Very good morning to everyone. The topic of my speech today is that participation is more important than winning itself. Competition is one of the most important aspects of life. There is competition even before a person is born. However, in today’s day and age the importance of competition has been taken to a bit far and is overrated.
There is no doubt that competition is an extremely important requirement for bringing out the best in any field. Many people however consider winning as so important that they are ready to put at stake the most pleasurable things in life.
Some of them can even jeopardize things that are of greatest human value. This results in a negative outcome of competition thus defeating the purpose of it in the first place.
Although it might seem conflicting, winning is not the most important part of a competition. In fact, winning is not at all the desired purpose of a competition. The purpose of a competition is to bring out the best – not only in that competition but also in the competition of life.
A competition test asks whether we can handle defeat and winning. It is obviously important to be able to handle ourselves when we lose. However, it is more important to understand how to react when we win. The whole complication of winning and losing is just really farce. A competition tests whether we have the guts to stand up and challenge the others.
A competition tests whether we back out in times of difficulty or we take it as a challenge and work through difficult times without complaining. A competition is supposed to be a miniature reflection of life and whether we give up on it is what we are tested for. Thus, it is participation which is more important than a first place and second place and last place standing.
Many people today especially the younger kids and teenagers, are overburdened with the responsibility of winning competitions and being the best of the lot. Although there is nothing wrong in the hunger for winning, but there is definitely something wrong in a greed to win.
The moment hard work is superseded by greed and performance pressure, the whole equation changes. Participation is what matters. It tells us as well as the world that we are not scared to face any challenge that is thrown to us.
It might seem likely that he will lose but the Mia act of still taking up the challenge define all odds and predictions is what transforms us into mature responsible adults who can take over the challenges of life and the world.
This ideology of participation being better than winning should be promoted more and more specially to young children and students in educational institutions. Usually students who show a knack for studies suffer from a tremendous amount of performance pressure not only from their parents but also from their Peer groups who have seen them excel throughout and they want to keep it that way.
Search people hold your opinion that participants are mere observers and get nothing out of a competition and that it is only the winner get succeed in life. These people cannot handle defeat and failures which is a very important part of growing up.
Whenever these bright kids face even a minute difficulty, they start questioning their existence and all sorts of ill-gotten thoughts nest in their young impressionable minds.
We must teach the kids that part of growing up is to accept things that we wish were not true.
What better example do we have then the great scientist and inventor Thomas Alva Edison most popularly known for the invention of the electric bulb – one of his many amazing inventions.
It is said that Thomas Alva Edison experimented and failed over a thousand times but he did not give up and continued in his Endeavour for excellence. Even went so far to say that he has not failed 1000 times but has found 1000 ways that will not work.
This statement is great in itself and just showcases how great it can be achieved even if failure has been smeared on our faces from head to toe.
Participating in an event on competition also makes his bolder and boosts our self-confidence. It is a great way of meeting new people as well as making friends.
Improvement in social interaction skills is something that is a bonus of participation. The skills that we learn on the field are the skills that will once help us at least once in our lives to face real life situations with ease and cut through difficult times like a knife cuts through butter.
I would like to conclude by saying that life is too short to be wasted on thinking about the outcome of what we are doing. It will only cost tension for the future and ruin our present. We must be like the flowing river and go where life takes us.
Leave a Reply