Affiliate Marketing Secrets

I used to be one of the top students in my class and in my small “niche” when I was young. However, the older I got, the more I started to wonder what the whole point was. I easily used to get 95-100% on assignments or tests in the beginning of the year in highschool, then kind of taper off because of burnout since my physique was my most major weakness at that time. Up until then, my parent’s pressure kept me going, as well as personal interest in my studies. I enjoyed my teachers who seemed to be great motivators and mentors.
I would see certain students with 97% averages (I was friends with one of them) and kind of wonder what the whole point was trying to “be the best”. People who did this were not necessarily happier people and all the hard work and drive to prove superiority or higher achievement over another would lead to a short term feeling of satisfaction of “proving that one’s better”. Then if you were to go to the top, you would go through all the stress, competition and pain trying to maintain it…until you find another person better than you and the whole process would repeat itself. It doesn’t always necessarily mean that these people are necessarily better people either. The ones I’ve met were downright narcissistic on a pathological level (and lie to preserve a perfect image), were obnoxious, and generally not well liked either.
So what motivates these cutthroat competitive people? Their short term feeling of satisfaction of “superiority”? All that hard work, strained relationships, all for that? Or is it to please their parents?
Just wondering what you think of this.