Being competitive includes your emotions
"I'm competitive" often means "I'm not competitive".
It's not uncommon to hear people say "I'm competitive" (or some variant of that phrase) to explain away certain behaviors on a frisbee field. They yelled at a teammate who made a mistake—because they're "competitive". They got visibly frustrated when things weren't going well—because they're "competitive".
This doesn't really make sense to me. Think about what it means to be competitive. The dictionary on my computer says competitive means "having or displaying a strong desire to be more successful than others". In my own words, and considering the specific context of ultimate frisbee, I might say it means enjoying trying hard to win, or doing anything it takes to win (while still upholding your moral code!).
So here's the problem. An athlete who truly likes to win should display that desire by doing things that make it more likely they'll win. If they say they like to win but don't act like they like to win, then, if I may be blunt, it's all just empty words.
And these behaviors—yelling at teammates or getting visibly frustrated to the point where their teammates get down—makes it less likely that they'll win.
The people who truly have the right to call themselves competitive are the ones who put in the work on the emotional/mental side to be an emotional leader of the team, and actually maximize their team's chances of winning.
If you're interested in doing "anything" it takes to win, then you need to understand part of that "anything" is to have the emotional intelligence and self-control to keep yourself and your team operating at peak performance. Being competitive isn't a valid excuse for poor emotional behavior—in fact, it's the opposite: poor emotional behavior is evidence that someone doesn't actually care about winning.
Trying hard doesn't just mean running your hardest while you're on the field or putting in the hours to improve your throws. It also means working to grow mentally and emotionally, learning to be the best teammate you can be. Someone who really values winning will do what it takes to win. And what it takes to win is to be someone teammates like playing with, someone teammates might feel inspired by, someone who makes teammates excited to try their hardest, whether things are going well or not.
An "emotionally competitive" reading list
Real-life emotional intelligence needs real-life practice, but it also needs a solid foundation of understanding—understanding yourself and understanding others. For me, much of that foundation comes from books. It's impossible to put together a complete reading list because I've taken lots of little ideas from lots of different things I've read. But here are a few suggested books that I consider especially important:
Learn how to communicate with people
Communicating is harder than we sometimes realize. Learning effective communication techniques can help.Read Conflicted by Ian Leslie, Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, and Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg
Learn to accept that things are imperfect
Bad things are going to happen, in life and on the frisbee field. Sometimes you make a mistake, other times your teammates do. Learn to accept that sometimes bad things happen, and accept that we can never change the past but can strive to create the future we want.
Read Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright, The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck by Mark Manson, and A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William Irvine.Learn to respect how different other people are from you
Reading books about dating and (romantic) relationships can help you step up your frisbee game. If there's one thing good books in the dating & relationships genre have in common, it's that they teach you that other people are truly different from you. They have different goals, different ways to connect, different strengths and weaknesses, etc.
You should know and respect those differences, and you should take the time to see things from their perspective. These skills help you connect with teammates on the frisbee field for the same reason they help you connect with people romantically.
Read Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus by John Gray and The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman.Learn to take responsibility
Teammates don't want to be criticized by someone who acts like they're perfect. When we criticize others, they'll often shut down instead of using that criticism for growth. But when we criticize ourselves, we can often inspire others to also look for ways to improve themselves.
Read Extreme Ownership by Jocko WillinkA few other assorted suggestions:
Each chapter of How to Win Friends and Influence People is a short lesson on subjects covered in greater detail in the books above. It's a classic for a reason.
Brad Stulberg's three books (link to my review) are a good resource for understanding and harnessing your passion.
The first two 'books' of the blog series known as Rationality: A-Z helped me understand the way our minds work. Knowing that my brain and others' brains aren't perfect helped me both to accept imperfection and to find ways to work around those imperfections and communicate better.
Reading self-help books can feel corny. But if you connect with the right book at the right moment in time, it can be life-changing.
These are some of the books that worked for me, but that doesn't mean they'll work as well for you (see #3 above!). But don't give up—keep searching and you'll find the book (or YouTube video, or blog post) that works for you.
Updated (2023-12-05): A long time after posting, I came across an Understanding Ultimate essay (Stop playing badly!) that’s essentially a combination of my article here and another essay of mine, Don’t overreact when it’s all the same bell curve.
Not the first time I’ve accidentally re-written one of Benji’s articles after absorbing the lesson but forgetting where I first heard it. My apologies to him, and hopefully it comes off as a compliment to how influential he’s been, and not an attempt to take credit for his ideas.