One of the greatest golfers to ever play the game once said, "Winning isn't everything, but wanting it is", a quote which makes me wonder if winning is really that important in life for us or is it just an obsession which people tend to have or develop it overtime with success. Let us look into the facts about the obsession with winning briefly in this blog which will help us understand more about winning and decide whether we really have to focus on winning or do not care about winning to focus on a brighter side.
How is winning related to success?
Okay, let me get this straight, how often do we see students who got the best grades in school hover around with zero self esteem? How often do we see the athletes and some achievers disappear after one achievement of success? How often is it that we look at people who are not satisfied with winning even though winning is considered the best possible way of reaching the top. What we should observe is that they all won but they did not succeed. Most of us always focus on winning so much that we often forget the struggle and the journey we went through to reach the top. We may win but with no success. At the same time, we see some college dropouts succeeding in life and the athletes who did not win last year coming back stronger to win this year. This does not mean that we should quit college or just give up on our first attempt. What it really means is that we should focus on what success really means irrespective of the fact that we are winning or losing. Our obsession of winning has been involved in people so much that our society tends to follow a particular route and never is there a chance for self-improvement of the right choices or the freedom for the ones who have the proper idea. We should never confuse success with winning, we can win without success and we can also lose with success.
Why do we really need to win?
Alright, it is true that we love to win, who doesn't love winning? We play games to win, we argue to win, we tend to fight a case in court to win, we protest to win and convince the superiors for our betterment. We all are always focused on winning in each and everything we do which is for our benefits. Well, it isn't wrong but if you ask everyone in a public protest for the motive of their protest, chances are that you will get answers which are not related to the main topic of protest and they are just there supporting it. This begs the question of why are we doing this? Why do we have to win? The thing is, we always have to prove something to certain amount of people, and it is considered the "best" way to prove yourself is by winning in that particular thing. This obsession makes it so hard for us and we forget why we should really win and how it is affecting our self-consciousness. We work more for the satisfaction of our ego rather than practicing self improvement. The only thing we can get by this is just the proof which is not even meant for you, but for the opposite person. You get absolutely nothing from it except the loss of time and energy. What we can do instead is that we can invest that time in self-growth, establish a connection with yourself, do not care about winning and be the best version of yourself so that the same people come asking you what we really did to succeed.
How do we really plan the route towards success?
We often see people talk about the path towards success and its aftermath, but have you ever seen someone talking about the path to failure and how to fix the issues if one happens to face those problems? There may be some people but they are very less and that is what differentiates them with the rest of the world in valuating the success and self satisfaction. We have to plan our success in such a way that we take care of all the failures we are bound to encounter in the journey and accordingly, be prepared for it beforehand which helps in making the path very feasible even though it isn't. We can always blame someone else or a situation for our failures but we cannot afford to believe that ourselves which mostly makes you go downhill. Always plan the goals according to your strengths and work on them with sheer passion towards it. You will then realize how much obsessed you were with winning that you weren't aware of the value of your efforts.
Should we fix this obsession of winning or live with it?
Look, it doesn't matter how hard we try, we cannot change our mindset unless our will power is greater than our self acceptance. We can always strive to win but just winning for a cause with no plan after that can be disintegrating. We can try to better ourselves with each effort being better than the last one. This means that we do not need to fix the obsession, but we have to learn to manage it for the betterment of ourselves and which has some value addition with it. We cannot let the current factors affect it and we can afford to live with this obsession once we get used to our achievements.
So, we can conclude that it is always up to us to either win or make efforts to make it to the top of the mountain. We have to stop depending on the factors which won't help us to get to our goals and work on the ones which help us get our goals. Never back down of anything and keep winning with a purpose for yourself.