Competition: Good or Bad?

Competition is something that everyone has in his or her life. When you are young and still studying in school, you would compete with your classmates for better grades, when you get older and go to work, you would compete with your colleagues so as to please the boss more with your work and get a promotion to a higher position with better salary. Companies compete with each other to get more customers and slowly expand their business. Countries compete with each other for a better economy. Even animals and plants compete with each other. The plants compete with each other to as to get more water, sunlight and nutrients, while the animals in the wild challenge each other for survival and mating. So, competition is part of everyday life, but is it really a good thing?

The cause of having competition between people is that people like to prove to themselves or other people that they are actually better than the other person. People compete with each other so as to win, and winning brings benefits to the victor. Some people compete to make their views heard, like when in political elections. The representatives debate with each other and try their best to convince the public to vote for them.

People not only compete with others but with themselves too. Some people do not concentrate on beating their peers but instead, they concentrate on competing with themselves. They keep trying to do better than they did previously, therefore these people are not under as much stress as the people who compete with the society. People who compete with themselves get to set their own goals and learn or work a their own pace, and as such there is not so much strain.

Competition causes good stress. This type of stress from competition makes people strive to be better than their rivals. The stress drives people to work harder and go the extra mile to improve, making the society and country move forward and not lag behind others. Without this sort of stress, people improve much