Five Tips for Healthy Competition with Loved Ones, EP 254

Do you compete against your spouse, best friend, roommate, sibling? Ever wondered how to keep the competitive spirit alive without straining your closest relationships? Tune in to this week’s episode of Champions Mojo, where I, Kelly Palace, share five tips that will revolutionize how you compete against or alongside your loved ones. Drawing from my own experiences with my competitions with my husband Mark, who is also a competitive swimmer, I discuss how gratitude, focusing on personal milestones, and celebrating mutual victories can transform competition into a bond-strengthening activity.

Get inspired as I recount a thrilling race in the 400 IM where Mark and I finished within a hair’s breadth of each other. Plus, hear about the motivating stories of the Olympic swimming siblings sets, the Shackells and the Walshes,  who embody the perfect blend of healthy rivalry and supportive encouragement. Whether you're into sports, board games, or any competitive endeavor, these insights will help foster a nurturing and positive competitive environment. Don’t miss out on these game-changing tips!

1. Be grateful you have a shared activity that you are both passionate about
2. Focus on your own goals and personal bests
3. Allow the other person to teach you something new
4. Celebrate their successes, when they win, and give them space when you win
5. Enjoy the positive impact that competing with someone you love has on your performance. It raises you to a higher level!

Podcast mentions:
Host Kelly Palace's Husband Mark Palace
Olympians: 
Alex and Aaron Shackell
Alex and Gretchen Walsh
Erika Connelly 
Olympic Trials Finalist Catie Deloof

Email us at HELLO@ChampionsMojo.com. Opinions discussed are not medical advice, please seek a medical professional for your own health concerns.

You can learn more about the Host and Founder of Champions Mojo at www.KellyPalace.com

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:02

Welcome to the award-winning Champions Mojo, hosted by two world record-holding athletes and health life and leadership coaches. Be inspired as you listen to conversations with champions and now your hosts, kelly Pallas and Maria Parker.

Speaker 2 0:18

Hello friends, welcome to the Champions Mojo podcast. I am your host, kelly Pallas, and I am solo today, but we're going to talk about a subject that will hopefully mean a lot to you, whether you are an athlete, a swimmer. This is going to work in or out of the pool, and that is five tips for competing against or with a loved one. And this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart, because my husband, mark, and I have just come off of swimming the middle. We have a fun competition together and we swam the 400 IM together not in the same heat, but in different heats and we ended up being less than one tenth of a second apart. So I hope you'll stick around and listen to five tips that you can use. Whether you're competing against your spouse or just a really good friend that you train with on your team. It's hard to see one of you do well and one not do well in a particular event that you're competing against each other in, or maybe you're siblings, or maybe you're just really great friends. But we're going to talk about competing and five tips that will help you. The first thing that I want to focus on is that, if you are competing against someone that is really close to you, that you love and you respect, and you want to win, but you want them to win too. It's wonderful, as tip number one, to recognize and be grateful that you have this shared activity that you're both passionate about, because if you're competing, you're joking about who's going to win. Or am I better at you, am I better than you at darts, or whatever you're doing out there swimming or running or trivia, whatever you're doing but just be grateful that you're both passionate enough to care if you perform better than the other person and then have this fun competitive camaraderie. To get back to the 4.9, I want to give a little example of each of these.

Speaker 2 2:25

Mark, my husband, is more of a sprinter and more of a stroke person, so he's like a breaststroker, butterfly or sprinter, and I'm more of a distance person, even 800, 1500, freestyler. So we jokingly said, hey, let's have a little competition in the 400 individual medley, which is 100 meters each stroke. So there's, his strokes are involved, freestyles involved, a little distances involved, but for us to come down to being less than one-tenth of a second apart in our times this past Nationals, it was really fun. It was the one that we gave bragging rights to. I'm just so grateful that I have a husband. Everywhere we go to meets I have so many people say how lucky Mark and I are that we do have this activity that we share together, that we can train together. Just be grateful for that.

Speaker 2 3:10

If you really get your feelings hurt when this loved one, really great friendship, beats you which Mark beats me more times than I beat him absolutely for sure he's a better swimmer than I am, being young and strong and a man, he beats me a lot. But if you focus on your own goals this is number two focus on your own goals and your own personal best, then you're not going to be as upset. If they're better but you've achieved your own goals, that's an obvious one. But sometimes we get caught up in that competition and we don't focus on that. So another thing that I wanted to point out that I was inspired to speak about this topic is that in the Olympics this past summer on our US Olympic swimming team there were two siblings, alex and Erin Shackle, and the Walsh sisters, gretchen Walsh and Alex Walsh. They have some fun competition going on between siblings, but of course it's obvious that the Walsh sisters always celebrate one another when they do well. The Shackles celebrate one another. So that's my number three is that celebrate well this loved one's successes. Without a doubt, you're going to be happy because you love this person. This person is close to you and, yeah, you do have some kind of a rivalry. Even though Aaron Shackle is a guy and he's bigger and stronger probably than his sister, alex, I guarantee you that they compete on some level. It's some fun thing like maybe who got the most medals or who improved their time the most, or whatever, because we as athletes let's face it we are competitive and I know the Walsh sisters compete because sometimes they've competed head to head. So celebrate their successes when they win. And also this is another kind of small one when you beat them at something, give them space. You can make the jokes later because they probably don't want to get it rubbed in their face at the time. So celebrate their successes when they beat you and then give them their space when you beat them. We talk about giving someone space when you beat them Erica Conley, who made the Olympic team at the US Olympic trials and then ended up being on one of our relays and getting a medal when she and Katie DeLuve had the swim off for sixth place, but it was definitely the option to go to the Olympics, the option to go to the Olympics.

Speaker 2 5:24

So whoever won that swim off between Erica Conley and Katie DeLue was going to make the Olympic team. That was such high stakes and those two were training partners and friends. I thought it was so touching when Erica Conley won that swim off and she did not celebrate herself. She didn't, like most people would be, like I just made the Olympic team, I'm going to get on the lead line or I'm going to throw my fist in the air. Erica Connelly didn't do that. She really just gave respect. I thought that was just an incredible example of sportsmanship. But also this camaraderie, friendship, respect that you have with someone that is your teammate that you love or a family member that you love or someone I love their interaction when that they were obviously competing for something really big on the line. And number four is allow that other person, allow them to teach you something and learn from them.

Speaker 2 6:14

So this is an opportunity to say I'm with this other person that is competitive with me, but I'm gonna recognize sometimes that they are better than I am, even if I have the upper hand usually in the relationship. Number five is enjoy the positive impact that competing with someone you love has on your performance. Like it's so cool that you are being able to compete with someone that you love because it raises you to a higher level. With someone that you love because it raises you to a higher level, sometimes you're just doing a practice but you have this ability to say, oh, I want to beat my husband in this set or I want to beat my friend on this particular thing raises your performance. So here is the review of the five tips.

Speaker 2 6:58

Number one be grateful that you have this shared activity that you and this loved one are both passionate about. Number two focus on your own goals and your own personal bests and then it won't make it so hard to compete and look at the wins and losses as much. Number three allow the other person to do some things better than you and learn from them. Let them teach you something. To do some things better than you and learn from them. Let them teach you something. Learn from this competitive relationship, because obviously when we're competitive with people, they're doing something that's keeping them at a high level.

Speaker 2 7:31

Number four celebrate their successes when they win and give them their space when you win. And number five the last one enjoy the positive impact that competing with someone you love has on your performance. It just raises us to a higher level. Those are the five. I hope that you have someone that you do get to compete against and not think of competition as something negative, but maybe think of it as something positive. So thanks for being with me today. Maria is back on our very next episode. We're going to get cranked up for the fall and we are really excited to keep bringing Champions Mojo to you.

Speaker 1 8:14

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