Compete with Yourself 与自己竞争

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There is a famous saying in sports games： “Second place is just the first loser.” Humans are born to compete with one another. Although the competitive spirit may be as natural as breathing air， it does not always lead to human developing strongly. On the contrary， left unmanaged， it can create great unhappiness for ourselves and others.

Avoiding competition can be a way of preventing unhappiness. But there is another method to solve this problem and we don’t need to dispense with our competitive nature completely： Instead of always going for gold， shoot for the bronze.

Although second place may be the first loser， third place can be the real winner—at least when it comes to happiness and longevity. This conclusion comes from research carried out on Olympic athletes. In a study， researchers discovered that the bronze winners appeared happier on average than the silver medalists after their events.

Another study looked at the average longevity of all three medalist groups. It found that the athletes whose best performance was silver lived to 72. Gold medalists beat this by a full four years. But the first prize in longevity went to the bronze medalists， who lived to 78.

体育比赛中有一句名言：“第二名是第一个失败者。（剩余2210字）