Humans strive to compete, and in doing so, become surprisingly competent through patience and practice. We hone our skills through several years, days, hours, and minutes of practice every single day. Some have an easier time doing things than others, and those who are consistently competent stand out from everyone else. I would know this first-hand, seeing how my older brother stood above everyone he came across, with his name becoming synonymous with success and intelligence while I was in private school with him.

How competent are you? How competitive are you? Thanks you for chiming in, friends.  

I am competent to the point where I could essentially start supporting myself and living on my own, however I'm not in a good enough financial position to do so.

I'm not very competitive though, I'm casual unless it's something like a game or something. I don't strive to outdo anyone in life, it's pointless and I have better things to focus on.

I kick myself because I am extremely competent. I can do just about anything after five minuets worth of instruction and I really wish I could go back and learn better habits as a kid.

I found school easy in elementary school and middle school so I never had to actually study or do the work. I just did it right there and I didn't need to develop the skills of homework or projects.

High school came and I was extremely smart so I figured, "Whatever, I can handle this."

I couldn't. High school came in and smashed me because I didn't get exactly how to survive when I needed to make flash cards and study and work. I would play NES, or SNES, or go outside and play with friends and not do the work. So my grades suffered. And my morale suffered and I got in trouble with my parents because they knew I was smart and I'm turning in weak grades.

If I learned how to study, I could have gone into cancer research, or been a scientist, or discovered new things, or saved people's lives, or been a commercial pilot or done the things I wanted to do. But universities laughed at my GPA. I ended up in the Marines and I thrived there because I learned those responsibilities with no issues.

I went after college again afterwards and it took me a while to slog through.

I'm better for it now. But I'm way off topic.

I'm competent but it took some serious life lessons to get to the point today. Now I lead a team of people at a corporate fitness gym and we have fun. I'm happy where I'm at but I had to get my butt kicked to get there.

I'll answer your first question (about competency) first. I'm a very competent person. It usually doesn't take more than one or, maybe, two times being told something for me to do it, and do it the right way. Part of this is because I have a pretty good memory and I can remember most of what I hear. I get pretty good grades (although it's not because I'm smart, it's more, again, because of my memory) and I do reasonably well in most aspects of my life. I hope I can keep it up and, hopefully, improve some as my life progresses.


To answer your second question, I'm a very competitive person. Whether it's getting the highest grade in the class, winning a 4th grade soccer game at recess, or some stupid video game, I hate to lose. With that being said, I'm not much of a sore loser. I usually don't make excuses to why I lost or didn't perform that well, and I'm usually gracious in defeat. The only times where I'd say I don't "respond the best way" to a loss is when I was cheated or my opponent won in some unfair way, or with Bush-league tactics. 

For your first question I am competent since being grown up in a way to be the best I can be. I do things when needed I don't always have to be told to do it. Not unless its ones I haven't really come across of. I do it most of the time so I don't have to hear my mother complaining about it and have some peace.

For the second question. I'm not really that competitive or I would go out of my way to find a gaming tournament to beat down people. I like to enjoy playing games. Sometimes I can be competitive, but not to the point that its an obsession really. Also I'm not loser when it comes to some games I do put in the effort with what games I play, sometimes I come in first sometimes I come in 2nd or 3rd it depends really.

I'm not sure what you mean by competent, but compared to those around me, I'm not competent yet. Until I obtain the knowledge that I've always wanted and get to where I want to be financially, I won't consider myself competent in real life.



Anyways, I generally enjoy competitions, especially if I have a worthy rival (yes, it's exhausting but in my opinion, totally worth it). In the process of trying to one up each other, you begin to learn things about yourself and others that you would normally never be able to know. You learn what kind of person you are as well as what you're not, whether you would play by the rules or bend them, whether you are fair or you go out of your way to cheat to the bitter end, or if you get so nervous that you mess up, or if pressure helps you to perform better. Having a rival is sort of like a dialogue and at the end of the competition, the two of you would probably be closer to each other in terms of well, everything than other people because you understand the pain and efforts that it took to arrive at the same destination.

As for whether or not I'm competitive... I probably shouldn't tell you because then I'll lose my competitive edge. =P j/k In all seriousness though, I'm probably one of the most competitive people you'll ever meet in real life (somewhat different from online), if you press my buttons properly. lol I'm not interested in just any competition (must have a specific goal and the competitions must be fun or challenging in some way), but I don't mind joining things if it helps with something or benefits the community somehow (just don't expect me to go all out if I don't think the competition is going to be balanced, although that does sometimes change when I see that it actually will be). Therefore, I do consider myself to be relatively competitive, although that probably doesn't come across sometimes when I'm just online and relaxing.

Much like a user here stated already, I'm extremely geared toward visual learning, and struggle with doing so by sound. That said, just about any thing I learn by reading or observing I can remember for years on end with out ever needing to study or having some thing to constantly remind me of it. I'm cursed with the inability to ever read a book more than once, because if I try, about 10 pages in I start remembering the exact sentences that are about to happen before I get to them, and it takes the joy out of the experience.

When I was in school, I never had to take any thing seriously in the slightest. All the way through High School, I would literally sleep through class and still set the curve on almost every test we took ( for those unfamiliar with the concept, setting a curve means that if the highest score in the class was a 95%, that 95% became a 100%, and the rest of the grades were based on the new percentage of 95% = perfect score ). I mean I was taking Calculus as a Junior in school, and sleeping through it because the teacher couldn't stump me with the material he was teaching the class each day. He would literally wake me up and ask me to solve some thing on the white board trying to make me look dumb, and I'd answer it right every time, immediately plopping my face back down on the desk lol. Other than English / Writing, I did this for pretty much every class I took all the way through High School. I never did any homework either, because all of my in-class test / project grades were enough to keep me from failing, so that made school even less of a chore. This ended up hurting me more than helping, since I never really needed any self-discipline to get through things early in life, and it's harder to learn things like that later than it is to do so early in life.

Even sports came extremely easy to me as well. I played Football all through Middle School up to my Sophomore year in High School. I was always a first string ( starter ) on at least offense or defense through out my entire career. I played Basketball the same duration, and had even better of a time with that. I was being told I could've easily gotten a scholarship to a Division 2 school, if not a D 1 school, if I had truly applied my self and made it a priority. 

All in all I've always been some one who things come to extremely easily. It doesn't take much for me to learn some thing new and excel at it. Obviously I have my shortcomings, but they seem to be relatively less skill-wise than most people I know. I have that personality of being one of those people who hardly shows interest in any thing, but when I get serious, I can outclass more people than not through sheer natural talent.

As for competition, I'm an EXTREMELY competitive person. If I find some thing that I enjoy competing over, or I really want to win, I make it happen. I have a bad habit of putting in just enough effort to do better than those around me, though. Again I think this comes down to my history of never really having to work hard for things in life. To be entirely honest I have no idea what my limits truly are. I've almost never had to really push my self to accomplish just about any thing, excluding maybe sports ( but I didn't mean that in a physical sense to begin with. I know my physical limitations quite well ). Hopefully I can find some thing I want badly enough to really see what I'm capable of, but I don't see that likely to happen any time soon.

Sadly, I'm not quite as competent as I used to be. Years of abusing drugs took quite a bit of my edge away from me. Every day it haunts me that I'm only half the man I used to be, be it physically, emotionally, or intellectually. If not for a certain medication known as Buprenorphine, I probably wouldn't be sober at all. Still a year in to sobriety I constantly struggle with PAWS symptoms ( Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome ), which can be maddening at times, as well as greatly hindering my cognitive faculties. But meh, I'm getting over it slowly...