We are brought up to be competitive and to crave for success in life. Although succeeding in life is amazing, achieving it through selfish means, like how the world tells us, is not going to give us any fulfillment in life. For at the end of the day, after we gain the whole world, we are not going to take anything to heaven when we die.
Our education system is preaching this gospel more than any other system in the world. And since a major part of our childhood is spent in school and college, we are exposed to this philosophy greatly, and highly influenced by it.

With competition, we tend to attempt to establish our own supremacy or superiority over another individual.

For I say through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. Proverbs 12: 3

But of course, being competitive is not always bad. Being competitive in a casual game of chess for example, does not ruin the life of the opponent in any way(except maybe if the opponent has placed a bet on his own house, in which case it is better to just walk out of the game).

So what do we do about this? How do we succeed in life without trying to establish our own supremacy?

Focus on improving yourself, and not on triumphing over another

Often times we want to outwork someone in our school, or someone in our office, that we get so obsessed with what they do. We focus a massive chunk of our energy to defeat them, by learning what they do, reading the books that they read and watching the movies that they watch(happens). Although this may seem like a good way to succeed in life, it’s not. When we focus on outperforming someone, we tend to form a box in our head, and all we think is within that. Our only goal in life would then be to outperform the other person.

But what if you did? What if you did succeed in outperforming them? What next? You would eventually end up feeling void.

Therefore, it makes sense to invest our time in improving ourselves, instead of getting obsessed with what others are doing.

Add value to others

We’re all interested primarily on ourselves. No one wants to hear about our successes and why they should help us achieve more of them, but they do want to know how you can help them be successful.

Zig Ziglar, a motivational speaker said,

“You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.“

This might trigger the question, “How will I get what I want if I help other people get what they want?”. To be reconfirming, you will.

When we help others to solve their problems, we are exposed to a lot of them. That way, we will then be able to solve our own problems easily. Even otherwise, people see us as a problem solver, which will eventually increase our reputation.

That being said, adding value to others must be the primary goal of our life.

What good is it if we out perform the whole world? Nothing.

Therefore, being competitive can sometimes be a snag in places even where it’s not seen immoral.