As is well-known, competition drives us to become better, since it is only in desperate situations that one learns to get out of one’s comfort zone, seek improvement and better oneself. Daunting though it is, therefore, one must learn to face the uphill battles and confront them head-on, even if the prospect of competition can be a huge deterrent to one’s initiatives, which leads to procrastinating. As before, I know of no easy way round this (and I honestly do not think that there is one), even though there are now many motivational lifehacks out there (just google them!) that teach you to raise your spirits and motivate you to do what you may have been dreading all along. Recently, however, I have come to think of competition euphemistically as a bowl of soup, which may be totally inappropriate, given my embarrassing culinary skills. Nonetheless, as we all know, a bowl of soup needs to be stirred in order to be served, and the more flavours and ingredients there are, the more stirring is needed for balance and equilibrium. Stirring, however, differentiates the various flavours and supplements within, and as some subside into the background of the bowl of soup, others come out stronger and feature more prominently in the final product, whether it be in the colour of the soup or the way it tastes for one’s tastebuds. For those who are competitive, one would want to stand out in this miscellany of candidates, and in order to do so, one would need to beat others to the foreground during the process of stirring and mixing. Stirring/mixing, therefore, could be seen as a metaphor for competition. We are all in it together as small particles waiting in line, and whenever I dread the prospect of competition and just simply cannot be asked to move, I think of it all as a massive bowl of soup, and all I need to do is to get stirred up and move quicker than others to where I want to be. Don’t give up.