Book 213 - A Year of Magical Learning (Part 1/2)

Reflection Title: “This Buddhism Stuff Really Works”

Book – The Competitive Buddha: How to Up Your Game in Sports, Leadership, and Life by Jerry Lynch (Part 1 / 2)

Book Description:

The Competitive Buddha is about mastery, leadership, spirituality, and the Kobe Bryant Mamba Mentality. Discover how people from all parts of the world have brought together the Buddha and athletics for greater fun, enjoyment, and pleasure during their performances.

The Competitive Buddha teaches:

· Leadership Skills

· How to use Buddhism as an approach to competition

· How to master athletics and life

Reflection:

I really enjoyed this book a lot. The title, Competitive Buddha, is a total oxymoron, but feels like it fits humanity well as we are walking contradictions. Like Michael Jordan once said after winning a title, “This Buddhism Stuff Really Works!” That statement is hilarious because it is simultaneously so right and yet so wrong.

I’m an incredibly competitive person, at least I have been my entire life. Historically, competition has been what fuels me, what drove me to act, and what prevented me from enjoying life sometimes while being a source of a lot of pain.

Competition, if harnessed effectively, can be beautiful, rewarding, and fulfilling. On the other hand, competition, can easily send you into a tailspin if your mind, body, and spirit aren’t aligned and you forget why you are competing in the first place.

I used to always ask candidates I was interviewing a question that I thought revealed a lot about their character. I would ask, “Which is truer for you…Do you like winning or hate losing more?” The answer that I was hoping to hear back was, “I HATE losing”! If I heard that, I knew they got it because that is how I felt. I could care less if I won something, that was the expectation. What really got my juices flowing, head spinning, and fire activated was losing.

I used to HATE losing more than anything in the world!

Ever since I was a little kid, if I lost, something in my mind snaps. I would want to keep playing and playing and playing until I could prove to myself, my opponent, and the world that I will beat you eventually. If you made me stop playing after I lost and couldn’t try again, that is all I would think about until I could do it again. I would come home and replay what I did wrong and how I could be better next time in my mind repeatedly. I would be despondent. A literal party could be raging next to me, and I wouldn’t care. Thinking about the loss and getting a chance to try again is all I cared about.

I work in sales, where you lose a lot…like all day every day. When I asked that question to a candidate, I was hoping that they understood all that I just described. I was hoping that they would immediately understand what I was getting at. I was hoping that they too HATED that feeling of losing so much that it consumed them and pushed them to want to try again and again and again until they got it right. I was hoping they would say, “Who cares about winning, that is the expectation and means you are just doing your job!” If I heard that, I knew I had someone that was going to be up for the fight no matter how experience they had or didn’t have in a similar role.

Before Emilia and this journey, it would be fair to say that Chris Sears REALLY cared about outcomes in life. These days, I’m trying incredibly hard to view competition and life differently by taking “The Middle Way” as they say in the book.

To me, taking the middle way means drawing your energy not from outcomes, but from the activities you are performing. I am fueled by activities that align to my values. They are fulfilling, rewarding, and never get old. I have so much more fun these days doing activities that previously brought me nothing but pain.

Tennis is the ultimate example of how my life has changed.

Before Emilia, whenever I would lose a tennis match, I would feel mentally shattered. I would feel miserable, and it would make me question why I keep doing this to myself. I would think, “just quit Chris…you don’t need to play competitively anymore; you can just go out and hit and have fun with friends for the rest of my life instead!”

However, I knew that was wrong and that I would miss it.

These days, I’m focused on balance taking the middle way. I love a challenge which is why I love competition. I’ve reframed what competition means to me. Competition is no longer about winning and losing, it is about getting to live my values. I get to learn from every match and every point. I get to challenge myself by stepping into the arena. I get to endure and keep pushing myself when I realize today will not be easy. I get to try and stay balanced by not caring about the outcome and just focus on having fun. I get to be humbled time and time again and realize that I don’t know anything. I get to not live life alone by meeting and getting to know new players. Most importantly, I get to play and have some damn fun.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still far from perfect and find myself violating my own values on the court. I still get pissed at myself on the tennis court (Balance), I still accidentally call a ball out when it was questionable and don’t correct myself (Integrity), I still hate losing after a match and think I should have won (Humility), and sometimes I find myself wishing to be anywhere but the tennis court (Not having fun).

The difference these days is that I’m aware, I’m working on it, and I’m actively trying to reframe the same event by leveraging my values, mission, and purpose.

Tennis can be an activity that I could find every reason to quit if I wanted if my goal was just winning and losing. These days, my goal is only about living my values and is why I’m willing to keep giving competitive tennis a chance for as long as I can because it is the ultimate expression and challenge of trying to be the person I promised I would be to my daughter every time I step onto the court.

Question: What would competition look like for you if you detached from the outcome?

---

Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? - An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - The Competitive Buddha: How to Up Your Game in Sports, Leadership, and Life by Jerry Lynch