“The best preparation for life or a career is not learning to be competitive, but learning to be cooperative.”

“Life’s greatest battles don’t always go to the strongest man; sooner or later the man who wins is the man who thinks he can”. An important necessity for the preparation for succeeding in life is to have the confidence in yourself that you are bound to succeed. Without this confidence, you cannot have the competitive spirit that will enable you to gain an edge over your competitors. Is it possible for you to succeed in your career if you cooperate with those who are competing with you for the next slot in the company’s hierarchy? Can a business enterprise which is launching a new product in the market cooperate with another company that is planning to launch a similar product? It is true that cooperation is an essential requirement for success in your life and career, but the need to be competitive exceeds the need to be cooperative when it comes to preparation for a successful life and career. This is because the strategy for succeeding in life is largely dependent on your ability to get into the shoes of your competitor and think of how to outrun him.

One needs to work hard to succeed in life. The first step is to choose an appropriate career. You will face stiff competition in all stages on your way to succeeding in your chosen career. First of all, you will have to score high in the entrance tests or standardized tests which are essential for securing admissions to colleges that will train you for that specific career. It is true that you will be able to prepare well for the tests by cooperating with your friends who are preparing for the same test. However, more than the cooperative spirit, it is the competitive spirit that will help you to score high in the test. The feeling that you need to be better than the others is essential if you want to score high in such tests.

If there is a company that has to pick one student from your class for a top notch job placement, would you cooperate with your friends to help them get the job? This is highly unacceptable if you wish to succeed in your career and life. You will need to be competitive if you want to be the one who is selected by the company. What happens after you get a job at a company of your choice? You will have to compete with your colleagues for doing well in your job. Cooperating with the other employees of the company is essential for the growth of the company but as far as your personal life and career are concerned, you will have to instill the spirit of competitiveness in yourself for doing better than your colleagues at your place of work. You will definitely have to prove your worth by going all out and demonstrating that you are more suited for any kind of job-related tasks as compared to others.

It has been seen time and again that failure is inevitable if you have not prepared yourself well for any given task. Preparing for a given task is one thing and competing with someone else for doing well in that particular task is another thing altogether. It is absolutely necessary for you to learn to be competitive if you want to succeed in your life and career by proving your worth to everyone around you.