This is the caption I am rooting for in one of the "design the laptop skin contest" for one of the teams I do not work in :) . I thought I can anyways pariticipate and ended up designing this- http://www.schtickers.com/catalog/laptopskins/create/preview.php?id=200331200804170331
Now I am not an extremely "proud of myself" kinda person. On the other hand I underrate myself and appear less confident for my capabilites (this can be called as a self-contradictory statement).
And after saying all this I am gonna tell you that I think my design and the caption is the best so far in the competition. And I say it in total objectivity.
And I will tell you why- because it is right in spirit. It is something that would cheer me more when I am happy and it will give me confidence when I am not feeling motivated. And that brings me to a point where lots of folks designed most of their captions around beating others. And it hurts me when the judge showed some liking towards a few of them (dunno why I am getting personal about this).
But frankly, folks talking about beating others, I do not find that an encouraging thing. Infact the moment someone asks me to beat someone, he makes a statement that in current capabilities I am not as good as the other person and additionally my aspiration should be around being better than that person. I am okay with the first part of the statement. But totally not okay with having an element of comparison in my aspiration.
I want my aspirations to motivate me, to provide me some energy , provide me that overwhelming intoxication and I want to feel that rhythm, feel the positive energy from what I am doing right now. I want my aspirations to be beyond the current age competition. I want it to be a state of bliss... I aspire for a state of mind and not for a goal. If I reach that state I know I am already successful - I have already attained what I started for and I need not beat anyone to get there. Basically I do not run to come first. I run to run and that keeps me going, keeps me running...
I don't know if I am correct or if I am just different...
4 comments:
Ankur Gupta has left a new comment on your post "Splash, run, jump. Live!":
This is quite a contradiction.
You say you run to run, and you also say your design and the caption is the best so far in the competition. If you do not like captions about beating others, then why care about if you were able to beat others in the competition or not. :)
Doesn't this mean you were trying to run to come first in this case which contradicts your philosophy.
No Ankur you are not understanding it. When I made this caption, my motive was to not win. It was as honest and earnest in trying to build up a spirit. My motive was to make captions and I made 5-6 of them and finally made this.
Once I made it and submitted in competition, I am analyzing the other's one and saying that other's are trying to foster the wrong spirit.
What is the motive of what you are doing is what I am questioning.
You need not live your life as a contest with others. Motivation should come from self and not from a sense of comparison.
Let's discuss this in more details offline but I myself belong to the school of thought that competition does pump up will to excel. How do you judge otherwise how difficult the goals that you've set for yourself are? I can set my goals too low and soon program myself to feel happy at little achievements.
I actually wished to bring this competition to illustrate the same point of mine, you weren't participating for winning but most of the people I am assuming were and the result was some excellent designs and captions, how many times in the absence of such competitions, people come up with such designs and captions? It is not just a human tendency but a law of nature - Survival of the fittest and not survival of the fit.
sure. we all know you are an extremely comeptetive guy :). Good if that motivates you. For me working for the purpose has proven more useful. To illustrate - when I run I measure my speed to know how fast I am - the thrill is in the experience of running so fast not in beating the guy. I call that self-motivation - it leads to innovations - bulb was not invented with the idea of beating isaac newton. It was build with the idea of providing light.
Also small fun contests are different than the entire life in general. What priciples guide you in life?
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