What are you competitive at?

Duels to the death.

This.

@Blackberry I challenge you to a duel! ’‘slaps you across the face with a glove’’ :D

Nothing at all. I do go all out trying to get trophies on PlayStation 3 games though. That kinda count?

Pssstt @WestRiverrat What did that roast kangaroo taste like?

@Symbeline Hmph!

Oh shit…’‘hides behind the garbage’’

Trivia competitions, Trivial Pursuit, name that scientific formula, seeing who can build a freestanding structure that could hold the most weight, math league. You know the usual nerd stuff.
Just kidding, I’m awful at math.
the others are true. (sigh)

@TheIntern55 Why the “sigh”? I’m competitive in nerdiness. But more like the highest grades and stuff. Revel and rejoice at being a nerd! Nerds unite! :)

We will unite!
Now I will stop Fluthering and start studying to accomplish ultimate nerdiness! it’s what I’m supposed to be doing anyway.

Same here, Alg/Trig test tomorrow….truce to leave Fluther?

Video games and cards.

Life. There are so many unspoken competitions out there. Many times we may not even be aware we are competing, and yet we are. We are all striving for what we want and that is a kind of competition. The goals are not specified and neither are the rules. That makes it really tricky and engaging and fun and scary.

@wundayatta Reminds me of this song, Welcome to the Jungle…:D

@babybadger truce

Croquet

Well at the risk of sounding trite, I am competitive at things that matter to me.
With that said, I will forever pursue finding the perfect whiskey sauce for bread pudding, but can easily sleep at night if I never accomplish a backflip into a pool. I love winning at board games that involve trivia, or the game ‘Rummycube’ but don’t get turned on by Monopoly. I don’t care if I ever compete in Karaoke, but among friends I relish when I have the best comeback or invoke a smile with a response.

Baseball, intellectualizing shit.

Writing, grades, marksmanship, and total number of books collected.

Spelling.

Smiling…. I didn’t realise it til I heard someone say to the woman next to me “How do you do it? No matter what’s kicking off, you always have a smile on your face!”... (People frequently say that to me, and to be fair, these people had only just met me, but when they started I thought they were talking to me! That’s when I realised the I wanted to be known the best for smiling no matter what!)

@zensky Have you competed in spelling bees?

@harple That scares me. Either you are always happy, which is pretty scary, or you are faking it a lot of the time, which is also pretty scary.

@wundayatta Actually it’s not quite either… The story I described relates specifically to a music festival I’ve been involved in the organisation of. The smile achieves several things:
1 – it actually makes me feel better
2 – it hides the underlying stress from the situation and helps prevent others from feeling it
3 – it makes people more inclined to say yes when I ask them to do something (they’re all volunteers)
4 – it shows that, although something or someone else may have pissed me off, I’m not carrying that on to the next person I’m dealing with
It’s a genuine smile, because generally I am so pleased that the people are helping out! Yes, sometimes it’s a front and sometimes it’s a performance, but being in a management role (which I am in that situation) requires that of one.

In other situations, I do generally have a happy disposition – I was just thinking about that yesterday, as I was in a foul mood. It made me realise how rarely days like that happen for me. Don’t get me wrong, I can and do feel deep pain and anguish, but on the whole I choose to spend more of my time smiling than wallowing.

(Am I less scary now?!?)

@harple Yes. Less scary. It’s interesting. I find that when a person shows all sides of themselves, I trust them more. When they are always happy, I wonder what they are hiding. I can see being happy as a leadership and motivational tactic and I respect that. I have been trained that way, too, although I’m not able to pull it off.

I have found that in the alternative, I try to motivate people by being realistic. These are our challenges. They are real challenges and we have no guarantee of being able to overcome them, but if we do this and that (and I believe we can), then we will be successful.

I like to set high expectations, but I’m not able to cheerlead to get people to meet those expectations. I will train people as best I can. I will coach them. I do believe in them (if I hired them, and even if I didn’t, but not as much). But I can’t put on a cheerful face. Just a determined face.

I suppose it depends on the vibe I get from the person who is determinedly smiley. Are they smiling because they are determined or are they smiling because they are hiding their insecurity? One isn’t scary. The other is.

Almost anything. I fight it all the time. I tell myself I don’t have to be the best, but it’s been part of my personality since I was a child. The best I can do is not act on it and not enter any true competitions except those I have with myself. And laugh at myself for such idiocy.