How to face competition

I read some Economist's book about how to think and face competition and make a real happiness. I was impressed by this book "Kyosou no sahou" in Japanese. In this book we Japanese are not willing to face real competition by many reasons(one is ethics reason). And we are tend to twist the conditions to make better society with many peoples' happiness.  I think that we should know and learn from Sportsmanship( for example soccer's case)