Are you the competitive sort? Being successful kind of marks you with that label, doesn’t it? And that’s quite alright . . in business. The question gets a little more complicated, though, when the focus is a more personal one.
Did you grow up competing for your parents’ attention? Is so, did you ever outgrow that feeling of needing to compete with brothers, sisters, and others for your parents to really pay attention? How did it work when you were young? And, how is that competition working for you now?
The Debate Begins
I was talking with my sister-in-law a while back, and we landed on the topic of peaches . . . you know, the
locally grown and just picked variety. These are the same summer peaches that are so perfectly ripe that - even if you eat them fast - you can’t begin to catch all the the sweet juice as it drips from your chin and sticky fingers. Simple, right? What can be controversial about peaches?
Well, it wasn’t exactly the sticky goodness that got us stuck. No, where we got into trouble was when the conversation turned from eating to preserving, and to what we remembered about our mothers doing the preserving of those same kinds of juicy, sweet fruits.
The conversation started innocently enough. Peaches. However, it quickly moved to:
- Where our mothers got the peaches (i.e., Which were better: Peaches gotten at the local farmers’ market versus those you hand picked yourself at a nearby farm) . .; to
- How our mothers used to fix fresh peaches for us when we were children (or to how we believed we remembered our mothers fixing them, and which did it better) . .; to
- The exact process we “vividly” remembered by which our mothers canned or otherwise preserved those same fresh peaches; . . and of course, to
- Which of our mothers did a better job, and so ended up being a better mother because of her fresher tasting, juicier canned or otherwise preserved peaches.
It was one of the more totally ridiculous examples I can remember of one-up-man-ship pitting deceased mother against deceased mother.
In fact, it was absolutely mind-boggling how far we went in competing on this topic that didn’t matter one whit! Yet, we did it.
And, as silly as it sounds, we’ll probably do something similar again should the opportunity and spirit arise . . if for no other reason than the combined power of childhood memories and an adult child’s love for a parent who’s now gone.
Are You Still Competing For Your Parent’s Attention?
Does this sort of ridiculously competitive behavior sound at all familiar to you? Are you still competing like this with your siblings or others for the attention - or presumed honor - of a parent? I’m not asking if your children act this way. I’m talking about YOU!
Truth be told . .when you get right down to it . . my sister-in-law and I don’t make much sense to one another. We live in, and surround ourselves with people from, totally different worlds. It’s not that one’s actually better than the other . . . just that they don’t quite touch. And that’s okay. We can be friends without being fully in tune with each other.
The point is that if you and you siblings - or others in your circle - had good childhoods and/or have good memories of certain parts your childhoods, it’s easy to get sucked in to verbal competitions like the one I just mentioned. They don’t have to make any sense.
Where you get into trouble is when you move from simple conversational jabbing to hard core competing and even worse. If your mindset is stuck in “Compete” mode (an artifact from youth and early midlife), and there’s stuff in your history that’s pushing you to defend yourself, your relationship with your parent, or your parent themselves to someone equally set, the results can be less than positive.
Let Go A Little . . End The Debate
The challenge for you is give yourself permission to let go a little. Do your parents - living or deceased - really need for you to defend them? Wouldn’t it be better if you could simply celebrate them, and all the amazing concoctions they dreamed up for fresh peaches?
Keep growing my friend!
Gail
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