I found this piece in a book I was reading.  A personality theorist by the name of Alfred Adler developed it..  It really spoke to me and made a lot of sense.  See the piece as a comparison of how different people cope/deal with life situations.  I like to believe I am a Horizontal Striver. 

Vertical Striving (Negative or Competitive Striving)	Horizontal Striving (Positive or Noncompetitive Striving)
It’s all about “ME”	It’s about the job or task
How will I come out of this compared to others?	What can I contribute to help get the job done?
External motivation (praise and punishment)	Internal motivation (enjoyment and satisfaction)
Anxiety about feeling inferior	Confident and feeling like an equal
Demands perfection, mistakes are not okay	Feels courageous enough to do their best, make mistakes and learn from them
Autocratic	Democratic
Self-esteem is dependant on others’ evaluation of you	Self-esteem is not in question
Creates distance between people	Creates closeness between people
Performance suffers	Performance improves
Deed=Doer	Deed=Doer
Perfection	Mastery
If I can’t be the best, its not worth doing	If it is truly worth doing it is worth doing regardless of how imperfectly

If a person shifts his/her thinking from a Vertical Striving attitude to a more Horizontal Striving attitude, he/she might find life crises or challenges less foreboding situations.  It was a relief to find this chart, it reaffirms my personal beliefs that vertical striving can only result in destructive consequences for everyone involved.