Obsessed with Success
Our culture is obsessed with winning. Embodied in every aspect of life from youth, we are obsessed with finding the best and brightest in…
Our culture is obsessed with winning. Embodied in every aspect of life from youth, we are obsessed with finding the best and brightest in any given endeavor. We foster a culture of number one. Its sometimes said 2nd place is the winner of the losers.
This is a cultural artifact of survival. It’s important, and perhaps vital, to order our society for success against precious resources. Choosing resources likely success though competition is a clear metric. In other words, everyone is a winner because they played is a flawed model when you are playing the survival game. So, where is 2nd place? Is it really the pole position of the losers?
Here is the dirty secret: All winners at some point in their lives were failures. And in time, they often rediscover failure later in life when the success runs out. How does this happen?
We learn to hide our failures early and proclaim our successes often. We bury failure to feed success. Then, as our success grows, we insulate ourselves from failure. Our culture elevates our status over others, and even drives them to take the fall for success. There can be only one after all. Macho, bravado, and shameless self-promotion feed the success in culture and magnify the power of personality. Winners are winners, because they are driven to win, sometimes without concern for the cost.
True winners know the dirty secret. They have to keep winning or it ruins them in the end. They become a victim of their success, and in doing so, are cast from the podium by their adoring fans to worship the new champion. They silently recall the people that helped them to success and the people they relegated to the past. Sure, winners strive to win again, and some do. But many don’t and it often is a dismal decline that ends with “Where are they now”.
So much for the sunny message of my piece, which is what again? Oh yes! It’s that if you accept failure, you can avoid this horrible trap!
How? We all fail along the way. Accepting that in yourself and being gracious to the 2nd and last place contestants makes you humble. It allows you to win without being a loser!
Winning is a vital part of culture on many levels, so should failure. That is what I am going to explore. How failure shapes our world, evolution, lives, and spirit. I want every great success story to share its great tale of woe. They say 15 minutes of fame takes years to make. That is not success as we define it today. That is success as I want to expose it. Failure is success without the obsession. It’s the relentless practice, drive and effort to get up and brush yourself off without forgetting you fell. Or worse yet, hiding it. No one is born to greatness. In fact, many who have been squander it.
Failure, in everything you do, is winning. Failure can be a life altering or life ending event. But success is almost always a live altering and life ending event for those who forget the lessons of failure. My call to action is asking you to become a Failure Pro and volunteering to share your experience with me and your audience.