In life, you can only win if you lose
Life is not all about winning . In life, there is time to play. Success requires of one to have fun.
Elbert Hubbard stated:
“Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.”
The journey is the joy:
You can only be successful if you enjoy what you are doing. Enjoy the hard work, enjoy the toil, enjoy the set-backs: enjoy the suffering.
In a game, the result is the motivator and the journey the gladiator. The end of a story is meaningless without the story.
For example, to summit Mount Everest, from planning phase to the finish line, it takes approximately 12 months (525,600 minutes)of preparation, training and climbing. The time a climber spends on the peak of Mount Everest, is approximately 40 minutes.
Flying with a helicopter to the top of Mount Everest will not fuel one with the same sense of achievement as summitting it through swet and blood. The sense of achievement and exiliration of the 40 minutes is rooted in the hard work, toil, challenges, commitment and perseverance of the 525,600 minutes journey.
There are certain games you do not have to win. Atempting to win every argument with your partner would be counterproductive. The price for winning this game would be too high.
For great successes in life, you do not have to win all the games. You have to embrace losing for success.
Roger Federer stated: “In the 1,526 singles matches I played in my career, I won almost 80% of those matches.”
This is a monumental achievement by any standard.
Roger Federer further stated: What percentage of points do you think I won in those matches? Only 54%. Even top ranked tennis players win barely more than half of the points they play.”
Coming from one of the greatest tennis players ever, there has to be merit to what he says.
If all things are equal, a person who wins 54% of points should equate to a 54% winning ratio. Why does Roger Federer have almost fifty percent higher win ratio when compared to the number of points he won. This is attributable to the art of masters:
– he won the most important games in his career, the semis and finals; and
– he want crucial points.
How he could achieve this, could be demonstrated in the following example:
Roger Federer winning score could look like this: 7/6- 1/6 – 7/6 – 0/6 – 7/6
In the above example, Roger Federer won the match, even though he only won 22 point and lost 30. His victory is owed to the fact that he won points at crucial stages.
The 2023 rugby world cup is another example. New Zeland scored 336 points in the tournament. South Africa only scored 208 points in total in the tournament, having played one game more than New Zeland. Moreover, on point scoring, South Africa ranks fifth. However, it was crowned as the 2023 rugby world champions. This was due to the fact that they want important games and then, they want crucial stages in their matches.
The most powerful strategy for unparalleled success:
All that great successes require is for you to win important games. And then, you do not even have to win all facets of that game. All you need, is to win the crucial stages of the game.
Outline what is most important for you in life. This is different for everyone. Then, identify the key stages of that endeavour that will turn the tide massively in your favour and double down on it. Be ruthless in your dedication.
Upwards and Forwards !
-Sidney Pretorius