Questioner: Namaskaram Sadhguru. So, I’m saying that the idea of competition is so much ingrained in our minds – not even at the school level, but even at the postgraduate level, or any aspect of our lives – that it creates a lot of unnecessary stress, so what can be really done about this?
Sadhguru: Competition is a good thing. If you’re incompetent and you’re in competition, you will feel stressed. If you want to be in a competitive situation, the thing is you have to work on your competence. Right now the problem is, you’re tweaking your desire, you’re not tweaking your competence. This is what has to happen, that we must teach children to tweak their competence, not their desire. We’re calling this ambition, we’re calling this goal oriented-ness.
Competition is a good thing
Ambition means what, you tweaked up your desire. You’ll suffer invariably. If you tweak up your competence, you will see, wherever you go you’re doing better than what people expect you to, so naturally things will go well for you. Competition is not the bad thing. Lack of competence is the bad thing. We must understand this. In this country, this is very important because we still think our education is cooked in heaven. Because people tell me temples are crowded just before the examination. Just the wrong place to be. Just the wrong place to be. When your examination is coming, you sitting in the temple is just the wrong place to be. In the vacation you sat in the temple, great.
If you focus enough on enhancing your competence, you will see there is such joy in breaking limitations everyday and becoming something better
So instead of competence, we have big desires. If you focus enough on enhancing your competence, you will see there is such joy in breaking limitations everyday and becoming something better. You don’t care a damn how somebody else is doing. Yes? If everyday, if you’re breaking limitations – when I was speaking to the, I think our Home School, I was telling them – a class full of children should sound like eggs are hatching! You know, I used to be… at one time I used to do sericulture, you know – silk farming. And, I was amazed, I was so amazed I didn’t take them to the market sometimes! Because these… if you just leave the cocoon long enough, if you don’t take it to the market, you should see how it opens up – tak…tak…tak…tak…tak. Like this it will be making noise. Slowly they are opening it up. When a million of them are trying to open, you go inside this room… this is how a school should sound! That every moment they are breaking their limitations.
If you’re breaking the limitations of who you are. If your competence… you’re working constantly to expand, you don’t even have the time to look at somebody, how is he doing. Because this is such a great thing happening within you. So please focus on your competence. Competition you don’t bother. If you’re good, you’ll be on the top. Otherwise, you’ll be somewhere. It’s okay.
