and sellout you are famous for 5 minutes and then put on the scrap heap as the establishment set others up who are just as willing to sell themselves out for the buzz they get from being recognised as special in some way.
Yes, continuing to play sport when injured is an indictment of how disconnected we can become from our sensitivity, for in truth even a paper cut hurts every one of us.
‘People would like me for what I did, for what I was able to achieve.’ I really believed this until very recently – I strived to be the best worker, the best problem solver, the cleverest at whatever I did- it’s exhausting and so I often hide away to hide the cracks in my facade. It’s taken a toil on my health, this being there for others so they aren’t displeased with me, whilst also knowing I wasn’t the best because it was unsustainable, yet that’s when I got the whip out.
Recently I saw my parents, my dad in particular this relates to. I could feel he loves me so much and all my efforts to get his approval growing up and as an adult, so he’d notice me, were all completely pointless. Pointless because he loves and has loved me all along. I wanted from him a particular father-daughter relationship that he wasn’t able to give, but I’d made it my mission to get – so not understanding or accepting of where he was at and his life history.
Now I’m discovering this need to be the best in work etc. and learning to let it go because my body can’t sustain how I’ve been living. Now it’s learning to feel how I am enough and the boxes that need ticking in work will get ticked, just in a different way with all of me. It is a transition period and a little unstable but that’s ok.
Competitive sport is not natural, it’s been introduced.
Yes it is interesting when you observe most young children before school age and they are not naturally competitive but cooperative and collaborative with each other.
Until I came across Universal Medicine and then a string of other companies inspired to also use the same foundation of love, integrity and care of people above profit and fame, I was seduced completely by the belief that you cannot exist, let alone be successful, if you did not vie to be better and ahead of others. Yet I now know not only is it possible to exist and be successful, but this is the only way that my heart feels at ease.
Thank you for sharing your experience of sport and competition. Even if we have never been strong performers in sport everything you talk about is relatable. Competition is an absolute killer for us all. And it not only permeates our sports fields but every day life, down to those conversations when we vie to get a point across rather than be open to really hear what others are saying.
Where I grew up you were considered a bit weird if you didn’t play sport and if you were lucky enough to be good at it, it made you popular and got you noticed. I played sport mostly rugby for years growing up and it did provide a sense of belonging to something or a type of brotherhood but I consider those years kind of a waste of time when all the practices and time spent playing and the energy put in could have been put to far better use.
Yes it is quite a shock to look back realise how much time could have spent far more productively.
It was the same where I grew up – I did not play any sport, and it’s true, I did feel that many people saw that as weird and it made me a bit of an outsider.
“The truth is they liked me for what I did more than who I was.” Success in its many forms is a powerful and toxic illusion which enables us to deny what we are truly feeling and hence being our true self.
Thanks, Anonymous. I love the clarity you now have that sport was a strategy to gain acceptance and recognition, but took you away from the sensitive boy that you are now re-connecting to.
It’s great to see that no matter what our vice or goto activity is, in the end it often comes to us wanting to be liked or loved as we have let go of loving ourselves.
It is amazing how much we learn from watching our parents, and in your case, where there has been much competitive behaviour, it is clear to see how the cycle of competitiveness continues through the generations.
Sport is an excellent distraction.
‘I always finished in the middle, which started to feed a line of thought that I was âMr Just Above Average.â ‘ – Wow, the judgments we can have of ourselves can be relentless, and even though we may think they are not a big deal, even the subtlest imposition on ourselves can affect our health and wellbeing big time.
For ages I could not get settled with competition. I knew I want to win and if I didnât it felt terrible. But I innately wanted everyone to also feel great and certainly did not want anyone to be depressed about losing, so ideally I wanted everyone to win. And I wanted everyone to feel part of a loving whole. I now donât even try to find a way of making competition okay nowadays. Regardless of what it looks like, with competition everyone loses.
Sport is one of the biggest lies in our education system. It is a lie that sport builds confidence, is good exercise for us and develops the expertise to work as a team. So long as we seek sport to comfort and satisfy us, it will be a part of the school curriculum.
It is also a lie that is the natural nature of man. It becomes our ‘normal’ when the body’s reflexes are in a constant state to achieve a goal as they then become ‘stuck’ in a state of survival of flight or fight – competition is ‘fight’. Support an individual to feel love and secure in themselves, which is the innate and natural state we are born in, and there is no need to become ‘stuck’ in the survival mode.
If you are doing something from an empty place within, nothing you do, no matter if it is sports or a job e.g. will ever truly satisfy you.
The moment you accept in full the individual quality you have to bring in this world and express it in full, competition will be eliminated. As expressing your quality in full communicates to everyone, that they can do the same.
‘The seeds that were planted watching my mother play tennis were now starting to shoot.’ That’s true of all kinds of attitudes, approaches and opinions that we bring to our children. This blog highlights our responsibility not only as parents but as neighbours, friends and colleagues.
‘Selling out at the expense of tenderness’ This is what we are thought, pushed and championed to do from very early age onward. Boys more then girls although in the past couple of decades that has changed rapidly. Even with the amount of abuse, injuries and violence in and around sports we still doggedly hold on to the benefits of sports for a human being. The shift can only come when we start to see that it is not just the extremes that are harming but every slightest expression in its mildest of forms of the same energy.
It is sad to read this ‘It was at the age of 11 that I started to learn that I could punish my body’ at that age or any age it should have been about loving your body not punishing it! Interesting that we have to learn to do this- it just goes to show it is not our innate nature to ‘punish’ ourselves or our body.
Sport falls into the realm of being social, successful, normal, accepted and then reinforced by inclusion and recognition. The life blood of a nation of which the blueprint starts with our first breath. This blog confirms the damage done through ‘false good’ and the prison it comes with. Sharing this Blog with your willingness
to be so honest will bring a much needed reflection for others
Contact sport like rugby is so unbelievably aggressive it is shocking to see it when you haven’t for a long time. It’s pretty crazy how we can normalise and champion something so abusive.
Well said Vanessa. If we could look at things with fresh eyes, unveiled by normalisation, we would see the utter madness and abuse of our choices.
This reveals so much about the life of sport and around sport. Although society considers participation in sport that is something that is really good for us, what are we giving up on so that we can play and participate?
Your sharing proofs, that it is never about what we do, but how and with what energy we do it. If the root cause of ones behaviour is not healed, it will always show up in different masks. Seemingly different, but energetically exactly the same.
It is interesting how things have to become more extreme and extreme the longer you escape from yourself. A great proof, that the soul will always make its way and tries to reach you no matter what, If you want to keep not listening to it and when you got used to the distraction and there is no high moment anymore, the behaviours eventually need to become more extreme in behaviours that support the withdrawal from life and oneself.
We speak often of the beauty, tenderness and playfulness of young children and yet these qualities are disregarded and squashed when children participate in competition sports. When we throw out gold to embrace lead, we force children to become everything they are not.
This is a very powerful statement Kehinde that describes exactly the school system (and pretty much everything else children encounter) ‘When we throw out gold to embrace lead, we force children to become everything they are not.’
It’s as if we’ve been groomed to do battle with someone or others and have to win to feel alive. A complexity introduced to distract us away from simply being at one with ourselves and others.
The high moment of winning fades away so quickly and wants to be revived on and on again. As after the high will always follow a low. True brotherhood and love does not knows these amplitudes in both directions.
How have we got to the point that ‘winning’ at any cost to the body is accepted as ‘well that’s the price you pay’. The winners aren’t really the winners are they.
They sure aren’t winners. It is interesting when you look at people who win something in the moment they have the jubilation but when you see the later or the next day, you see things are not as rosy as they may have 1st appeared. To beat someone means there has to be a loser and so a divide which merely serves to create more separation in the world.
Sport competition and drinking a very real and tough way of living in the world that does not support us in any way to be the love and tenderness we truly are. Loving and honouring ourselves is a vital part of life so missing in the world today and there activities and a large part of the escape from this. The wisdom of your mother after all is a great marker that we really do know what is really going on if we choose to listen.
I would agree – the pinnacle of love and tenderness in sport seems to be fair play during sport and alcohol-fuelled brotherhood afterwards among competitors or during and afterwards among supporters.
I had a friend in High School that was on the wrestling team. He won all of his matches and was on his way to the state tournament. His method of winning was working out hard all week and to stave himself during that week to lose weight to get into a lower weight class.
When the match started, his prize was the copious amount of food in his gym bag; he was hungry for the win literally. There were not many matches that lasted past the first round. His hunger and aggression exploded with the bell. Late in the season he met another hungry person in the ring and dislocated his shoulder. The referee was forced to stop the fight because he carried on injured, the injury ended his season.
I love the line, ‘Perhaps there is a way of living that has no competition’ as if we could put all that energy into cooperating with and helping each other the sky would certainly be the limit.
Competition is rife especially amongst men yet it is so unnatural, you only have to look at a little boy to see how deeply loving and caring he is. Sport for me was a way to fit in and get recognition from father. I remember playing rugby and hating having to tackle people or be tackled so I learnt to run super fast! Something I found was the division it created especially with the man of the match certificates as essentially was always pitting us against each other rather than teaching us to truly work together.
I agree Richard and had similar experiences – I started being involved in sport early in life and it was just about having fun, playing with friends but then in came competition and everything started to change. I became involved in that too but there was always a struggle in side me as something didn’t feel true and I fought my own competitiveness which was a conflict of feelings inside.
Sport is a huge distraction and injures many in the process physically and mentally and yet so many still champion it. With increasing evidence about the many down sides are we ready to call time on competitive sport?
Hi Anonymous, it was uncanny reading âMy Introduction to Sportâ. It was like reading my own story. Sport was such a focus growing up for me too — it is heavily entrenched to play sport with role models being sportsman. I remember egotistically looking at some that did not participate or were not coordinated especially the girls (in primary school). It was hard, aggressive and subjective. People may say it is all in good fun however, to not feel harmony within for me now is one of the worst feelings I can feel. Relationships are everything to me with harmony being the normal way for me. Sports fosters dis-harmony and aggression in the body even if you think you are having fun or keeping fit. It is like the ‘happy drunk’ mentality. The more you build harmony within the body the more you look back at this and register âWhat was I thinking?â.
Some good points here anonymous. Sport is such an accepted addiction and no-one questions it. Great to expose it for what it is.
Sport and feelings of aggression often go hand in hand, both in those participating and those spectating.
People even champion themselves when they used their innate anger, whilst doing sport. Like it is a good thing to play out the aggression- on one hand it is indeed good to not keep it hidden in the body, but on the other hand why does no one look at why there is the anger in the first place?!
Amazing to be unravelling this tightly bound package.
When we don’t value tenderness, and appreciate what this really brings in terms of awareness and strength it can be easy to sell out to it.
Very true Rachel, when we appreciate and allow our natural tenderness out it is impossible to compete with or put another down.
“Our willingness to play with injuries and put up with the pain is a measure of oneâs toughness. Men, and now women, are identified by their ability to ignore what their bodies are telling them.” True and it is madness to see the celebration of sports people continuing despite injury. They surely pay for it later in life, as joints crumble. I recall one man whose fingers were detaching on a Climb to Mt Everest. yet he continued – and returned again. Serious lack of self-love issue there?
This must have been the imbedded sporting life-style for I followed in your shadow and adding to what has been shared I can add 10 years of Judo, which was also a very gut wrenching demanding sport as every training session was a full on contest one against one.
That fight for recognition I’d say is the biggest competition. Getting underneath the need for recognition will address competition.
Absolutely- working on the lack of self worth will eventually help to embrace your own quality and which everyone brings. When I am awesome so are you.
To me, competitiveness is a form of abuse and when we do not like ourselves we are more likely to abuse our body.
Any form of competitiveness is not natural to us because we are deeply sensitive, delicate and gentle beings. Our body can register the hardness associated with competitiveness and this causes stress and strain on our body. Also, competitiveness breeds separation and disharmony, and our world is currently dominated by separation and lacking in harmony. So, is sports truly healthy for us?
Competition in sport is often a competition to prove your worth to others and self-worth to yourself and there will always be someone else to conquer and another mountain to climb. There is no harmony in sport, or in watching it.
I look back on my time playing sport as almost a waste of time that I could have put to much better use. Same really as watching sport, all those hours in front of the tv getting sucked into something I had no input into the outcome of.
Oh yes. Five whole days watching a test match!! Three days in front of the Ryder Cup. Days glued to the World Snooker. Crazy, crazy waste of time and a waste of a body.
Let tenderness lead the way and it’ll lead us back to love.
Yes – no place for sport in that equation.
Sport and drinking, two abusive pastimes often rolled into one.
It can be a hard one to get your head around – we are all on the same team and there are no sides, the rest is just stuff we have made up. Thatâs why this truth is best understood with our heart.
“we are all on the same team and there are no sides.” Love this Joseph. So simple yet true.
Sadly many people find it a sport or entertaining to abuse others â perhaps this is related to our championing of sport, competition and the ensuing separation. You only have to read comments on Facebook or other anti-social media posts to see how many do this. I saw a post on a local community board this weekend warning people that Jehovah witnesses were door knocking in our area and you should (or maybe shouldnât) have read some of the nasty comments accusing them of all sorts of crimes and being a child abusing death cult etc!
Yes so in sport the idea is to crush another person or team to feel better about oneself. Now where is the love in that! Someone once told me about an adult that got angry with a child because a child won the game they were playing!!!!!
I was not sporty, but I was competitive, competition comes in many forms as we may not be the ones that succeeded on the field, but we maybe the ones who want to win at board games, at being the prettiest, or the most clever…winning and loosing, is a big losing game for all of us. I have learnt, competition gets in the way of true relationships.
Being trapped in the winning and loosing game creates instant separation. It avoids successfully to feel your own lack of self worth by feeling better and elevated through winning.
What is the difference between the two when your write:
‘There is an old saying â play to win. I can look back now and say that in most cases I played to not lose.’
One would be an attacking tactic and the other one would be defending. But both tactics come from a starting point that is not true in the first place and that is about winning and loosing instead of about working together.
Me against you and you against me instead of all of us in this together
That was a very wise comment from your mother.
‘Sport is about winners and losers.’ – That’s the simple truth. And no matter how we look at it we cannot escape the fact that for 1 winner there are often thousands of losers, if we count all the participants as well as the entire team and relatives that surround each of them.
What’s really interesting to feel when I go to the gym, is that we don’t even need two different teams in order to feel competitive with one another, the feeling of competition in the weights room is so apparent. That feeling of competition adds a level of tension to the room that although not necessarily outwardly acknowledged by all is undoubtedly felt by everyone.
Anonymous I love the absolute irrefutable solidness from which you have presented this article. It is a solidness that stems from the non negotiable truth of your body.
Competition appears so harmless on the surface. That which is not harmless is the punishment and abuse of the body and the craving for recognition, awards and to be liked by others â an insidious game of further separation from our true essence.
“Perhaps there is a way of living that has no competition⌔
Very well said Stephanie, competition is everywhere, I have seen it at parties, in games, in our education system, in families, our society and when I look around, pretty much the rest of the world is rife with competition. Not only that, a majority of humanity celebrates competition and we even give out awards for this behaviour. Once we have a society that is competition free this means we have a society that is truly embracing love.
You father is very representative, if not possibly more receptive than the general population, that he sat and listened though ‘not ready to accept that sport is used as a tool to pull us further away from our Soul and God.’ Sport is clearly about separation and beating or being better than another, yet our souls are all equal, even to that of God.
Injuring ourselves through sport.. when you think about it, is totally backwards, yet we accept it as being ‘par for the course’, just like drinking is seen as part and parcel of growing up. The cost to our health services, the time off work, not to mention the cumulative physical and psychological damage over time and further cutting ourselves off from one another.. everything has a consequence that either confirms and consolidates who we naturally are, or diminishes and undermines it.
I canât help but think if all the energy, money and resources ploughed into sport was used instead to bring about total teamwork i.e us all working together instead of competing, what would the world look like then?
I remember having 3-legged race and sack race at school as well as egg and spoon race where you had to run holding a spoon with an egg on it and not drop either â do schools still do these kind of races? I donât remember the 3-legged race being very harmonious but do remember falling about on the ground laughing. I never won any of those races but sounds like the winners lost more.
It is important to acknowledge how easy it is to influence the life of a young child. But also, if there is any need for recognition or acceptance, the child grows up tailoring themselves to get what they need, so it works both ways.
With our bankrupt healthcare system we are starting to look at more selfresponsiilty and moral questions are raised such as does health care need to pay for lung disease in smokers? If we look at the amount of injuries there are and the cost to the healthcare system and working economy we might be seeing a different picture. I can’t count the amount of times I got injured in sports and the impact it had om my ability to function.
What would happen to sports if we championed self care, to harming ourselves, tenderness and brotherhood? This question exposes exactly what sports are about and what they are really doing to us.
‘Men, and now women, are identified by their ability to ignore what their bodies are telling them and sometimes play with serious injuries. ‘ I know this one myself, in my sporting days I would just push on no matter what was going on in my body. The other day I heard a radio and there were two commentators to a cycling match championing a man who just had a major fall and still got back on the bike to continue the race with a broken collar bone. if this is how we make ‘champions’ it is no wonder we are inclined to go against our tenderness and hurt ourselves in the process.
I have noticed that men sell out as you describe here in various different ways and abandon their natural tenderness for something else in order to cope and handle life. But at what cost? The current stats on men’s health and wellbeing would suggest a great cost indeed.
Thank you Anonymous this is a much needed counter to the constant narrative that sport is good for you and sets children up for later life. You expose so well what is really going on and how we lose ourselves in our efforts to gain recognition and acceptance.
Thank you for sharing your story, ~ I love your awareness and beautiful turnaround.
I was always a disappointment to my father because of my lack of aggression that is required in sport; my dad would have, fit well into your family! I was not a great lover of sport, then or now. I was pulled to science and art but looking back they also had their type of competition and requisition, without the physical abuse to the body! These activities were still places to hide, photography in the film era as an example, required you to work in a Darkroom! It also allowed you to be a fly on the wall in High School taking photos for the schoolâs yearbook. I also worked in an Italian restaurant from 16 to 18 at nights and weekends. I started as a dishwasher and became one of the chefs. In my last year of school, I had Sunday and Monday off and was the only chef on Tuesdays and Thursdays nights. I was also in a few school plays, another place to hide by being someone else literally on the spotlight. Acting was another great place to hide. Growing older provides a view of where you have been and exposes patterns. The Ageless Wisdom exposes our true selves, and there can be no competition when we are all equal.
The truth is that when we enter a family whose life is dedicated to sport we are placed in that family to learn, whatever that learning is for us every time we come back until one day we master it, to offer or present another way, a ‘united’ way in which there is not one drop of separation.
A powerful expose of sport leaving no doubt just how unhealthy it is.
I agree, from someone who experienced it in depth, in many areas of life, and how it can become all consuming. And normalised, in fact many of us normalise it, having a life full of doing sport or watching, sport, not really looking at whether life could be different or and more supportive.
What your mum shared with you about people already liking you and that your real problem was not liking yourself is really interesting. Often it seems we want to fit in and be liked and we can use sport to make us feel part of something – that we belong. I can feel that if we accept and love ourselves then we do not need to seek being liked and recognised through sport.
“if we accept and love ourselves then we do not need to seek being liked and recognised” through sport or any other activity or behaviour.
Reading this reminds me of the injuries that I incurred in sport. I damaged my knee firstly with netball and then irreparably with football. At the time I didn’t take the injuries seriously and just kept on playing. It is now later in life that I feel the consequences of my choices, with arthritis in my knee.
I can relate to the pushing to achieve even though we are injured. I injured both of my knees doing yoga, which most would think was quite sedate and harmless but it’s not as we still want to push ourselves to get recognition. It took years to heal and at one point I limped for three years, and for what, I now ask myself.
This is a stark account of the reality of the abuse in sport, I knew rugby was aggressive and injuries took place, you can see it and Iâve never understood the fascination with the game, what I didn’t realise is how many injuries one person might suffer and still carry on, just one injury should be enough for us to question our rationale and stop yet we override so much just in the name of recognition.
“Perhaps there is a way of living that has no competition⌔ Yes it seems that you have found such a way through the way you live today and now with that way of living you are a role model for all the men and also women who still think that being competitive is the way to live. Your honest blog is such an inspiration and also an invitation for them to put their competitiveness into question.
I never thought I was competitive until about 15 years ago when I played a game of crazy golf with my husband and he won â then I discovered the truth. I wonder what would happen if we did it again â donât feel I would be competitive but suspect some still lurks in the background.
There is definitely a way to live without competition – some activities are not possible but working in many fields and doing enjoyable physical workouts is very possible and actually simpler and easier than doing them while being competitive. Curiously it is quite possible to do very well without engaging in competition.
What an extraordinary story that is probably not very extraordinary when you consider how sport is such a large part of our culture. I love that there has been a realisation that you are amazing long before you enter any competition and that it is never at the expense of another.
Another thing coming into the sport and alcohol equation is gambling, and it’s being socialised at younger ages with the way sports programs on TV present their stats and advertise gambling on the ad breaks. It’s becoming a new normal.
Great blog I can really relate to – I suspect most can because it’s so prolific this way of making ourselves feel ok about having lost the connection to God and how amazing we are just for being what we are divinely constellated to be.
All my attempts at being good at sport, or good academically or a perfect student, or a rebell were all based on my lack of appreciation for myself. I wanted someone to recognise my worthiness just for being me. But I wasn’t appreciating this myself. Instead I was going all out for recognition, bringing through all the force and ugliness that went with trying to achieve it. Still clocking this in all sorts of areas in my life, like a weed with deep roots. I’m now realising the yuckiness it leaves inside isn’t me and I can let go of it all.
Thanks, Anonymous, for this very honest summary of how sport was your way of coping with life from young. What a blessing to have the awareness you now share, and to be able to re-connect to the sensitive being you are and always have been.
“I had to train harder and there was more competition for a spot in the top team. This did not go well with my nervousness and anxiety.” Human beings are so sensitive so I can understand why that did not go well with you.
Yes we are super sensitive and whenever I played sport if I was honest it created a lot of tension, anxiety and exhaustion because it was akin to going into combat and the pressure of it was huge.
It’s a huge snapshot of life today and how sport becomes part of our management strategy to cope with not living our full selves in the world. Your mothers wisdom really grabbed me when you spoke about needing others recognition and to be liked “and that is that people already liked me â my real problem was not liking myself.” That is a gem of wisdom which I need to look at in my own life!
It is never too late to return to your true tenderness and realize what is underneath our loveless behavior. Lovely to read your mothers wisdom in knowing the people already liked you â the real problem was not liking yourself. We all know so much more than we are willing to admit.
We all know everything and that’s because we are all everything.
‘My motherâs response pointed out to me something that I already knew all those years ago but conveniently ignored, and that is that people already liked me â my real problem was not liking myself.’ – Perhaps we need to start asking why no one has taught us the importance of self-love.
Yes, how many of us are going around not even liking ourselves let alone loving ourselves. Imagine the financial savings if we all lived with love for ourselves first before we did anything, could this be the answer to the burden on our health care systems?
‘Our willingness to play with injuries and put up with the pain is a measure of oneâs toughness.’ – Yes, we learn from very young that we need to toughen and pull ourselves together, that this is expected of us in life regardless of whether we play sport or not.
For all the talk about teamwork – when we examine sport closely participants are out for themselves – if we truly deeply wanted to work together weâd realise aiming to beat one another is pointless.
Agreed Jospeph, even in the activities in work and friends that we call “teamwork” like sport there is very little if ever any true teamwork. It’s hard to understand until we appreciate that perhaps only true teamwork can be there if everyone comes together for a purpose of evolution in someway. Then its team work all day long.
We have taken individual sports and made them team sports. You can win your bit, but the team still loses. You can fail, and that is not too bad, but if you miss the penalty kick in the World Cup final that causes your team and country to lose becomes the albatross around your neck that will always follow you.
Super interesting how something so divisive as sport can be championed as so healthy and good for us? Look at the physical level what injuries the pushing and combatting give. And emotionally we also gain nothing by playing competition. We learn and grow by working together, by playing together and yes our bodies love to move in a way that supports them.
What is offered here is a big dose of insight and understanding in behaviour that would otherwise easily dismiss as an unpleasant person. Underneath every behaviour is always the same cause: hurt and protection. If we get to see this we can see through the behaviour and meet the person for who they truly are, giving them a moment of opportunity to feel it for themselves.
“The attention that I received from all these experiences when young reinforced my competitiveness and showed me that sport was the way to satisfy my need for recognition, allowing me to feel a little more comfortable with myself, albeit only temporarily.” This is hitting the nail on the head to why we would choose something that is so going against our natural impulses as children.
Agreed Carolien, understanding why we do what we do is key, knowing that sport fills a void helps us to then look at why do we have the void that we need to fill in the first place.
‘People already liked me.. my real problem was not liking myself’.. when we don’t like ourselves, we’ll push ourselves to endless lengths to try and be liked from the outside – and are then always at the mercy of others’ opinions of us. Founding our self-worth on something that we have no control over leaves us wide open to self-destruction when that outside confirmation is not forthcoming or turns into attack.
Indeed if our self worth is based on external validation we only live further away from the truth of who we are.
Very well said – key is to learn to value ourselves for who we innately are and not what we do – the way most of us live today, we have it all upside down.
When we love the depths of ourselves we are able to love the depth in others.
There are so many things that we do in order to gain recognition from others, like the example in this blog of sport. I wonder if we really loved ourselves and no longer needed recognition would we in fact lose interest in sport. I suspect we would.
The turning point for me was rugby union. I was made to play at boarding school in the UK and for six months i was tackled and knocked around like ten pin bowls until one day in order to protect myself I tackled back and it didn’t hurt me one bit. It seemed like the answer at the time but it was me simply dropping my tenderness. I now play a different game and that is nurturing my tenderness that was once so very abundant.
I feel one of the reasons sport and alcohol are often together is that when you train and prepare and dedicate so much effort into preparing and participating in the sporting event you have just done and afterwards you then realise that win or lose it really did not deliver the goods in terms of a deeper settlement and satisfaction that you were looking for in the first place, and so you don’t want to feel that and then seek the booze to numb the ‘come down’ or disappointment that it was not it and what you are sensing and feeling and to try and get yet another high to temporarily sustain us. This was how it was for me anyway.
I also remember the day when I really clocked how much recognition and acceptance I could get from others by being good at sport – it felt like a winning formula literally to get through life but when I applied it, I realised that it did not really work longer term as every success was only a short lived high moment that never felt like enough and I was always left hungry for more….it did not change the underlying tension or uneasiness or unhappiness that I felt about myself. It was only when I started really appreciating, respecting and accepting myself and my qualities that things started to shift and I then no longer relied on acceptance or recognition from others to feel fulfilled in life.
Very interesting article. What really stood out was how driven we can be to be liked, even at the expense of our bodies.
Achieving in sport is such distraction from living the truth of who we are, for we can load our bodies up with all the effort and competition that is inherent to sport.
Otherwise, in classes of 30 plus students, I always finished in the middle, which started to feed a line of thought that I was âMr Just Above Average.â I knew that I was good at sport compared to my schoolmates, but not really good. Later on, this would feed into every part of my life.
Love the insight you have offered us here Anon into what would be considered a normal kids experience of sport.
Its fascinating to observe how we watch, learn and copy others at the expense of our bodies, our sensitivity, our selves, and once we have chosen to override this sense of what feels true, we are then opening the door to a stream of thoughts that chip away at our self worth.
That is very true it’s all a game of numbing our disconnection.
Your mother was very wise, the cure to all this ill is to not just like ourselves but to truly love ourselves and others so much do that we can only but be ourselves in full.
Yes because from that space we can make wise decisions about where we place our energy. Whatever and wherever we choose it will not be at the expense of our self worth and we are likely to be far more aware if it is at the expense of another.
I love how you share that in the end it was your lack of love for yourself that made you push yourself so far. This is something we can look at where ever we are in our life as when we push, disregard or abuse ourselves to reach a certain goal this is always coming from a lack of love for ourselves.
Lack of self-love plays such a significant role wherever there is disharmony and a feeling of inadequacy, it should be the primary subject in every school as well as taught in every home.
Many years ago when my children were young and we played a lot of cooperative games I discussed competitiveness with my mother, who like yours Anon was sporty and played competitive bowls for her county and even got to the nationals up until an illness in her late seventies. She thought competition was a ”good’ thing, as this was how the world worked. But just because the world currently thrives on such competition doesn’t make it a good thing in my mind.
Sue that is something I have had to learn, that what is considered normal is not necessarily what is our natural expression as human beings.
“A select few reach that level and they do that because they are willing to sacrifice what tenderness remains from whom they were as very young children.” I have seen this play out in the youngsters I know, as they leave their preciousness and delicateness behind and act tough in order to compete. Sad. One day the world will abandon competition as we progress towards brotherhood and harmony.
People do that everywhere, for example in the corporate world as well as on the football pitch. Leaving behind who we truly are for competition or survival. Survival mode has us living far less than who we truly are. The greatest protection and inner richness comes from remaining true to who we all are.
“I was able to explain to them what I now know was my real purpose for playing sport â to receive recognition and be liked by people.” When we are ‘good’ at something we tend to enjoy it and like it – but for what reason? What energy fuels us to compete and win at all costs?
Whilst my experience of sport was very different to yours it now helps me understand the drive and effort different kids at school would put into sport, I would look at them in envy sometimes or on a rainy day laugh at why they would want to get cold outside, but never did i used to look and feel the sadness or longing that the kids felt to want to belong to something and the fact they too were using sport to make them feel better about themselves. I think bringing this level of understanding would start to cut the division between groups at school.
Anonymous, thank you for writing this article. It is a real insight into what really goes on in the world of sport and how unloving it can be. It is beautiful that you realised this and chose a different way.
I was quite shocked to hear that at 11 there was a certain weight you had to be to play/represent the school football team. âIt was at the age of 11 that I started to learn that I could punish my body, which allowed me to be âbetterâ at sport. I needed to lose some weight to make the 5 stone 7 pounds (or 35kg) school representative football sideâ especially knowing with what you share about the 3 legged race it would have been some a few years ago. It just is so wrong, what on earth does that teach children … well not to accept and deeply love their body for a start!
This is a powerful article, anonymous. It’s quite an eye opener to read about your experience being on the front end of sport. As spectators, we champion, idealise and look up to successful sports men and women, but don’t realise the sacrifices made for them in becoming successful. It sounds grueling and painful. I wonder for those that get to the top if the sacrifices are really worth those moments of fame and recognition?
I loved taking part in fun sport as a child and as a young adult, both team and individual events. Looking back sport was relatively innocent then: competition was there but as a back drop not intense and central. I was not pushed by parents and participated in sports because I enjoyed or was good at them. Things changed when, and because of my talent as an athlete, I was expectated to represent the school at county, country meetings and compete to win. This dampened my natural enjoyment of athletics: I could never train, race or jump to win, it wasn’t in my DNA.
I agree Gill sport is a distraction and separates us from our true selves. Some people even in their late fifties and at a ‘loose end’ join a sports club and begin to play a sport competitively and regularly. Despite sustaining injuries, it matters to rise up rankings. Sport often offers social interaction as well as feeding a need.
This is a brilliant article, thank you for writing it. I love what an insight you have given in to the real life of sport and what it requires to it going.
Thank you for this in depth and detailed account about your experience / life of sports and competition. It is so important that we share and start talking about how we feel underneath all that what we have life accepted to be and find out why we are doing what we are doing. Otherwise we stay on the merry go round that life has become missing ourselves sorely and feeling terribly alone in a world where there are billions of other human beings to connect to. If we do not connect to our true values and start to live them we will always be lost and dependant on the world to tell us what to do.
Yes I absolutely agree and was pondering on this only the other day as feelings of competing came up to heal, that playing sport is no different to fighting at war – we are there to win and that is all that matters. When we do begin to feel the effects of sport not just the injuries and harm we do our body but how we feel towards another when battling it out regardless who they are, it has to make us stop and question the impact sport has on society. What does truly matter in this world – winning and the glorification of coming first or our relationship to others from the connection to self?
The fight in competition starts with ourselves as we have to fight our true and harmonious nature to even be competitive.
Being better than and placing ourselves relative to where others are at is not how we know ourselves.
I think it is reasonable to compare competitive sport with war as in those sports we are not playing together but against each other in which the enemy has to be defeated. No difference with war.
Play to win or play to lose, both are not needed when we return to that tender state we walked away from, to begin with.
There is such an irony to this. The belief that when we engage in sport and competition we are healthy and fit is utterly exposed in the self abuse it really is when we juxtapose it with intense alcohol consumption, especially when the energy of competition means we drink to excess to save face among our team mates, who all profess to be on the same side. There is no brotherhood in the separation competition encourages.
It is such a shame that men have to develop such a hard way of living and that competition is the instigator. I love meeting men who have truly discovered their inner tenderness, it reminds me as a woman to be tender too.
I used to think there was nothing better than winning the race, beating everyone and standing on the podium / getting the medal… that was until I started to enjoy myself. Literally the feeling of warmth in my heart and the subsequent willingness to connect with others. The recognition pales in comparison.
I did the whole sport, drinking thing as well until I realised I could do the drinking thing without having to do the sport, which to me was the more fun one of the two and I kept doing this until I came across Serge Benhayon who showed me there was another way to live and that you can be as much a man or even more by getting back in touch with the gentle and tender boy that I used to be.
I find it interesting that your mother made the comment that everybody liked you but the problem was, you didnât like yourself. The question that jumps to mind is, why? â why didnât you as a young boy like you, so much so that you kept pushing yourself to run faster, jump higher etc, simply to get the attention that for some reason you were craving? Maybe it simply was that you always knew deep inside, who you truly were but you were growing up in a world that was telling you that being this sensitive and sweet young boy was not acceptable and that you had to harden up to be a man. I hate how society is set up to stop our beautiful young boys and girls from knowing and living who they naturally are.
“I still believed that punishing myself physically was a way of getting the results that allowed me to feel good about myself.” I love your honesty Anonymous and I am sure that there are more people outside having this believe about themselves. We as a society are wondering why the world is so aggressive – me I am not wondering as what you have shared could be one reason why it is so as if someone can punish himself to feel good about himself they also would easily punish others as well.
We have to feel very deficient to seek confirmation on the outside all the time and to work very hard at that confirmation. Clearly this is very common as many people choose this path to a greater or lesser degree. A great blog showing how you can come back from this lifestyle.
“There is an old saying â play to win. I can look back now and say that in most cases I played to not lose”. I had not considered this before out-loud as such, but in reading it I have considered it on some level as I am now aware that is what I have done.
I could relate very much to this blog. I really didnât like playing sports in primary school, even though I was on the softball team, I would end up nearly in tears each game because I wasnât very good. But once I hit high school I really jumped into sport this is where the competition really took hold. I can remember feeling so worked up while playing games that I would get aggressive and yell a lot. When I was in my early 20s I was exercising to the extreme and playing many different sports. One night a bystander actually thought I had special needs because I was so erratic in my behaviour. After playing beach volleyball one night and getting so frustrated and rude to my team which were either my good friends and family I gave up sports for good because I became a completely different person to who I was. Sport and competition isnât the innocent fun game that is sold to us from young. Our bodies know it but our minds override with the payoff we get from being recognised.
Itâs unbelievable how lost yet driven we can get with sport – changing our behaviors, our bodies and our mental state all to reach a goal – but then once it is reached it is all about the next goal. Looking good and yet putting on a front that shuts out the world.
I can really relate to this blog as I also played competitive sport at an elite level and I can totally agree that to succeed at high level sport I had to over-ride my body and a natural sensitivity that has always been there. This hurt more than the physical pain of the training and the injuries.
Likewise Andrew, I pushed myself all the way to the top, representing Queen & Country… the way to do that was to value the recognition more than my body. I was good at it because I had quite a low sense of self worth, and loved it when something came and filled that for me, no matter what the cost.
Competition pits man against man, woman against woman and, if we teach and encourage it, child against child. Some say it adds spice, provides a reason to do what we do, that measuring ourselves against others makes things more interesting. How empty are we that this is so?
Mankind thinks competition is natural to human beings because of the survival of the fittest theory in which we come from the apes, we do accept this competition not only in sport but factual in every aspect of our lives and in our societies.
Competition is literally everywhere and is the perfect game to stop us from working and living together in brotherhood. When one has to be better, then another has to be lesser and in truth, this doesn’t exist for we are all absolutely equal in our essence.
Sport is a game to stop us from seeing our connection and brotherhood. Itâs a pretty clear symbol of the tricks our spirit plays to distract us from feeling our unity with each other and God.
It was very interesting to read your life experience with sport Anon. Itâs true we engage in competition in order to feel complete, which alerts us to the fact that there was something missing from the equation in the first place â our connection to our self and a deep valuing of who we are and the unique quality we each bring to life before we even open our mouth to say anything or move our body to do anything. Yet the seeming âcompletenessâ we achieve by satisfying our thirst for recognition does not come from a true wholesomeness, for how can it when it leaves others behind? There are no winners or losers in sport, there is only the perpetual struggle to prove we are worth something because we have neglected and negated our true richness. Such divisive behaviour can never lead us back to true Oneness, it can only ever lead us further away.
What a wonderfully written article and definitely one that serves as a testimony to the true harm and impact of sport. It stands to reason that sport is deeply harmful not only to our being but to our body whether it be contact or not. We have to harden ourselves to compete with others and this is never healthy for anyone.