Winning isn’t Everything!

Is it better to win or to fail? Why limit it to two choices? The better goal should be to learn.

As I was driving on Interstate 295 N in Richmond, Virginia a car passed me. As I often do, I looked at the license plate. It read ; “only win.” I immediately thought, there is no such thing as “always “winning. When you tell yourself that the only option is winning, that’s absolutely unrealistic and you’re setting yourself up for, guess what, failure.

There’s nothing wrong with winning, but nor is there anything wrong with failing. You can have an angry unsatisfied winner or a gracious failure. You may be familiar with the quote, “it’s not whether you win or lose but how you play the game.” In playing the game one objective could be winning, another could be failing but the correct response whether you win of fail should be learning.

What I find interesting about failure is that children have no concept of failure until they are taught that theory. Every child I have ever known, myself included, when faced with a challenge or an obstacle normally did one or two things. They either figured out a way to meet that challenge and overcame that obstacle or they made a decision to do something else because they lost interest. What they typically did not do was call themselves a failure; at least not until that idea was introduced to them. We were never born to be “failures.” Whatever that is.

There are lots of people on this planet who have either been told they are not good enough or were not good enough when they attempted something and did not accomplished that goal. Too often, we are conditioned to believe that we are failures when we don’t meet a certain standard. If you haven’t been told that, just wait, it’s coming. Unless you’re a perfect person, you are going to miss a target now and again.

That being said! Only YOU get to decide whether you’re a failure or not. YOU choose! I suggest you don’t label yourself in such a negative way. You become what you think. Just because someone calls you a failure doesn’t make you a disappointment. Because you didn’t win today or didn’t make the team that doesn’t make you less than anyone else. By the way, where did the word failure come from anyway? The short answer; men made it up. Sometimes we don’t know the answer to a question because we never ask the question in the first place. So, the next time someone calls you a failure, ask them; what is a failure?

Given the choice to always win or to learn from my failure, my choice is to fail and learn. Instead of referring to yourself as a failure, describe yourself simply as a learner!