Posted by CatTales
on 6/8/2009, 8:42 pm
76.181.218.61
The 12 Characteristics of Competitors
Who are some of sports top competitors?
Certainly athletes like Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong, Brett Favre, Derek Jeter, Wayne Gretzky, Martina Navratilova, Jimmy Connors, Michael Johnson, Carl Lewis, Lisa Fernandez, Dawn Staley, and others come to mind as supreme competitors.
It's not just the top athletes who are highly competitive but competitiveness is a key to many of the top coaches successes including Pat Summitt, Anson Dorrance, Joe Torre, Roy Williams, Mike Krzyzewski, Dan Gable, Bill Cowher, to name just a few.
What defining traits do these athletes and coaches display that distinguish them from their peers and allow them to be the best of the best?
In preparing this Special Report, 12 characteristics continually surfaced in the words and description of competitors.
COMPETITORS:
1. Crave challenges and convert everything into a competition.
Competitors crave challenges. They love the challenge to compete and continually test themselves, whether it is against others or themselves. They look to convert anything they can into a challenge and a competition - this includes everything from achieving a certain standard on drills, to driving home in a certain amount of time, to guessing which elevator of three will be the first one to come to your floor, to you name it . . .
As Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summitt says, "I'm a competitor. I'm liable to take you on in just about anything, whether cooking, or jogging, or arm wrestling."
Competitors love competing and seem to get a certain "high" from it, which is likely why they seek it in almost all endeavors. They feed off of competition because it provides them with an opportunity to focus all their attention toward achieving a particular goal. They love continually raising their goals and trying to better themselves and others.
2. Compelled
Competitors are highly driven people. They are very outcome-focused on achieving specific goals, times, and measures. They willingly work hard and invest the time necessary to achieve the outcomes and status they so ardently seek. They are clear about what they want to achieve and pursue it with a single-mindedness of purpose.
3. HATE to Lose
Perhaps the greatest hallmark of competitors is that they HATE losing. They absolutely detest and despise it. Competitors unequivocally hate losing more than they enjoy winning. Losing is a constant, gnawing, empty feeling that they did not do enough - or are not enough as a person.
In this way, competitors are often motivated by a fear of failure more so than a drive for success. Their fear of failure drives them to go to great lengths to prepare and persevere to avoid losing at all costs. Because of their disdain for losing, competitors will also closely analyze their losses and defeats in an effort to correct them. Following a loss, competitors yearn for quick rematches or the chance to compete with someone else as soon as possible. They want to quickly rid themselves of the detestable feeling of losing - and prove to themselves and others that they can be victorious.
4. Play with Emotion
Because competitors are so invested, they play with a strong sense of emotion and passion. They are often a whirlwind of energy and are willing to dive on the floor or run through a wall to achieve what they want. While they can often channel their emotions effectively, sometimes they spill over and can be a destructive force too. (See Section 7 on the 5 Pitfalls of Competitors for more info.)
5. Take things Personally - and are MOTIVATED By It
Competitors take things very personally and tend to be highly sensitive to criticism. They believe even the slightest criticism is a personal attack on them not just as an athlete, but also as a person. It cuts to the core of who they are as a person. However, rather than agreeing with it or getting down by it, competitors transform the perceived criticism into a huge source of fuel to avenge and sometimes humiliate the attacker.
"I tend to take things personally," said Michael Jordan. Jordan would often play mind games with himself believing that an opponent's look was a sign of disrespect.
6. Play with Something to Prove A driving motivational force for competitors is that they often feel like they have something to prove.
Most of the time they want to prove themselves to others, especially those who dare to express their doubts about them. Competitors draw energy from the naysayers and turn their perceived and real criticism, slights, and snubs into personal vendettas and grudges that allow them to prove others wrong and make them eat their words. They want the person to deeply regret they ever doubted them in the first place. They harness the anger from the criticism and channel it to their performance to put the doubters in their place. Potential critics are best to heed the phrase "let sleeping dogs lie" when it comes to doubting or taunting competitors.
Competitors love to create a "me (or us) against the world" mentality - thinking you are either for me or against me. They make quick, sometimes lifelong, and easy enemies out of those who dare to doubt them. Michael Jordan had people scouring the newspapers to look for the slightest comment from an opponent, coach, or media member that he could warp into a personal slight and use for motivation.
"Competitors want to prove everyone else wrong. They want to show the skeptics, 'I am better than this. I am a winner.'" ~ Coach Pat Summitt, Tennessee Women's Basketball
On a deeper level, psychologists believe many competitors are ultimately driven by a constant need to prove themselves to themselves. Their successes are short-lived because many feel they are not complete unless they are continually pushing themselves and bettering themselves. It's like a hamster running on a wheel that never stops.
What we allow, we encourage.
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