Playing To Win Versus Playing Not To Lose

What motivates you? The vision of achieving your goal and having the things that you desire or scary thoughts of how your life would look like if things were to not go your way and you ended up having a very lackluster, uninspired and unsatisfying life? Well, does it really make any difference as long as it pushes me into doing something about it you may ask? In my opinion I think it does. I feel that the people who are drawn towards the vision of having their goals fulfilled and seeing their dreams come true have a slightly different attitude and this enables them to have a different outlook on the processes and the methods they adopt and everything they encounter on the journey to achieving whatever it is that they have set out to do. But more importantly, the major difference appears to be in how they interpret the inevitable failures and road blocks that are an intrinsic part of the journey towards success. Having our eyes set firmly on the goal and being buoyed by the prospect of achieving them, most importantly in my opinion, shifts the focus from avoiding failure, pain and rejection and focuses it on how it would be like once we achieve our target and have the things or the situations that we desire. This is sometimes referred to as being promotion oriented as opposed to being prevention oriented. People who are promotion oriented place a lot of emphasis on their dreams and ambitions and are constantly focused on achieving them and the majority of their mental energy is invested in in these pursuits as opposed to thinking about failure or the consequences of something not going their way. Those who are prevention oriented on the other hand are constantly thinking about the worst case scenarios and the consequences of not succeeding at something.

Another major distinction between these two mind sets is that when someone is playing to win, winning is their primary focus and the overwhelming desire to win is the force that is propelling them and when the desire to win is so deep and strong, the failures, rejections and pain that they encounter during the journey is endured more easily. Though it hurts when they stumble or encounter setbacks, they do not really dwell on them and they brush aside their failures quite easily and are more concerned with getting back on track, modifying their approach or methods and trying again. There is a popular adage which I have come across several times that goes something like “if you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate”. Though sometimes success is as simple as trying more times and facing more failure, the problem is that this is really difficult to do as failure stings and stings very badly most of the time. It requires great emotional fortitude to endure failure over and over again till something positive happens and that is the reason most people will never try again and again until they succeed. So they do not find success not because they are not clever enough or that they do not possess the right skills, but because they don’t have the emotional toughness to endure such high doses of failure. I must confess that I definitely belonged to the latter category of people, those that are more concerned about not losing than actually winning. I was terrified of failure, embarrassment and any kind of rejection or disapproval (still am but to a lesser degree) and used to quit or stop what I was doing the moment I encountered even the slightest setback to rethink or re-adjust my strategy before trying again. So I used to spend more time strategizing and engaging in what is known as mental masturbation rather than just putting in more attempts which would inevitably bring me the results that I was looking for.

Whenever I started a new endeavour whether it was Jiu Jitsu, public speaking or trying to socialize more etc., my first thought would be to not embarrass myself, not face any harsh criticism, failure or rejection rather than aiming at succeeding or excelling at whatever activity I was choosing to pursue. As a result, I would take action but the amount of action I took would be very low in order to ensure that I do not face too much failure or rejection. I was not motivated by getting good quickly, which would entail taking massive amounts of action, failing quickly and trying again till I got good at it, but I would want to somehow circumvent all the failure and unpleasantness and slowly ease my way to success without facing any really challenging circumstances. Needless to say I rarely ever got very good at anything. Another big problem with playing not to lose I realized is that since I was always afraid of the negative outcome the only circumstances in which I would be motivated to take positive action with regard to some aspect of my life was when my situation was so bad that the pain of not doing anything was worse than the pain that I would have to endure while attempting to change my situation. So I would exercise and follow a strict diet when I was quite badly out of shape and it hurt every time I looked in the mirror, I went out and socialized actively only when I had no friends and was tired of staying at home alone on weekends, I worked on my public speaking only when I knew that I just could not tolerate the fear I felt each time I had to present something and it would be better off trying to improve than face this fear for the rest of my life. But the moment my situation improved even a little bit, I would lose the will to continue to get better as the prospect of trying again and failing was now worse than my current situation. As a result, I got into decent shape but never into amazing shape, I had a few friends but never a lot of them, I got decent at public speaking but never amazing at it.

During this time, I saw quite a few guys who were way worse than me when we started off, surpass me and get amazing at these things while I was never too bad to begin with or even if I was, I got “quite good” at it and then never progressed beyond that. But the stark distinction between them and me would be that they put in far more repetitions and tried and practised 3-5 times more than I did. They had some monumental failures and embarrassments the likes of which I never faced but they also became far more successful and got really good which I could never achieve. I then began to realize that I was playing to not lose, while they were playing to win. I was more worried about avoiding pain while they were visualizing how it would be to succeed and this helped them endure all the pain that they encountered along the journey. I feel that in most endeavours the biggest thing that holds us back is our fear of rejection or failure and we try to shield our egos by avoiding them at all costs. I know that I have spent more time valuing potential over actual results. When we sit and plan and think about all the things we could achieve if we put our mind to it, we are just fantasizing about our potential but when we actually take action to actualize that potential we get results and the thought of these results not being what we thought they would be is what scares us. Once we have the results in front of us, we can no longer live in the illusion that we have built in our minds about our capabilities as they are now shattered and this is unthinkable to our ego. But the only way to really master something or at the least get very good at it is through taking actual action, getting the harsh feedback, facing the reality of our current skills and trying again and again till we reach the levels we desire. Playing not to lose may get us from rock bottom to some decent level as I have discovered in many areas, but in order to be a great success we must risk being a great failure.