I’m in love with competition, just not about winning. 

You’ve probably known the feeling: the flutter of butterflies in your stomach, the restless nights of practice—or of not practicing, but staying awake anyway, fueled by adrenaline and expectation. Then comes the day of the competition. You look around at the other contestants: their relaxed confidence, the fire in their eyes, the effortless ease in their posture. And in that moment, a quiet sobriety settles in—you sense that most of them are more experienced, maybe even better than you.

You give your best, or you freeze under the pressure, but by the end of what was supposed to be “your moment,” you find yourself watching others step onto the podium, under the bright and distant spotlight, while you linger in your own little corner of the room.

I’ve joined many competitions in my life—even ones completely outside my field, like a barista championship. I’ve won a handful, but I’ve lost far more. And yet, no matter the outcome, I always walk away with something valuable, usually more from losing than from winning. Over time, I’ve even grown to take a strange pleasure in losing.

It’s true that for someone to win, someone else must lose. And it’s also true that losing can sting. That’s partly why research championing cooperation over competition keeps gaining traction. Cooperation is one of the most admirable human capacities: in The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt describes the “hive switch,” a state where people work in deep synchrony. In many fields—especially business—collaboration tends to raise everyone’s value, which is why the phrase I hear more and more these days feels so apt: collab or collapse.

But I still wouldn’t dismiss competition. In fact, I love it. I have a deep belief in human potential, and competition—despite its flaws—often brings that potential to the surface. The fastest humans in the world emerged from the Olympics. Humanity reached the moon because of the Cold War race. Would these breakthroughs have happened through cooperation alone? I doubt it. In many cases, cooperation is actually born from competition.

So why do many people distrust competition? Of course, it has to do with its potential downsides: the pain of losing, the stigma of failure, and the toxic mindsets that can grow out of it. One example: competition can suppress intrinsic motivation (the desire to learn and create) and instead amplify external validation (winning, ranking, applause). But I’ve never felt personally threatened by these risks. And that made me realize something about myself: I probably have a high tolerance for failure.

One of the great blessings of my life is that I was born without talents. That forced me to learn, improve, and try obsessively. And perhaps that’s why I love competition. What could be better than gathering talented individuals and driven spirits in the same place?

I still remember reaching the semifinals of a university football tournament in the UK. We were the university’s B team, and we defied all expectations by getting that far—only to be completely crushed by a team that was better than us in every way. Later, when I learned they had won the entire competition, my heart genuinely leapt. “They deserved it,” I heard myself said. Of course there was disappointment—feelings are rarely pure—but I was glad we lost to the best.

That, to me, is the beauty of healthy competition: even in losing, we can celebrate the excellence of others. Their brilliance can inspire us, and make us better competitors ourselves.

Through years of entering competitions, I’ve learned that there is always something valuable to take away, no matter the result: a clearer sense of your skill level, new ideas of how to improve, and—when you’re uncontrollably upset—a chance to understand and regulate your own emotions. Losing contains countless lessons. Winning teaches remarkably few.

Nietzsche once said that failure and suffering are fertile; they forge strength, clarity, and character. When I think about this, I see that the problem isn’t whether competition is good or bad—it’s how we define losing and winning.

To me, losing is an inevitable chapter in a long story. I think in decades, maybe lifetimes. I carry a narrative arc in my mind that dwarfs any single victory or defeat. After all, who enjoys a film where the protagonist wins every scene? Losing never crushes me because it’s simply a scene in a much larger film.

Sometimes I even set losing as a goal: Let’s lose a hundred times this year. I tick each one off as an accomplishment. I’ve made losing a structural part of my life. My compass is internal: I define what counts as winning or losing, while many people rely on external markers—trends, virality, what others approve of.

And that’s partly why some people reject competition: because losing hurts. Losing feels like a judgement. It can fracture community, create hierarchy, foster insecurity, and distract from learning. But I’ve long decoupled self-worth from results. I still play hard, but I don’t let results define my trajectory. We need to differentiate good effort from good results, because the two don’t always align. You control one, not the other. As Epictetus said, You control your effort, not the outcome. If you’ve done your part virtuously, you can’t truly “lose.”

So what is winning? For me, winning means defeating my previous self and progressing toward mastery. Ironically, losing often accelerates that progress. Winning is that moment when my work feels align with my intent—regardless of how it’s received. It is an internal calibration, not an external victory.

Once you calibrate yourself to external validation, you begin pouring energy into things unrelated to the work itself. Hollywood studio spends millions campaigning for Oscar wins—not to improve the film, but to be seen. Most forms of competitive “winning” depend on external calibration: marketing, positioning, networking. But true creation requires internal calibration: honesty, solitude, experimentation. These two systems rarely align.

So I won’t chase external winning. I will put my effort into the work itself. Unless it serves a strategic purpose in a larger plan, winning is not a destination—it is a byproduct of alignment. A Zen saying puts it simply: Perfection of craft, not applause, is the goal. The right stroke matters more than the gallery.

Which brings me back to cooperation. Cooperation is good. But neither cooperation nor competition is inherently superior. We need both. If we reject competition simply because it carries the possibility of pain, we lose something essential—something that has pushed humanity forward for millennia.

This matters especially for children. Instead of shielding them from then hurt of losing, we should teach them a healthier mindset: to see competition as a space for growth, resilience, humility, and inspiration. To see losing as part of the journey—and even a privilege, because of the depth of learning it offers. This mindset can cultivate a better kind of competition in the future, where effort is respected, losers are not stigmatized, and victory is not the only measure of worth.

Recently, my daughter was selected by her school to join several academic competitions. One day, after realizing she hadn’t done well, she asked me, “If I lose the math competition, can we still go to the mall this weekend?” Half laughing, I told her, “Of course. When have I ever punished you for results? You know what’s most important to me?”

Before she could answer, her little brother piped up, “Effort!”

That weekend, she was eliminated early in the competition. Yet I remember it as a beautiful day. We ate at a restaurant, talked, and I told her how proud I was that she had the courage to participate even knowing she might lose. And in her loss, I could see how hard she had tried. For us, that day was a win.

As I looked out the window at the piercingly bright sky—the kind of brilliance climate change seems to bring more often now—I found myself thinking of all the competitions she will face in her life. She’ll win some, lose many. And maybe, just maybe, one day she’ll come to see, as I have, that losing, too, is a privilege.