Editor's note: The following is a an excerpt taken from Brady Poppinga's book "True Spirit of Competition."
Trying to interlace my hypercompetitive life and my life as an LDS missionary was like trying to mix oil in water. I morphed into a different person when I competed. I was abrasive, rash and ultimately disrespectful toward my opponents in the heat of competition. That attitude was a byproduct of my own insecurities and a win-at-all-costs mentality.
As a missionary my charge was to learn, live and teach charity, service and respect toward my fellowmen. How could I ever make those two contrasting worlds one? At the point of giving up my pursuit of a football career all together, I had an epiphany in the form of inspiration from on high of how to do just that.
After a lot of thought, prayer and deliberation, the answer to my question finally came to me while I was sleeping. I awoke and immediately wrote down my thoughts. It was so clear and yet so simple. I thought, 'why couldn’t I see this before?'
The key was a flaw in how I viewed myself and that was also tied to how I viewed my opponent. I realized I was competing with the erroneous idea that my worth as a human being was reflected on the scoreboard. I felt as though I was competing for actual superiority. The false assumption was that if I won, I felt I was a better person than my opponent. When I lost, I mistakenly felt that I was inferior. I finally understood that this was the reason why I was getting so emotionally amped up in competitive situations. My self-worth was on the line. It was a big ego trip.
No wonder I had no respect for my opponents. If I lost, I blamed them for making me feel like a loser — a failure. Because I felt threatened in this way, it was not surprising that I had no regard for the well-being of my opponents.
It became clear to me why the intense emotions of competitive situations could escalate to the point of feeling hostile toward one another. If one felt that the final outcome of a game or match ultimately defined one’s self-worth, I could understand why one would go so far as cheating or intentionally trying to injure one’s opponent to win.
No one instinctively wants to feel inferior or worthless. No one wants to be known as a failure or a loser. For that reason, the perceived threat on a personal level imposed by the opponent would have to be eliminated at all costs.
The point I was missing was that the outcome of a competition does not determine first and foremost who we are. Regardless of the outcome of any competition, we, at our core, are incredibly intelligent and capable beings with unlimited potential whose souls are great and immeasurable. A win or a loss is never going to change that.
By eliminating the personal aspect of competition and understanding that the outcome would not be a reflection of me or my opponent’s self-worth, the threat imposed by my opponent disappeared, as did my defensiveness. I came to see my opponents as the source of an oppositional force that would test my strength and skill rather than personally attack my self-image. When I saw my opponents this way, competition became an impersonal experience to see how I measured up to the opponents I confronted.
For example, when we run alone, although we may think we are running as fast as we possibly can, it is not until we compete against someone in a head-to-head race that we run our fastest. This is because we now have a reference point we can measure our speed. This is what the true spirit of competition is about — making a conscious choice to take the opposing forces we face head-on, resulting in one’s highest level of performance being extracted.
An opponent plays a vital role in making this happen.
Second, I came to realize that my definition of success was also off-base. It dawned on me that a scoreboard doesn’t determine success or failure. Success could have as many different meanings as there are people on this earth. Success is determined by how any given person performs, according to his or her expectations and derived from the person’s situation.
For example, if someone who has just recovered from a serious illness were to finish a half-marathon, it would be a huge success for him or her to be able to compete in the race, win or lose. To those whose talents and abilities are at a level unmatched by others, it is very conceivable that not even a victory would be a measure of success if they did not play to the best of their ability.
The problem was that I equated success with winning, and that meant that success was something my opponent could take away from me. I realized being successful was a choice I made, regardless of outside forces. Being successful wasn’t an end result, but rather the way someone operated. That flaw in my reasoning was clearly a mistake on my part.
Because of my new outlook on competition, success became something that couldn’t be snatched away from me by my opponent. Therefore, my opponents no longer posed a threat to my successful self.
Instead, my opponents pushed me to dig deep and to be my most successful self possible. The responsibility of making the successful side of myself manifest was now on my shoulders alone and within my control. I could feel successful as long as I fully engaged all my senses in the present competitive moment, trying as hard as I could to come out victorious for myself and for my team. Success was obtained by simply making an inward conscious choice to rise to the challenges my opponent presented independent of anything else.
I came to understand that if the scoreboard no longer reflected my own personal success, then there was a greater purpose to competition than just winning or losing. By confronting the obstacles a competition provides, one experiences the sharpening of one’s competitive will. One’s skill sets, abilities and knowledge on a holistic level become more refined. Winning was the goal, but only the byproduct of the process, not the end. The end was that, in spite of whether one wins or loses, one could experience the gradual personal growth of one’s being that comes from meeting head-on the struggles of the heat of competition.
Losing took on a whole new meaning. Although it is disappointing and it hurts, losing is not death. Some of the biggest improvements personally come from failing and losing. There is no true success without failure. Just ask any great competitor or champion. I saw where losing was a blessing in some cases instead of a curse. Enduring a disappointing loss reveals the flaws of your performance, and that can be very humbling. Thus you are more willing to learn. After a loss, the answers to the questions of what needs to be polished and honed to eventually come out victorious are more clearly visible.
Winning, on the other hand, is more about validation than anything. When one wins, one’s past efforts of improving and growing are rewarded. One needs to be very careful with winning, however, because sometimes winning can lull us into a complacent sleep. We can be made to believe that there is no more need for progress or development. That is not the case. Since our potential has no bounds, there is always room to increase our level of performance. Following a great victory, our souls fill with a euphoric adrenaline rush of knowing that the struggles endured along the way were not in vain, but rather very much a major part of the reason why we came out victorious.
In summary, I came to understand that a scoreboard no longer determined my own worth as a person or that of my opponent. Regardless of the outcome of a competition, our worth is beyond the scope of any label or word that could attempt to describe it. No matter what creed, race, color, ethnicity, or religion, we are all beings whose potential has no ceiling. When we begin to see the true spirit of competition as grounds for pushing our personal levels of performance to new heights, instead of a measure of our worth as a human, competition becomes more enjoyable and rewarding.
After this realization of who I was, I felt at peace. I felt comfortable, confident, and secure in my own skin, knowing that the outcome of a competition was never going to define me, resulting in an inner strength I could draw from to assist me in controlling my emotions in the heat of competition. Knowing this freed me from my insecurities and feelings of defensiveness that I had toward my opponents.
I could now compete with all the passion and zeal of my heart as I did in my youth and yet maintain strong relationships with those I competed against. It was really possible to compete fiercely and still leave the field of competition with mutual respect for my opponent because instead of imposing a threat to the very existence of my successful self, now my opponent imposed a challenge that called for the emergence of my successful self.
From those lessons, instead of using competition as a way to boost my ego, I now saw competition as a way to enhance my capacity to perform and to grow closer to my true potential. After my mission would be the best time in my life to apply those things I learned when I faced my most formidable rival, my elder brother, head to head on the biggest stage of our lives: in a college football game.
Editor's note: Go here to get the book, or here for a downloadable ebook to mobile devices.
Brady Poppinga has played for the Green Bay Packers, St. Louis Rams and Dallas Cowboys. He has worked as a motivational speaker and studied business management at BYU.