Sure, to test yourself, but its more than just that. Its allowing yourself to come face to face with adversary in a high pressure state. Its putting yourself in a difficult situation and forcing yourself to navigate through it. When you compete, you’re letting your mind and body get to a certain level of discomfort and manageable stress that it otherwise would never get to. When you do this, the next time you’re in a situation that raises your heart rate and gets your adrenaline pumping, your body recognises it and combats it a different way, without the shock factor. The more and more you put yourself into these high stress situations, the easier is gets and more rational you are able to work through them.
So apply this to ordinary life. Whenever something bad or shocking happens, it usually feels worse the more surprising it is. Not saying to go through life expecting adverse things to happen or be ready in case it does. That’s a whole different kind fo stress that doesn’t need to be present. But knowing that if something does occur, you’ve already battled high intensity, stressful situations so your breathe is controlled, your heart rate is down and you can think and work through it more logically.
Compete in what? Well anything you’re physically interested in for starters. Sports, combat, lifting. Even gaming sports. Video games, pool, darts. World class chess players burn thousands of calories in chess tournaments just from their minds working on overdrive. Now that’s not to say you should go out and enter poker tournaments for mental benefits but do test yourself. Do force yourself into high stake situations and reap the knowledge from the experience and reward if you succeed.
If you don’t have any of these things that you’re already doing, find something. There are 101 bullshit sports and games out there, trust me theres something for everyone. I can’t stand when people say they don’t know what they’re interested in or have nothing they’re good at. Because guaranteed you haven’t tried all of them. Most people haven’t tried more than two different sports out of the hundreds that exist. So no excuses. Go find your thing. There’s team sports, solo sports, Martial Arts’, things like rock climbing, parkour, marathons, water sports, WHATEVER. You’ll find your thing and you’ll find the tight nit community that comes along with it to keep you showing up and improving.
Challenge yourself. You’ll never regret failing but will always forget never trying (;