So, how am I abusing my television? Well, let me put it this way, I like to yell at the digital people on the screen… a lot… and very loud… sometimes, I think they can actually hear me. My voice and reactions must carry through the wonderland of audio and video frequencies… I whole heartedly believe that! I don’t yell and scream at the real people in my life, why do I yell at digital representations of people on my television? If I was the only one that does this, I might feel a bit weird, or maybe even crazy. But, I KNOW I’m not the only one who EXPECTS the people inside the television to hear and obey the screams of those watching.

And so, I abuse my television, it carries the weight of this burden quite well. It has yet to talk back to me and it never fails to turn on. It must be a glutton for punishment because if I listened to how I talk to it (and I’m using talk very loosely here), I would have up and blown my picture tube a long time ago. I would have ceased to recognize the remote control signals and simply sit there doing absolutely nothing. Yep, that’s what I would do quite honestly. I’m sure glad my television doesn’t have any artificial intelligence at all.

Not only do I scream at the video game people, but I yell at people playing the variety of sports that I watch. How can they make such lousy plays when they’ve been playing these sports for the vast majority of their living and breathing life? Shouldn’t they be nearly unstoppable in every facet of their sport after practicing for nearly 20 years and being paid to do it to boot? From missed free throws to missed bunts to missing their pit in the race… how can it be done?

In reality, these people DESERVE to be yelled at and yelled at VERY loudly. Not only are they making their team cover for their mistakes, but they are affecting millions of people watching their performance. Yes, they should EXPECT to get yelled at… I would because I yell at myself for making the teams I’m involved with cover for my mistakes. Yes, not only do I yell at the video games and sports people on television, but I actually yell at and abuse myself.

I hope you guys don’t think I like yelling at things that don’t talk back… I don’t exactly like it. It’s just something that is built into my emotional state of being. I like to yell at inanimate things because I believe they actually enjoy making me mad enough to do it. Why else do some of the most unbelievable things happen while I’m watching? I honestly believe that if I’m not watching, things are absolutely perfect and nothing goes wrong… but when I tune in or play the game, the entire world comes crashing down in front of me just to see how loud I can yell or how high I can make my blood pressure go.

Even though I recognize that these objects in my life simply cannot hear me, I will continue to express my dissatisfaction with them by yelling, screaming, and generally hating every lasting minute of their existence until they succumb to my every beck and call. So, television, I know I’m a bit crazy, but you will continue to hear my yells. Sports people… you also will continue to be berated by my maniacal tirades at your incompetence. And I haven’t even mentioned the tools in my life… they probably deserve their own article.

So, join me in my abuse of inanimate objects… let’s show them who the boss is! I’ll guarantee you that I’ll do my part!

Primarily in my life, I am in constant competition with myself. Sometimes to a fault, I compete against myself in an effort to achieve perfection. As a result, there are certain competitions that I will never undertake and/or complete because I know perfection cannot be achieved and therefore I am left in a state of paralysis. I also have the mentality that if I am going to do something, I am going to do it right. Half right is an utter failure of competition for me. Competing against my own self rules my senses in almost everything I do… I attempt to win at everything I do.

I am a very sports oriented person too. That means that I am also very competitive against groups of people. It doesn’t have to be sports though. Any group that I interact with, I want our group to be perceived as the winner. Winning brings the stamp of approval amongst your peers does it not? Nobody ever crowns the losers do they?

I do not compete with possession. In my young adult life, that statement would not have been true… but these days, the more mature and self confident version of me doesn’t need worldly possession to tell me I’ve won the world’s possession competition. What do you actually win anyway? More bills, more stress, more stuff… great, can you take that with you when you die? Well, nobody really wants the ancillary issues that come along with possession competition… they only want the “stuff.”

Do you compete with your spouse? Sometimes I do, but only in a loving and friendly way. If I do compete with my wife, in actuality, it’s a competition that I want us both to win. I’m not looking to beat her or dominate her and win some hidden achievement. I’m looking to enter into a competition that we both will win. This is what I call a friendly competition.

Other things and people we all have a competition with involve our job, our families, and even inanimate objects. Competition is everywhere in our lives and sometimes we completely miss the point and focus on the wrong things while trying to achieve success. If we simply focus upon winning, then our attention isn’t necessarily in the right place. Focusing upon winning can lead to a win at all costs attitude and will inevitably create issues along the way.

Sometimes, we forget that while on the path to achieving success, others are on that same path. We cannot simply brush them to the side or crush them on the way and assume that it’s ok. We must compete with a fair and friendly attitude. Remember, nobody wants to be associated with a jerk. A winner who competes to win at all costs is in fact, a jerk. Ask their “friends.”

Now that I’ve told you who I compete against, are you much different than me? I think we are all competing amongst ourselves. The only difference is how we go about it and what we truly view as success. I used to compete with the mentality of crushing all opponents, a sports mentality. But in the real world, competing in such a way will not work and in the end, it will leave you as the loser in life. As the new year begins, I have entered into many new competitions. I intend to be successful, but my focus will be upon achieving success without destroying those around me. Competition done fairly and effectively can help everyone and not just the so-called “winner.” So, go compete, but be fair and friendly.

Personally, a sense of appreciation from those I interact with is priceless. I freely give away time and effort if there is a sense of appreciation from those involved. However, if I feel like I am being taken for granted or even artificially used, resentment supersedes any positive emotion I may derive from my time and efforts. I am willing to bet that most of us out there act and respond in similar fashion.

There is a big difference between being appreciated and expecting to be pampered. Appreciation can be as simple as a smile, a handshake, or even a spoken and meaningful thank you. Pampering is an extreme form of appreciation in the fact that every need or whim is satisfied at its beck and call. Pampering is reserved for special treats or moments in life, not an everyday or every minute occurrence.

Some people expect appreciation to be in the form of pampering. I recently ran across an article involving a sports figure which drudged up imagery of a pampered life. Lance Armstrong, one of the greatest cyclists ever, is attempting to come back after retiring a few years ago. He won seven straight Tour De France championships among his vast athletic accomplishments. On a personal level, he has overcome cancer and continued to excel at his sport. He is an amazing athlete and has done many things to promote cancer awareness among his work with charities and health organizations.

Even though he has done all of these great “human” things, I can’t help but think about how pampered he must be, given the following sentiments regarding his attempt to return to professional cycling. “Lance Armstrong could still race in the 2009 Tour de France, as long as race organizers make him feel welcome… For the moment, we are going to determine his program based on where he is really welcome and invited … and we will see about the rest… So the main thing is that he is definitely not excluding riding in the Tour, but it would have to be in an atmosphere that is serene and respectful.”

I understand his point of view, he doesn’t want to go where he’s not wanted or appreciated, neither would I. But Lance himself has said that his goal is to “draw more attention to his global campaign to fight cancer.” Appreciation on a personal level is a priority, but not the highest priority if your goal is publicly stated as helping other people. Helping other people involves sacrifices and in this case, appreciation is likely to be his sacrifice.

Why is the Tour de France not welcoming Armstrong back with open arms and being supremely grateful for his return? Well, through the years, he has been tied to various blood doping and performance enhancing drug cases but has never been specifically charged or failed any tests. There is a mountain of coincidental evidence involving his name, team, and trainers through the years however. While there is no smoking gun, there is a deep sense of suspicion. On top of that, the team he has chosen to join and represent in his comeback has been cited and suspended for violations. He didn’t do himself any favors with that choice.

He is right in wanting to be appreciated, but the statements above leave me feeling like he wants to be pampered. He wants to be welcomed back with some sort of lavish return ceremony in an attempt to reclaim his crown as the world’s greatest professional cyclist. If your goals are to raise awareness about cancer and fight the impact it has on our lives, he should sacrifice a bit of his needs for appreciation for the overall good his celebrity brings back to the event. Lance Armstrong returns to the Tour de France in an attempt to regain his crown… all of this while he has battled and beaten cancer. Imagine the headlines and news attention that would be paid to him and his cause. Sacrifice… we all do it, even the superstars in our world.

Citation: http://www.espn.com/

We’ve all seen it and we always have that lingering doubt in the back of our minds whether anyone has accomplished their feats legally and honestly. We have been trained to question athletes because there have been some over the years who turned out to be just as skilled at lying to the public as they were at their sport. If “that one guy” was lying, maybe this one is too. How can we ever know? We can’t and that creates the never ending stares of suspicion when someone comes along and does the unthinkable.

Our nation just witnessed Michael Phelps complete his goal of winning 8 gold medals in a single Olympics. He has taken his sport and brought it to a new level. He is the Michael Jordan, the Tiger Woods, and the Wayne Gretzky of swimming. We look at him in complete amazement at how hard he trains, how he withstands the pressure, and how he deals with adversity to reach his goal. Phelps, knowing he would be subjected to massive amounts of suspicion, volunteered to be part of a stringent testing program featuring the latest tests for drugs in blood and in urine samples. Cheaters are usually ahead of the testing programs so he has gone one step farther. His blood samples will be stored for the next 8 years to be subjected to any new testing to help stamp his innocence.

None of this would be necessary if our sports were not so corrupt with money, power, and ego satisfaction. You have to give it to Phelps though. He wants to prove his innocence by physical evidence. Most athletes want you to believe them because they are nice people. Nice people can be cheaters too as we have fallen for that trap many times before. In the end, we are left with the opposite thinking we would like to have. No longer are the best athletes innocent until proven to be a cheater, they are thought of as cheaters until proven innocent.

Given that there is always a team or individual who stands out in any sport, competition committees are always on the lookout to level the playing field. It’s good for ratings. Nobody will watch a sport where the same people continually win, it gets boring and Las Vegas doesn’t make much money under such circumstances. Part of this leveling ideology actually created the news story about the NASCAR cheaters mentioned at the beginning of this article. In the Nationwide Series (1 step below Sprint Cup), the Toyota team of Gibbs Racing has been particularly dominant this year. They have won 14 of the 25 races. 14 of the 15 Toyota victories belong to Gibbs. In car racing, there are currently 4 manufacturers. Winning 60% of the races creates a “level playing field” issue.

NASCAR, seeing the recent Toyota dominance, informed the Toyota teams to cut their engine power so the rest of the field would have a competitive chance to win. Does that sound like a solution? Isn’t the goal in competition to build an advantage and then use that to win? Baseball players throw faster, hit farther, and run faster. Football players get stronger, get faster, and develop better playbooks. Race car owners build better engines and cars. Gibbs Racing created their advantage legally and now they are paying a penalty for it. However, Gibbs Racing decided they didn’t agree and illegally tried to manipulate their car’s performance when tested for compliance. They did not remove the advantage and tried to cover it up and were caught doing so.

In an effort to create competition equality, NASCAR has destroyed what true competition is. Gibbs Racing of course was wrong in their efforts to cheat, but why should they have to pay the penalty in the first place? If your baseball team was 20 games up on the field going into the playoffs, should they be required to sit their starters and play their bench to make the playoffs even? If your football team wins by passing the ball, should they be required to run every down to give the other team a chance? Should Michael Phelps have to swim with a 10 pound weight tied to his midsection to even the field? You get the idea. There is no equality in competition. If there were, we would not have competition at all, there would be no point. Parity is fine, as long as it is the product of the sport itself.

Competition committees who alter the playing field by placing individual limitations on specific teams or individuals have failed the integrity of the sport. The other car manufacturers should have been forced to deal with their lack of competiveness, not given a falsified level field to race on. NASCAR, trying to be equal, created a situation where Gibbs Racing felt cheating was better than sacrificing their advantage. Other sports have done what NASCAR has done so they aren’t the only bad guy here.

Can you think of an area outside of sports where a level field has been theorized? Taxes? Communism? Everyone who doesn’t have something wants equality, but if you place those same people on the other side, you would be “stealing” from them. The sooner we realize that we aren’t equal, the better off we’ll be. Life is a competition. It’s not about winning. It’s about being the absolute best you can be. If we have competition committees ruling our everyday life, then we are penalizing the people who do their absolute best and rewarding those who are not. Insane reverse incentives. Level the playing field by removing the competition “fairness” and we’ll all be better off. If we have something to reach for, we try harder in every aspect of our life, sports included.

Citation: http://www.time.com/

Almost every major sport that I know of has its own version of an All-Star game. This special game is a reward for performing at levels deserving of recognition by the league, players, and fans. Some players are even fortunate enough to have contracts that kick in bonus money for All-Star selections. However, as mentioned earlier, there are players who are snubbed and left out who are actually more deserving than those chosen ahead of them. It happens every year. There will be a list of 5-10 players available almost immediately after the selections are announced of players who were snubbed. MLB has tried to ease the tension by adding in the one last chance vote for these players. But still, how do players deserving an all-star berth fail to receive the recognition they are deserving of? One word comes to mind… popularity.

With all of this voting and selecting being done by fans, players, and managers, many times, the decisive factor between one player and the other is popularity. Popularity could include lots of things. What has the player done for the game in previous years? How much bad press does the player receive? How do his fellow players feel about him? When a subjective vote is placed, popularity will always enter the decision making. This will in fact leave some players on the outside looking in no matter how good they are performing in their respective sport.

The popularity contest has been with us since we were born. Sports and their all-star games are not the only reflection of how we utilize popularity for recognition and pats on the back. I know you didn’t think this was going to be an entire article devoted to sports did you? We all know better than that! Do you believe that you left the popularity contests behind the day you graduated from high school or college? Did you think that superficial popularity needs are only running rampant in social gatherings or country clubs? Are there popularity contests going on at your job? Do you see them in your everyday life? Popularity contests never end in our lives. Some people work the popularity system to their advantage and others do not. Ever hear the concept of “kissing butt?” They are working the popularity contest to their advantage.

Why does being popular mean so much to everyone? It’s probably easier for an unpopular person to explain what being popular accomplishes. I believe it comes down to the need for acceptance. People can receive “strength” from being accepted. There is an imaginary power associated with being accepted and popular within your group, community, or profession. The position fills your inner desires of being thought of as successful, popular, and accepted. These desires are so strong in some that they will sacrifice their integrity and self respect to accomplish rising to the upper levels of popularity and implied success. “Kissing butt” creates one of those sacrifices. Yes, it may be a valuable tool in the game of popularity, but is it worth the price of your integrity? My answer is no. Some people will answer yes. Popularity and success means that much to them.

MLB has added in the one last chance vote for the snubbed player to receive his due attention. Do we have this luxury in our real lives? No, there are no second chance votes for us in our daily popularity contests. What popularity contests are you involved in at this moment? Are you in one with your co-workers? Are you in one with your supervisor trying to win a promotion? Are you in one with management trying to be noticed and rewarded with a raise or bonus? Maybe you are in one with your family in some manner. What are you sacrificing in these contests? Are you playing the game while keeping true to your integrity and self respect? Yes, it can be done. You can be popular in all things and still keep your integrity and self respect intact. It is much harder to win a popularity contest with such a “handicap” but it can be done and you will feel better by winning the game in this manner.

Are you currently an All-Star in your life? You may not believe that you are in a popularity contest in your life but you are. Every single person, in some form or fashion, is in a popularity contest. The choice you have to make is how you play the game. Are you going to be true to yourself and win by letting your actions speak for your value and be honest and trustworthy in every situation? Or, are you going to play the game and take the easy way out and “trick” people into giving you popularity? The two questions you have just read can be simply read as do you have integrity and self respect or not. People with integrity and self respect are hard to come by these days as the easy way out is the fast track to success and acceptance. More money, bonuses, promotions, etc are available to those who take the fast track. Are you willing to sacrifice the core values of your person to have popularity in the eyes of others?

I hope that you choose to play the popularity game the right way. Become an all-star in your life by being true to yourself. The popularity you receive by winning the game the right way cannot ever be compared to the trivial popularity you receive by lowering yourself to the depths of sacrificing your integrity and self respect. While you and I will not receive a cash bonus by being an all-star in our daily lives, we receive a much greater bonus. Our hearts are full and we know we are living our lives with dignity, integrity, and self respect.

From the previous articles, you have gathered that I am a sports fan. Starting from about the age of 11 or 12, I really focused on baseball. For the next few years, I played in a variety of summer leagues to satisfy my competitive needs. After baseball, I found out I liked basketball. Basketball took over for me after I broke my arm a couple of times playing baseball too foolishly. Just a little insight into my playing style, I played to win, I played hard, and I was ultra competitive. Winning to me was everything and I would do everything in my power to make sure winning was a potential result. It’s a typical male perspective, the alpha male syndrome. So, after the broken arms curtailed my baseball pursuits, basketball reignited my competitive flame. Hours upon hours and weeks, months, and years of playing took its toll upon my body. As a result, a serious knee injury knocked me out of the game forever. Of course I had to replace it with something, so softball came into play. There is always a sport to move on to if you have a need for competition coursing through your blood. I spent a few years playing softball, but an injury didn’t curtail that career, boredom did. Softball just isn’t exciting. What’s next you ask? Let’s go for bowling. Currently, I am in my bowling career. Exciting? No, not quite. Competitive? Yes.

That’s my background to this point involving sporting activities. I guess you can throw in ping pong, horse shoes, and even some football in there. I haven’t devolved into golf, shuffleboard, or backgammon just yet. What I am trying to get across is that I’ve spent quite a bit of time in the sports field. If it’s a sport, I probably know something about it. Along with that, I probably have even developed affection for a team that I “root” either for or against. Yes, I admit, I root against teams. In actuality, I think I have more fun rooting for people to lose than I do for teams to win. Maybe that’s where the title of my article comes into play. Could that be why I view myself as the Anti-Fan? Let’s get into my stupid little superstition involving sports.

My personal stupidstition, and the only one that I knowingly participate in, involves my choice for who I want to win in ANY sporting event. Now, first off, I want to make sure that you know this is not a 100% stupidstition, there is some risk involved and success has been known to happen. The whole situation consists of this: If I want a team to win and I watch the game on television or listen to the game on the radio, chances are, they are going to lose. The opposite is of course that if I do not have any knowledge of the game, they will win. Now, given the introduction to me and my sporting activities along with my desires for competition, you must also know that I actually care who wins or loses. However, over many years of being a dedicated sports fan, I have come to the conclusion that I am the reason why my teams lose. Yes, everyone that roots for the same team can publicly blame me for their demise. I have big shoulders, I can take it. Better yet, make me the superstition for the results of your team’s failures. If they lose, I must have been watching or listening. If they win, my electric was probably out. You’re welcome by the way.

As I stated earlier, I enjoy rooting for teams to lose. I think the only possible explanation for me being the anti-fan is that statement. My stupidstition’s payback for enjoying other team’s losing more than my team’s winning has resulted in my teams never winning. Well, not never, but you get the idea. I’ve even tried (pretended) to say it didn’t matter who won or lost, but during those last few minutes, I DO care! The stupidstition knows this and pays me back accordingly. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that about 80% of the time, if I want the team to win, I can NEVER watch or listen to them. I have to be a closet fan. NOBODY can EVER know I like them. I can’t buy a hat, a shirt, or even have their logo around me, the stupidstition will know. It’s just that bad. Is there a problem with this stupidstition? If I root for a team to lose, and I am the anti-fan, shouldn’t they win? OF COURSE! Guess what, that happens. I can thoroughly enjoy the demise of a team I dislike only for them to pull out some sort of miraculous breakthrough win. I can give example after example supporting my stupidstition since I began watching sports closely in 1982. Yes, it goes back that far.

Where’s the twist for today’s article, shouldn’t there be some metaphor I turn to or introspective look inside myself to support a claim? Not really a twist, but the theory I have resigned myself to, is that you should not enjoy the failures of someone else, no matter what the circumstances are. My support of and rooting for teams to lose is repaid to me in the fact that my teams do not win. Thus, I am the anti-fan. Stay away from me or I may infect you. The only way for true closure of this stupidstition is to begin rooting for those teams I cannot stand. Yes, the only true path to victory is to support other people in their paths to success. This does not only apply to sports. Here’s that twist I’ve been leading up to. People in our world sometimes revel in the fact that those around them are failing and in turn, potentially open avenues for success in their own world. What they do not know is that they are becoming the anti-fan to their own success. Supporting and basking in the failures of others will only lead to your own failure. You cannot win by living upon the demise of others. So I go forward, rooting for the Lakers, Notre Dame, and even the Chicago Cubs to do well. Yes, I said it and no, the St. Louis Cardinal fan base has not kicked me out.

Today’s article comes down to one thing. You must support other people in their pursuits of happiness and success. If you do not, your own pursuits of success could be negatively impacted. Stupidstition or not, you just cannot feed upon the failures of other human beings. Go forward in your life rooting for people, not rooting against. If other people follow the same ideology, imagine how many people are rooting for you in your quests. It feels good to root for someone, much better than rooting against them. Live your life rooting for success. Focus on the positive and remove the negative. It’s a way of life and not just some stupidstition.

Ever watch the movie “Bull Durham?” I’m sure if you have, you remember the roles of stupidstition there. Baseball and its players are one of the largest gatherings of people “believing” in superstition. We hear about curses all the time whether it is the Chicago Cubs or the Boston Red Sox or the Chicago White Sox. Every team has some sort of past bad luck associated with a curse or superstition. That’s part of the folklore of such a great pastime. It adds to the cache of the sport. It brings a sense to the game that something out there truly cares about who wins or loses. The Cubs can’t win the World Series, they are born to lose. Statistics and many June swoons over the years have only added to the knowledge this is true right? What about those Boston Red Sox? They broke their curse twice in the last few years. I guess their players found some way to satisfy the ghosts of Babe Ruth’s past.

Name a sport and there will be stupidstitions associated with it. Players rely on the luck factor and they have to appease the winds of tradition. However, are athletes the only people who believe these silly stupidstitions exist? Of course not. How many people have a lucky tie? How many people have a lucky pair of underwear? How many people have a lucky “insert item here?” Do people do things differently when something important comes up? Do they have certain superstitions when it comes to sales meetings, first dates, or special events? Sure, I can place a good bet that the majority of people out there have at least one stupidstition in their life. It could be something simple or something major, but the fact is, you are focusing on something out of your control and hoping that if you satisfy the needs of this sentient owner of luck, things will fall on your side when needed. You believe you can bring luck to your side. With luck AND skill on your side, how can we lose right?

Think about it just a little bit. Sure, superstitions are stupid, but we still have them. Why? Most of the time, we truly believe there was something that happened that affected our performance or outcome. On the way to your job interview, you forgot to wear the lucky tie. We all know that’s why the interview didn’t go well. That sales meeting flopped because you failed to eat the “special” breakfast for that day. You didn’t get that promotion because you didn’t wear your tried and true lucky underwear that day. The first date with the girl you’ve had your eye on failed miserably because you failed to wear your lucky suit. I’m sure you get the idea. Superstitions are created and followed because of one thing, failure. Failure created the superstition and we follow the superstition to keep failure from happening again. That is the basic concept here.

Sports teams and athletes focus upon superstition more than the rest of us and publicly display them because they truly believe failure can be averted if they satisfy the requirements of the stupidstition. Your everyday, normal person also falls into this category. Failure haunts our pasts and we try and rationalize why some things work and some do not. We analyze the situations that work against those that don’t and find the differences. Something in the differences must be what created the failure right? Everything was the same that day except I forgot to wear the special black socks. That must be it. The black socks are now the lucky socks. Our team just lost 3 in a row, what did we do different than when we won 3 straight? We must have lost because we didn’t practice at exactly noon each day. We are readily looking for something to place blame upon because of our failures. Stupidstition serves this purpose and it does it very well. It’s a perfect institution to blame. It’s much better than blaming ourselves or realizing that maybe it WAS something we did to create failure.

Losing the promotion to superstition is much easier than focusing upon your own strengths and weaknesses. Not getting the girl is better given to crappy wardrobe than failure of chemistry. Failure to land the job is easier to accept if you don’t have to accept the blame upon yourself. The majority of the time, failure is the culprit and the creator of superstition. It accepts blame and it actually creates an aura around itself. Superstitions grow throughout time. We readily place all failure at the feet of stupidstition but we NEVER allow for the rare anomaly of success to detract from it. Success even in the face of failing at superstition, it must be a fluke, it’ll never happen again. I mean, the light shines on a dog’s…

So here we are at the end of the article and it really wasn’t about sports at all was it? Stupidstition is just a metaphor for failure in our lives. It’s much easier to live life placing blame on something that is a wisp of our imagination. It draws and feeds upon our desires to succeed. The power of the stupidstition in your life depends on just how much you believe “luck” affects your life. If you feel life happens to you, then stupidstition probably plays a large part in your life. However, if you believe life is what you make it then stupidstition is more than likely in the backseat and rarely sees the light of day. Failure in our lives is guaranteed. We can choose to accept it and move forward trying to correct what was done wrong or we can focus upon our “bad” luck and place the blame for failure on superstition. Of course I know it’s easier to live without acceptance of failure, but who said living life was easy? Stop worrying about the luck of life and focus upon the living of life.

Satisfaction of my internal competitive desires was, and sometimes still is, impossible. Nothing was ever the best and there could always be something done better. There was always something to focus upon that could have been performed at a higher level. Excellence was an unattainable plateau that could never be reached. In the end, excellence was replaced with perfection. We all know perfection cannot be attained. There is always something that could have been done just a bit better. Even a perfect game in baseball is not all that perfect. Was every pitch a strike? No. Is a perfect game with 27 strikeouts better than one with 3? Is a perfect game with 60 pitches better than one with 110? It’s all relative, but to whom? It’s relative to the person and audience in question. In my competitive adventures, the relative question for me became, “Is it the best (i.e. perfect) result from my practice?” If it wasn’t perfect in my version of reality, I practiced more, more, and more. Of course, perfection was never going to happen, but yet I continued to pursue it.

This is just the story of an admitted weekend warrior. How do the truly gifted athletes view their version of excellence? Do they interchange the word excellence with perfection? If you took a poll of professional athletes, I believe the true answer would easily be a majority answering perfection is their goal. Athletes practice to achieve perfection. If you watched professional football last season, perfection was all that was talked about for most of the season. The New England Patriots were on pace to record only the second ever undefeated regular season in NFL history. Week after week, highlight after highlight, we were treated with their race towards perfection. As most of us know, they were able to achieve regular season perfection and they were the first NFL team EVER to win 16 regular season games without a defeat. The only other team to reach perfection “only” won 14 regular season games. That team also completed their run through the playoffs undefeated and won the Super Bowl. However, the Patriots failed in their final game to achieve victory. Their race to complete perfection fell one game short. They lost the Super Bowl. They “failed” to achieve perfection.

I can comfortably sit here and “predict” that we will never see a Major League Baseball team go undefeated. We will never see an NBA team go undefeated. We will never see a major sports team that plays the amount of games they are required to play, compete for an entire season without losing. Yes, it is statistically possible to go undefeated, but it is relatively impossible. But, the players are shooting for perfection. They begin each season with an unblemished record and their goals are set for the stars. Excellence and the pursuit of perfection is the adrenaline of competition. Success is the resulting product of time spent in pursuit of this goal. Every player lives with the rational knowledge that perfection is unachievable, but that doesn’t create a roadblock large enough to stop them from aspiring to reach their goals.

Goals of perfection, we all have them. Athletes are easy to identify in this regard. What goals of perfection and/or of excellency do we harbor? Do we want to attend our jobs but never utilize a sick day? Do we want to complete every project under budget and ahead of schedule? Do we want to show up early and leave late every day? What is our version of excellence in our daily work life? What about home life? What are your goals of perfection there? Everyone has different ideas for what truly achieves perfection in their lives, but more often than not, the same goals are followed and reached for across the board. In the end, striving for perfection and the attainment of goals are usually for the satisfaction of one thing. Are we satisfying our own personal needs for being the best we can be? Sure, sometimes that is the answer. Are we satisfying the needs of those around us because the achievement of our goals helps our communities succeed? Sure, that also can sometimes be the answer. However, the majority of the time, excelling at competition and the pursuit of perfection is about pride, the pride that comes with being the best.

If you sit down and be truthful with yourself, are you trying to be the best to satisfy a hunger within yourself that isn’t tied to pride, more than likely not. I’m not saying that striving to achieve perfection is wrong, but I am saying that the reasoning for the pursuit can truly alter how you lead your life during the race. If attaining the goal defines your life and alters the relationships around you, even if you succeed, you may actually lose. Pride can also consume your life. It can alter your life and change how others interact with you. People don’t want to interact with people only interested in their own personal satisfaction. They want to talk and deal with people whose goals are those of the group. Group goals of excellence and perfection can also be detrimental. It is a very fine line to walk when pursuing a goal of perfection. That is why we must focus on what is truly attainable. We are not settling for second best, we are not accepting failure, and we are not focusing upon the pride attached with being number one.

Striving for the best is usually our goal, but we must maintain a balance within our lives. Perfection and/or excellence, or perfexcellency as it is called here, must not be viewed as the ultimate goal of our lives in any endeavor we enter. Doing so will lead us into the trap of functioning for pride. It may be cliché, but if we truly give our best at whatever we do, we win. We may not win the game or the promotion or whatever the prize may be. But, we will win by knowing that at that moment in time, we performed to the best of our ability. We excelled, albeit we were not perfect. Who is in a better position, someone who threw everything away to win or someone who gave their all and did so while maintaining their integrity and relationships along the way? We can all continue to strive to be the best we can be, but we must not allow pride to be our motivational factor. I will continue to pursue excellence, but perfection will not be my definition of achievement. Can you accept imperfection in your pursuits? You must or your pursuits will never end.

Along with athletes, there are also normal working men and women who are scared to retire. They are scared that without the routine of their life, they may wither away and not have any impact on the world. They may be scared that they have forgotten how to live alone with their spouse. Some people are just scared to let go of their responsibilities because in the end, their job and work defines their lives. Retirement should not be something to be scared of. It should be something that is looked forward to as an accomplishment, a reward for your years of hard work, dedication, and loyalty. So other than the various excuses listed above, what exactly is the core reasoning behind the fear of retirement? Let’s focus upon the athlete for a bit and then we’ll see if the reasoning is any different for the average worker.

Athletes are groomed from a very young age for their sport. They spend countless hours studying the game and how to personally excel at it. Practice for the game is a way of life. These days, there is no off season for any sport. The athlete, although playing a game, spends just as much or more of their life devoted to their job than the average daily worker. They are living their dream. They are living their sport and they thrive upon competition. Right there, it’s in that one word, competition. For the athlete, competition is the key. Athletes have competition not only versus opponents, but with teammates, and also, with their own self. Every aspect of the athlete’s future and livelihood depend on excelling versus their opponents. If they do not excel, they are not likely to be a paid athlete. Pressure drives the athlete to practice and succeed. Pressure comes from within and also from external pressures from family, fans, team managers, and ownership.

Well, given all this pressure from competition and continuous drive to succeed, you would think retirement after a successful career would be welcomed. Is it though? Time after time, you see athletes “holding on” to past glory, trying to relive that one great year, and trying one last time to win the elusive sports championship. Some athletes have nothing else other than their sport. Their sport actually defines their lives. Without it, they think they will be castoff, forgotten, and meaningless. So, they try to relive their old glory and put off the inevitable. Competition doesn’t fade, but the personal skills and talent age along with your body and you can no longer compete effectively. There’s that word again, competition. Athletes are afraid that without competition, they have no sense of self. They have nothing to prove, they do not exist. Retirement from sports is thought of by some as the equivalent of being an old horse being put down. Retirement is scary for these individuals. They have no true vision of their self without sports. Their occupation or job or skill defines their lives.

That’s a pretty easy argument as athletes are consumed by their occupation. But are they so different than the average daily worker that you and I are? I don’t think so. We can look through the description above and interchange the athlete in the story with us. It’s the same. Some of us are defined by what we do, our occupation, our accomplishments, our responsibilities, or our title. Retirement means the removal of our self definition. That is a very scary proposition. Just as with the athlete trying to hold onto the past, you see members of the working community trying their hardest to stay on the job. In the end, they are just trying to stay relevant. Without people depending on them at work, they have no sense of direction. Who are they? Who do they report to? Who are they to serve? What do we do with our newly found time?

Even if you are not part of the group whose lives are defined by their occupation in life, retirement can still be scary. Our entire adult lives are devoted to others for the most part. From a very young age, most people have children and care for them. Most people are in jobs where they utilize their earnings to support their family. While working, you are completing tasks and satisfying responsibilities for the continued success of the company. Over the long period of time between young adulthood and retirement, we have devoted the majority of our times for something other than us. Reaching retirement means that you are going to have to get to know yourself again. You are going to have to get to know your spouse again. You are going to have to change. There’s another big word, change. What’s that saying? You can’t teach old dogs new tricks? It’s a cliché, but it’s the epitome of being scared to change. Retirement is a huge change. No longer are we defined by our occupation, our sport, or our title. We are defined by who we are.

Retirement should be a welcome change. We have earned it. We deserve it. Never be scared of what should be one of your life’s major goals. If you are lucky enough to have reached the retirement line, welcome it with open arms. Once again, find out who you are, find out who you and your spouse are as a couple, and live your life as you want, with no restrictions. We only live once and retirement is our last chance at fulfilling our life’s dreams which we have not accomplished yet. Welcome it with open arms and embrace the competition of retirement as it is a challenge even for those who are not scared.

Of course these sports organizations all have drug testing policies and agreements with the player organizations banning all performance enhancing substances. Given that, how do we see athlete after athlete being caught cheating? Shouldn’t they have been caught long ago? The tests are better today yes, but the “designer drugs” haven’t been around for very long. Testing for the old standby enhancements have been around for a long while, it’s just that the players were not caught. How? I can see athletes falling through a crack of random drug testing. Luck can play a part in the procedure. I can also see athletes being smart enough to circumvent testing procedures given the amount of money they make and the medical experience they can “purchase” from outside sources. However, in some instances, testing isn’t random and all athletes are tested in the activity they compete in. Random cannot be a valid argument for missing these players.

What does that leave us? If you have read my book review on Jose Canseco’s latest title “Vindicated,” you probably know a little bit about my stance on the issue of performance enhancing drugs. I believe that those in power in each of these sports carry the major portion of the blame for the destruction of our true athletic arenas. The ownership groups, the associations in power, and the entire business side of the system have “promoted” the use of these substances. Yes, that’s right. They in fact have chosen to “allow” these drugs invade their sporting events. Now, I’m not saying that someone went to each person or group in power and actively asked them if they supported the use of drugs to inflate athletic performance. But, what I am saying that the people in these powerful positions are not mindless drones. When you have sports records that have stood for many years being broken as easy as a New Year’s Resolution time and time again, rational thinking leads to the only true answer. Performance enhancing drugs are altering the playing field.

It’s really that simple. Knowledgeable and rational owners, groups, and people of power KNEW their sports were affected. They KNOWINGLY turned a blind eye towards the use because of the major influx of money into their coffers. Ever hear of the word accomplice? These people are accomplices in this issue. That means they are at fault, just as much or more than the players themselves. Yes, we see players on television crying and “admitting” their guilt. But, have you once seen an owner, group, or any people in a position of power admit to anything that was and is currently wrong with their sport? They WANT us to believe they were innocent bystanders. The athletes were always the bad guy. Are we, the public, really that gullible? I sure hope not. The fans of sporting leagues are very knowledgeable and after the first little bit of excitement from records being chased and broken, they have realized something has gone wrong.

Athletes smashing whatever record you can throw out there, it’s exciting…. Once. Having records continually broken by juiced up athletes destroys the sport’s integrity and fans lose interest. Fans love the sport they follow. Fans love the competition of sport. Fans love the integrity of the sport’s rules. Fans do not love cheaters destroying everything their sport stands for. How can we continue to be fans of sporting leagues and athletics where the bulk of the best players are not a true representation of their skill level? We are watching a video game for all intents and purposes. Players and the organizations are manipulating the sport for one goal, money. Money rules the sporting field as we know it. Not competition, not the race for a championship, and definitely not the pursuit of excelling with your own personal athletic gifts.

Sports have become a lottery. The tickets to win are in the performance enhancing drugs. Players feel the need to “juice” because they don’t feel they are on an even playing field. They fall into the trap of thinking “everyone else does it so I have to also.” The people in charge of the leagues secretly promote the usage of drugs because it brings big money to their sport. More people attend the event, more people buy apparel, and more advertisers spend money to be shown during the event. It’s a never ending spiral all focused on the dollar. Money turns to power and leads to greed. All of these things tempt everyone involved into being “ok” with performance drugs. Don’t get caught and we’ll act like we don’t know anything. If you get caught, you are on your own. Your best bet is to deny until the last possible moment when the evidence mountain gets so high that you have no choice. Then, and only then, do you “admit” your guilt. Take it like a man. Get yourself on television during a primetime interview and admit your guilt about how you were “forced” to cheat to compete. Take the heat for everyone involved and you can find a new money train in the form of a memoir about how your life as an athlete was horrible and hard.

The public will eat it alive. Fans want to believe the athletes are sorry for their mistakes. Our nature as forgiving fans gets taken advantage of. Yes, the athlete will be forever tarnished, but the sport itself lives on. The owners know this. They sacrifice the individual players because they KNOW the money will continue beyond any one player. Throw the athlete to the wolves, but always protect the interests of those in power. Yes, you hear small statements here and there from non-players about the use of drugs within sports, but they are few and far between. These statements of course are not coming from people with much power and influence. They are the scapegoats that the true powers use to “acknowledge” an issue and brush it under the rug. Even when you see the powers that be talking about drugs in their sports, they severely lower the usage percentages and talk about how it’s just a small segment of the athletic community involved. The sport’s integrity is still strong and cannot be affected by such a few selfish players. Isn’t that what they want you to believe?

When the owners and powers of athletics are held accountable for their actions, only then will we see drug use in our sports decline. Until that day, every athlete that competes has a cloud of suspicion over them when chasing records. It’s only rational. How can we be true fans of our sport if we can’t fully trust our sport itself? We can’t. Eventually, the revenue will decline because we will become disenfranchised and stop “supporting” our sports organizations. Remove the abundance of money and it will force every sport to return to its original doctrine, competition on a fair level.