Quotes & Sayings About Competing In Life

Initially I was very drawn to the Tao Te Ching, the Taoist philosophy. It was helping me deal with the balance of these external and internal issues with my chess life. Tai chi is the martial embodiment of Taoist philosophy. Initially, I had no intention of competing in the martial arts; it was just the meditation. — Joshua Waitzkin

A fucking rat race that is. CosaNostra Pizza doesn't have any competition. Competition goes against the Mafia ethic. You don't work harder because you're competing against some identical operation down the street. You work harder because everything is on the line. Your name, your honor, your family, your life. Those burger flippers might have a better life expectancy - but what kind of life is it anyway, you have to ask yourself. That's why nobody, not even the Nipponese, can move pizzas faster than CosaNostra. The Deliverator is proud to wear the uniform, proud to drive the car, proud to march up the front walks of innumerable Burbclave homes, a grim vision in ninja black, a pizza on his shoulder, red LED digits — Neal Stephenson

Competition is healthy. Competition is life. Yet most actors refuse to acknowledge this. They don't want to compete. They want to get along. And they are therefore not first-rate actors. The good actor is the one who competes, willingly, who enjoys competing. An actor must compete, or die ... Peacefulness and the avoidance of trouble won't help in his acting. It is just the opposite he must seek. — Michael Shurtleff

Until we do something about wild dogs, kangaroos competing for pasture, your fortunes in life aren't gonna turn around. — Barry O'Sullivan

After an early legal and legislative life attempting to abolish slavery, Jefferson, now at midlife, made a calculated decision that he would no longer risk his "usefulness" in the arena by pressing the issue.55 (There was a partial victory later: The Northwest Ordinance of 178756 prohibited slavery north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi rivers.) In all, though, for Jefferson public life was about compromise and an unending effort to balance competing interests. To have pursued abolition, even when coupled, as it was in Jefferson's mind, with deportation, was politically lethal. And Jefferson was not going to risk all for what he believed was a cause whose time had not yet come. — Jon Meacham

There is no need to put anything in front of us and run after it. We already have everything we are looking for, everything we want to become.

Be yourself. Life is precious as it is. All the elements for your happiness are already here. There is no need to run, strive, search, or struggle. Just be. Just being in the moment in this place is the deepest practice of meditation. Most people cannot believe that just walking as though you have nowhere to go is enough. They think that striving and competing are normal and necessary. Try practicing aimlessness for just five minutes,and you will see how happy you are during those five minutes. — Thich Nhat Hanh

You can spend your life competing in a world that talks too loud / You can lose your own direction getting lost among the crowd / Confusion - is it any wonder that the road ahead's not clear / Well you can try too hard to find it now I realise it's here — Kim Wilde

To win in life, never forget to be content competing with yourself. — Debasish Mridha

There is competition in Zen. Let's not be ridiculous. There is competition in everything in life; being a winner in Zen means, competing and winning in the world of enlightenment. — Frederick Lenz

There may be times when competition is appropriate, but life is not one of them. We have all been thrown together at this exact moment on this planet. And the sooner we stop competing against others to "win," the faster we can start working together to figure it out. The first and most important step in overcoming the habit of competition is to routinely appreciate and compliment the contribution of others. — Joshua Becker

Racing, competing, it's in my blood. It's part of me, it's part of my life; I have been doing it all my life and it stands out above everything else. — Ayrton Senna

I had been allowed to believe in man's innate goodness for the twenty-two years of my life, and I had hoped to carry the belief with me to my grave. I wanted to think that all people could have what they wanted, that there was no inherent conflict between competing interests, and that, if tragedies had to happen, they were not something mere human beings could control. — Charlotte Rogan

I have no social life. There is no time for one. Once in a while I may go to dinner with a friend but that is it. However I am much happier travelling and being busy competing in both my sports than having time off. — Liz Halliday

Like it or not, life is a series of competitions. You may be competing for a grade, a spot on a team, a job, or the largest account in town. The higher your self-esteem is, the better you get along with yourself, with others, and the more you'll accomplish. — Harvey MacKay

The "omnivore's dilemma" (a term coined by Paul Rozin) is that omnivores must seek out and explore new potential foods while remaining wary of them until they are proven safe. Omnivores therefore go through life with two competing motives: neophilia (an attraction to new things) and neophobia (a fear of new things). People vary in terms of which motive is stronger, and this variation will come back to help us in later chapters: Liberals score higher on measures of neophilia (also known as "openness to experience"), not just for new foods but also for new people, music, and ideas. Conservatives are higher on neophobia; they prefer to stick with what's tried and true, and they care a lot more about guarding borders, boundaries, and traditions. — Jonathan Haidt

Expect Nature to answer to your human values as to come into your house and sit in a chair. The economy of nature, its checks and balances, its measurements of competing life - all this is its great marvel and has an ethic of its own. — Henry Beston

...nothing is more blissful than to occupy the heights effectively fortified by the teaching of the wise, tranquil sanctuaries from which you can look down upon others and see them wandering everywhere in their random search for the way of life, competing for intellectual eminence, disputing about rank, and striving night and day with prodigious effort to scale the summit of wealth and to secure power. O minds of mortals, blighted by your blindness! Amid what deep darkness and daunting dangers life's little day is passed! To think that you should fail to see that nature importantly demands only that the body may be rid of pain, and that the mind, divorced from anxiety and fear, may enjoy a feeling of contentment! — Titus Lucretius Carus

I can't spend the rest of my life competing for your attention and coming in last. — Barbara Delinsky

In other words, without being tossed about by personal feelings and ideas, just returning to the life of my true self, without envying or being arrogant toward those around me, neither being self-deprecating nor competing with others, yet on the other hand not falling into the trap of laziness, negligence, or carelessness - just manifesting that life of my self with all the vigor I have - here is where the glory of life comes forth and where the light of buddha shines.53 Religious light shines where we manifest our own life. — Kosho Uchiyama

There are sharply different, competing models of what trans advocacy looks like - those that seek to follow the path laid out by the most visible and well-funded lesbian and gay rights organizations in the US and those that seek to use grassroots strategies, center issues of race and poverty, and aim to dismantle harmful institutions and conditions to redistribute life chances. — Dean Spade

There's a power struggle going on across Europe these days. A few cities are competing against each other to see who shall emerge as the great 21st century European metropolis. Will it be London? Paris? Berlin? Zurich? Maybe Brussels, center of the young union? They all strive to outdo one another culturally, architecturally, politically, fiscally. But Rome, it should be said, has not bothered to join the race for status. Rome doesn't compete. Rome just watches all the fussing and striving, completely unfazed. I am inspired by the regal self-assurance of this city, so grounded and rounded, so amused and monumental, knowing she is held securely in the palm of history. I would like to be like Rome when I am an old lady. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Competing in show jumping is a school of life. And it's one of the few Olympic sports where men and women are equal. — Charlotte Casiraghi

I got no support from USA Wrestling. I was competing against professional Russians that do nothing but wrestle for a living, and I was forced to take a job working for this lowlife loser, John du Pont, who I didn't want in my life. I just wanted the money. — Mark Schultz

The Tantric view is that there is already a complete Buddha dormant within each of us, but we've individually and collectively become addicted to horror movies that we mistake for documentaries. From this perspective, our whole society is caught up in a kind of shared horror story, imagining ourselves as zombie consumers rather than empowered citizens: afraid, insecure, incapable beings who have no choice but to wander through life grasping after fleeting pleasures, needlessly competing with each other instead of collaborating, isolating ourselves from the plight of those whose stories we don't understand. Because our whole society is both constructing and watching this shared screenplay simultaneously, the physical world begins to take on the qualities of this horror movie, and it becomes more and more difficult to distinguish the theater of our experience from the screen of our own projections. — Ethan Nichtern

I was in a competing company and have been dancing since I was four - ballet, tap, jazz, hip hop - so it's a huge part of my life and my music. — Tinashe

The point is, there will always be competing voices," I heard North say. "In your head and in the world. You can't spend your life caught between them."

I looked up at him. "You're telling me to choose."

"I know better than to tell you to do anything," North said, reaching around me to shut down his computer. "But if you don't decide, the world will choose for you. — Lauren Miller

I've been a non-believer all of my life, but I'd drop to my knees and sing the praises of any righteous god who collapsed this Tower of Babel and scattered men across the Earth in a million virile, competing cultures, tribes, and gangs. — Jack Donovan

Mostly I remember the way I was before I became a Contender. Competing in this race is like becoming a drug addict. One small slip leads to another and before you know it, you find yourself in an impossible situation and can't fathom how your life has spiraled so far from what it was. — Victoria Scott

Having loved sport my whole life, competing in a Paralympics would be a dream come true. — Heather Mills

Shooting in real-life situations helps actors because they're competing against the noise and the wind. Out of that comes things that shift and change, in terms of tone, but not in terms of re-honing the whole sequence. — Tony Scott

Life begins with you competing in the race marked out for you — Marcelle Hinkson

I've calmed down. Looking back, I was engaged more in dramas than I was in relationships. I've spent a lot of my life being in it for the plot, and I don't do that anymore. I'm satisfied. I'm not competing with myself. I accomplished things I wanted to do, so everything I do now is because I want to, not because I'm trying to prove something. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

Shift from mediocrity to excellence. Mediocrity and Excellence are like jealous suitors fighting for a partner and competing to please him/her, to the extent they do all they can to reproduce in sets of twins. Mediocrity gives birth to Irrelevance and Obscurity, whilst Excellence breeds Relevance and Significance. These sets of twins cannot inhabit the same life, only one compatible pair can co-exist. — Archibald Marwizi

I am thankful that in my current role I can mentor other coaches. I interact directly with seventeen coaches on my staff but I'm also trying to be an example to others outside the organization. I want to prove that it's possible to win or lose while maintaining a calm dignity and respect toward your players, officials, and the opposition. My hope is that my profession can have an impact on countless youth who are looking to their coaches for guidance on sportsmanship, how effort pays off, and the other life lessons that come from competing. — Tony Dungy

The power of the American system of republicanism lies in its capacity to allow religious belief to be a competing, not a controlling, factor in American life. — Jon Meacham

Although in skating you compete with other people, anyone who achieves a certain level of success is first and foremost competing against themselves. And for me the idea that I could always do better, learn more, learn faster, is something that came from skating. But I carried that with me for the rest of my life. — Vera Wang