Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.
BusinessWeek has an excellent article about winning. In their poll of 2,500 American workers, two-thirds said “a modestly talented but extremely competitive person” would be more likely to get ahead at their companies and only one-third gave the edge to “an extremely talented but uncompetitive person”. Mentioned in the article, is the intense discipline that prompted a 19 year-old Santosh Kumar to borrow books, sell vegetables, tutor others, and study his way into the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, becoming a hero in his rural village. He is competing for a life no one in his family has ever had. My hat’s off to that boy, he has my full respect.
Sure, I’ve had rough patches in my life. Patches so rough, I start wondering what life is about, and if this is what I want out of life. I start tracing my steps, figuring out what I did right and what I did wrong, and checking if I have drifted from the long term goals. You are what you do, and I believe in actively taking action to shape your life, rather than waiting for circumstances in life to decide how you should live your life.
The state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of your state of mind.
– Wayne Dyer
It’s sad to see when people choose not to fight and accept their life the way it is, blaming it on luck and circumstance. Understandably, everyone is handed a different set of cards. But it’s still how you play it. Like Peter Kua says it in his blog post titled “Don’t read this until you are irritated”, irritations in life forces you to go from just mediocre to great. Angry for not making enough money at work? Angry that you can’t quit smoking? These irritations are calling you out to respond to them. Irritations forces you to innovate new solutions, many inventions were the answer to a problem someone had. And like Peter says,
It’s fun to struggle. If your entire life was not filled with struggles, you wouldn’t become what you are today. If you didn’t struggle through high school and college, you wouldn’t be parking yourself in that snug leather chair of yours, in an office overlooking the bay. Struggling to survive is a constant irritation, but a necessity for growing rich and powerful. Who doesn’t like competitions? Who doesn’t like watching their favorite basketball teams struggle in a fiercely contested match? The struggle to win, the struggle for power and glory brings about an immense sense of achievement to those who make it. To those who don’t, they trudge back to the drawing boards. And they practice and rehearse and struggle. In preparation for the next challenge.
How many times have you heard someone say “I wish I was born to rich parents, I wish I was given the option to pick who I wanted as my mom and dad”? I think being born to poor parents gives you the advantage of having no other choice but to fight (unless you just throw in the towel before the fight). Perhaps that’s why America is such great country. Here we have all the less fortunate people wanting a better life immigrating to the big apple, the land of opportunity, the USA. They all chose to fight for a better life for themselves, and their families.
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Successful people are just not bothered about the possibility of failure. They go in the game knowing that they will win, and if they do fail, it doesn’t take them out of the game. Winners simply bounce back. They have a razor sharp focus on the prize and obstacles just sort of fade in the background of “minor implementation details”. Veteran executive coach Marshall Goldsmith says, “Successful people are delusional”, and “They are not as good as they think they are, but they have the confidence to pursue big things”. Sometimes the fear of failure prevents us from taking a chance, and when we opt to take on less opportunities, we’ve just secured ourselves absolutely no chance of success. It’s a vicious downward spiral that isn’t obvious everytime you opt not to take a chance — until you realize that you’ve just landed at the very bottom with nothing else to lose.
Sensei Paul Dal (a karate instructor), both a friend and mentor of mine once told me that when in a karate championship, there is nothing worse than fighting an opponent who has absolutely nothing to lose and unafraid to die. There’s just nothing worse than an opponent like that — so when he fights, he fights like he is ready to die. And guess what, he wins. It’s definitely a mental thing; when you detach yourself from all your worldly belongings and worries, and focus on that one single goal of beating that opponent, that’s when the magic starts kicking in. Rid yourself of your “oh, I can’t do this because I .. <insert excuse here>”.
And like Diane Brady says,
In short, they are the kind of people you want on your team. When somebody is passionate and driven by the pursuit, he tends to inspire passion in others. And fortunately for those less driven, most competitors are less interested in bringing others down than in raising themselves up. These aren’t the victims or complainers who have been beaten by life. More often than not, they like their bosses. In fact, they want to be the boss some day and often turn him or her into a mentor to help them get to the top. Whether racing to discover an AIDS vaccine or sweating to make it big in Beijing, this century belongs to the people who want the most.
Have you decided which of the following best describes you?
- A winner – fights to win
- Not a winner — accepts circumstances as is
I know I have.