As you probably know by now, Singapore was ranked poorly in the recent Happiness Index. One often-mentioned reason was our highly-competitive society. Here, we're taught (sometimes implicitly) to be the best, to make our parents proud, to get the best grades, to make more money, to be among the first in the queue, to jostle for seats on the MRT, to get maximum value at the buffet table. It's no coincidence that the Hokkien term for the fear of losing has become a love-hate expression to describe Singaporeans.
Competition is so pervasive here that it's become as natural as the air we breathe. We don't even think about why we do it, we just do. Certainly it has its roots in the early survival of the human species - this "need to win" ensured we got the food, secured the best territory, produced offspring with the most able-bodied mates, and so on, but in the modern context, could excessive competition be snuffing out our joy?
I'm not saying that competition is bad - it certainly spurs us on to do better for ourselves - but this "need to win" to feel better about ourselves can backfire for some of us. I mean, it's all rosy when we do win, but what happens when we don't? Being transfixed on victory can turn us into very sore losers.
Many of us have allowed this "need to win" to be the determinant of our happiness. So it's not surprising why so many of us are unhappy; we can't win all the time, and when we don't get the best or the most, we become discontented.
The key to regaining control of your happiness is to change your focus - from competition to creation. Competition is centred on other people - other people's possessions, other people's achievements, other people's happiness or good fortune. This causes envy and the desire to obtain the same or better, if only for the reason that "they have it".
This kind of thinking ignores what we truly want for ourselves, for our lives, for our loved ones. We're buying into the collective belief that just because it's desired by most people that it must be good for us.
Creation, on the other hand, is about using your talents to produce things of value to society. Creation does not look at other members of society as benchmarks; it focuses on what we personally can achieve with what we have. Creation is about reaching inside to create abundance. This kind of spiritual abundance, not material abundance, is what brings about lasting joy.
Eugine Loh, 938Live, MediaCorp Pte Ltd
