Competitiveness

Last night Becca and I played "42" (a dominoes game) with my parents for a while. We got beat both times by a pretty significant amount. During the game Becca had been talking with my mom about life and they were having good conversation, however I was getting legitimately frustrated. I said jokingly in the middle of one of the games, "This is not a time of fellowship," unfortunately I was about 1/4 joking and 3/4 serious. How sad is that, that I viewed Becca and I's time there as a time to get focused on winning a game?

So this is a huge reminder for me of my struggle with competitiveness. I tend to either play and not care whether I win or loose or focus on playing and get frustrated if I don't do well/win. I understand sportsmanship and having a good attitude no matter what happens in the game and am totally down with that, but that is not where my question or thought lies. My question is, how can the pure heart of competitiveness be aligned with Christ's perspective. A definition of competitiveness is, "having or displaying a strong desire to be more successful than others." This at first glance is in direct conflict with Jesus' teaching and life in saying that we must die to ourselves, count others as more significant than ourselves, love your neighbor as yourself, the first shall be last, etc.

So let me chew on this for a while, here is the thought, let me know what you think, and maybe we can find the balance and reconcile these two ways of thinking, or maybe not...