 pick what you care about. Unless you're like practicing a skill where you're actually trying to learn it and you know I guess in some ways because well if someone's really afraid of competition then maybe they should just sign up for a whole bunch of things they don't even care about. You know sign up for a checkers tournament, sign up for a golf tournament, you don't know how to play either one of them, that's fine you're just actually going to go through and see what other people are doing. If it's more a sort of you know like I was talking about it was too important for me to risk the competition then again resetting the goals, finding some small opportunities and you know organizations like Toastmasters does the everybody has to speak all the time. You guys have regular we're going to have a speech and a thing and it's not a one shot so giving people that and then you know just like I used the challenge as a checklist right be very specific about what is the goal you're going to get out of this competition and then you find out afterwards this did I get it what was the goal and that I think in terms of what's effective again thinking about outcome novices don't want competition. If you're just learning something just now I'm just trying to find out the rules here I don't I don't even know if I like this so don't put me in a competitive environment. The elite performers their competition is really themselves right you know your Olympian has already who's already had six or seven gold medals is saying well yeah but this is my place in history this is me beating my own world record I don't care about anybody else I'm focused on what what can I do they're they're useful the reference points on how I'm doing in the moment but my goal is really what pushing myself to a new level and it's those intermediate people who aren't sure of their ability and aren't sure that's where competition things like trophies and medals become that really important because that's when they're really trying to figure out am I good at this what can I do so I think figuring out where you are in your skill level is important and then what's the most effective also matters so for a novice you know did you live through this cool yay go team that may be what you're looking for a novice the most effective feedback is positive feedback pointing out what you did right you actually are to end improvement velocity feedback is the scientific term of art and it's the rate of improvement you still sucked you still are at the very bottom you did not win but you're still 200 percent better than you were last week right so velocity feedback is really important your elite performer don't tell an olympian velocity feedback because they may be taking four years to shave off a half a millisecond off of their time and velocity feedback how they improve from one day to the next may be crushing to them so for them they actually do want to know how did I plays was I better than everybody else was I better than I was the last time so there's not one perfect thing it's going to change depending on where you are but look for especially the people who load competition look for something that's fun that you just genuinely enjoy and maybe the answer is not an individual competition maybe it's joining a team for who can raise money for a charity for a 5k race it's not about competing for myself it's not about you know showing up anybody else I'm actually trying to do the best for someone else and for a greater cause than myself I think that's actually particularly appropriate for women because women tend to be more concerned about a reputation of being competitive and it's easier for them to say that they'll fight for someone else and oh I can't do that for me oh I could do that for them so having shifting the focus of competition off of yourself and to another organization or a team member may also be something that helps you express the competitive fire in a way you wouldn't have necessarily wanted to do it for yourself