"Winners never quit and quitters never win."
"Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."
Those are just a few of the quotes that reinforce the importance of coming out on top. Our society has placed a high value on winning, yet I've found few people whom define themselves as winners and know how to show up as a winner. I've met and coached many people that continually sabotage themselves because they don't believe they deserve to win and as such create rules for themselves that make it impossible for them to win (one such type is the professed "perfectionist," but there are others).
"Life is a competition. Everything is a competition!" That quote is from one of my favorite movie's, "City Slickers." In this scene Billy Crystal's character "Mitch" is trying to learn to rope a cow in preparation for his cattle drive vacation with his two best friends. As Mitch expresses his ability to learn this vital skill futile, his best friend "Ed" (played by the late Bruno Kirby) uses the above statement to chastise him for quitting.
When we look at everything as a competition, especially business, it means we believe there must always be a winner and a loser. Our mind then moves to the thought, "if there must always be a winner and a loser, there is a 50-50 chance I can lose,' and fear of failure manifests igniting the innate fight or flight syndrome.
What many people fail to realize is that in business and in life we get to define the rules for winning and losing. Most people's rules are developed subconsciously in their belief system over time and make it very difficult for them to win. Are your rules making it easy for you to win?
One powerful strategy to breakthrough the fear of failure is to develop the belief that there is no such thing as failure, only feedback. I developed this belief many years ago in my journey to become a peak performance coach. It was reinforced this past weekend when I met a very interesting man, his name is Jena Marcovicci
Back in the 1970s Jena played on the men's professional tennis tour for five years. He told stories of matches in which he would tank (lose) the match on purpose after missing a couple of key shots because he would tell himself he did not belong on the court with his opponent and that he didn't deserve to win the match. Somehow he was able to survive for five years on the tour. Along the way he began to realize what he was doing and decided to become a sports psychologist.
During his "Dance of Tennis" workshop at Rhinebeck's Omega Institute he talked of letting go of the competition while we are playing tennis and seeing the person on the other side of the net as a partner instead of an opponent. He encouraged us to redefine what 'winning' meant to us on the court so that we can enjoy ourselves playing the game we love.
I find it's the same in business. One of the five steps in my F.O.C.U.S. Coaching Program is "smile" and enjoy the journey. Applying that strategy as we go through the ups and downs of our business days can make all the difference. Smiling will allow us to feel better and to see things from a more positive perspective. And that will allow us to find solutions instead of focusing on and wallowing in the obstacle.
Along those lines it is imperative that we redefine what 'winning' means for us in business just like how I had to redefine winning on the tennis court last weekend.
If you are a salesperson you can decide that winning means building a relationship instead of closing the sale. If you are the business owner you can decide that winning means developing your people by investing time, energy and financial resources in training and coaching them instead of pushing them for greater productivity. In both instances investing focus on the new meaning for winning will give you even greater results long term.
Some people will take this strategy to the extreme and begin defining winning in terms that do not generate results, such as winning means just showing up, or winning means delegating things without holding others accountable. This will not work. You must be sensible about how winning is defined, but most people have their pendulum swung way too far to the other side making it almost impossible to win under any circumstance.
Remember success breeds success. A series of small wins creates a tremendous amount of momentum and confidence. Define winning in a way that allows you to feel good about yourself and to notice that you are getting better each and every day. As one of my business mentors, Alan Weiss, always reminds me, "if you improve one percent each day in 70 days you will be twice as good."
In what areas would you like to commit to improving just one percent each day while counting those little improvements as wins on your way to tremendous levels of success?