A little friendly competition never hurt nobody. Ideally, you’d want your friends to motivate you, and for some people that works best by turning it into a competition. But that competition will turn into something really annoying when your friends are more about trying to one-up you than to motivate you.
Maybe you’ve been in that situation. You’re at a little get-together and telling a story about how you had to defuse a situation at work between two different parties who wanted different things in the same project. In comes your friend telling the group “Oh yeah? Well I had an argument at work between 3 parties and 2 suppliers and then management told me to fix the situation.” I mean, that’s great, but if you want to tell your story, tell it. Don’t wait for someone else to present a situation so you can make yours seem more impressive, know what I mean?
Anyway, I bet you want to know how to deal with a person like that. Also, it’s nice to know how to avoid turning into this person. Because it can be very easy to get sucked into a spiral of one-upness.
The first thing to do is to try and understand where this comes from. I actually went and looked up some common psychological explanations for this behavior, and here’s what I found.
For some, it all has to do with self-esteem (or lack thereof). While some people are perfectly confident in who they are and what they can do, others feel the need to let others know how impressive they or their accomplishments are. When they’re doing well they feel good, and possibly that they’re better than you, while if things are not going well for them they’re overcome with doubt and shame. It becomes a race to keep up with what they perceive to be measures of success, and seeking external validation.
Another explanation is viewing relationships, love and respect and the like as scarce commodities. There’s only so much of it to go around, and you have to prove that you’re most worthy of receiving. It becomes very hard to find common ground or common goals with someone like that.
Finally, there’s your classic narcissist. You don’t exist to serve your own purposes, but to admire them. Best case you’re there to help them get what they want. If you’re really unlucky, they’ll have a nice manipulation streak in them too. They’ll try to control you in some way or form. Don’t let them.
So how do you deal with that? It depends on what type of one-upness you’re dealing with. If you’re facing someone who’s insecure, you may actually benefit most from giving them credit for their accomplishments and keeping your cool, staying nice. They may start to view you as an ally rather than someone to beat. If you’re dealing with someone who’s just plain arrogant, don’t be too shy. Claim your own accomplishments. You don’t have to brag, but there’s nothing wrong with letting people know that you’re proud of your life. If you’re like me and all of that sounds really exhausting, you can always just find someone else to talk to.