I know it’s not a popular opinion to hold in social and intellectual circles these days, but life does have winners and losers. We may all be equal in the eyes of God, but in every other life situation, effort and outcomes matter. I am deeply concerned that we have raised a generation of children with the belief that everything they do is special and that winning is less important than their pursuit of self-fulfillment. This generation of entitled kids will be our future employees.
Moreover, as I age, I see many of my peers who seem to be embracing the idea that their fate was never in their own hands and that the deck was always stacked against them by their parents, the government, big business, their school system, and so on. In this fantasy world, these points of view may resonate, but in reality, they only provide people with an excuse for mediocrity and rationalize their shortcomings. You help no one, including yourself, by allowing them to play the victim.
Winning does matter. We built our country on the idea of individual freedom, personal initiative, competitive markets, and free enterprise. In the United States, we are constantly keeping score and rewarding those who achieve. You can choose to live a reactive and safe life rather than a proactive and riskier existence, but then you are dependent upon others who create the overall conditions of success from which you earn your living. Instead, we should embrace the concept that there are benefits to learning how to overcome adversity and from striving to win.
You must be willing to fail to succeed. If you truly give your best and learn something valuable in the process, there is no shame in losing. As a favorite song of mine once said, “you can never win or lose if you don’t run the race,” and we all have our own races to run.
Life rewards courage and penalizes cowardice. Sometimes we have to be tested to truly understand our resolve and abilities. Some people get lucky and stumble into success. Still, most of us must carve out our own path through experience, hard work, determination, perseverance, acquired knowledge, and honest self-reflection. We should care a lot less about what others do or don’t do and instead focus on how we can grow through our experiences and improve. When confronted with less-than-stellar results, we should always be asking the following three questions:
1) How did I contribute to this situation?
2) What am I supposed to learn from this?
3) What positive next steps can I take in the course of my journey with this new knowledge?
Keeping score is never just about winning and losing. It’s about being honest about results and using this information to improve.
Related articles
- Winners vs. Losers (everydaypowerblog.com)
- Winners v/s Losers (ankushshilimkar.wordpress.com)
- Get busy living or get busy dying! (talktorob.wordpress.com)
- Failure Not Fatal (jonathanhilton.com)
- Winners vs. Losers (cullencrombie.wordpress.com)
- Losers Are Afraid Of Losing (locris.wordpress.com)