Positive Word Power

You think you got a bargain? You should see what I got,” said the woman to her friend. “The same exact paper towels as yours, for half the price!”

“You got a 98 on the spelling test?” the girl asked her classmate. “Well, guess what. I got 100 plus 5 extra credit points!”

“Your son got into Yeshivah Tov Meod?” one father said to the other. “That’s nice. Did I tell you that my son got into Yeshivah Mitzuyan?”

There are people who just have to compete. They see everything in reference to themselves and fail to think about what any given fact or situation means to the other person. It could be a great cause of celebration that the son in the above example got into the middle-level yeshivah. It might be far more of an achievement than the other father’s son getting into a top school. However, the competitive father isn’t really listening to his friend. He isn’t really sharing that person’s news with him. He is simply using it as a backdrop against which to present his own news.

Sometimes, competitive people will even compete over bad news. One mother complains that her baby kept her up half the night, and the other mother counters that her baby kept her up the entire night. In other words, she seems to be saying, “I don’t care about your tiredness, because it’s nothing compared to mine.” However, in reality, the second mother’s situation has nothing to do with that of the first mother. The first mother is simply looking for some sympathy because she is really feeling tired. She is not less tired simply because the other mother is also tired. She should not have to prove herself to be the most tired person in the world before she merits some sympathy from her friends.

Some people are competitive because they are insecure and need to feel that they are better than others. Some are just so self-involved that everything refers back to them. If someone tells them, “I got a parking ticket,” their first response will be to tell the story of when they got a parking ticket. If someone tells them that their child is engaged to be married, they will immediately launch into a discussion of how they felt when their child got married. “It’s all about me” is the message of the competitive person.

The result of competitiveness is an invalidation of the other person’s statement. Rather than comparing oneself constantly to others, a person can take their statements at face value and respond to them on those terms. If one teaches himself to feel sincere happiness for another person, he will not be so eager to dampen that happiness by attempting to belittle it in comparison with himself. It will be enough for him to know that his friend is happy, and that is good.

In Other Words

When I am about to bring myself and my achievements or experiences into someone else’s story, I will make an effort to hold off and give the other person my full attention.

Reprinted with permission from powerofspeech.org