Do You Have To Be Competetive To Be Good At Something?

Do you think any of the best athletes in the world, the ones that trained and trained and went to the Olympics, weren’t competitive?

It’s hard for me to imagine that any of them couldn’t be. The whole idea of the Olympics is to be the best, and if you don’t care about that, why would you do it? Sure, you might enjoy the sport that much, but it still seems that there would need to be a competitive feel to it.

It’s odd to take that down a few notches from the Olympics though. To your everyday Joe. Are there people who never were competitive who could have been the best athletes in the world if they had been? Or is it the same people who are competitive that are also the best athletes?

To be a professional in something, it requires a certain amount of time spent investing in it. When you’re not competitive, it’s hard to devote this time I would think.

So the short answer to the post title seems to be that, while no, you don’t have to be competitive to be good at something, but to be the best, you absolutely must be competitive.

With competition often follows skill.