FLASH NEWS!
Your success is
guaranteed!
In fact, you may
already have WON!
Wherever you
spend the most time and energy is where you will realize the most success.
You may become an EXPERT:
–
Eating
junk food
–
Playing
video games
–
Watching
sports
–
Manipulating
the SMART PHONE
–
Surfing
the WEB / Doing Social Media
–
Or …
»
Doing
absolutely nothing
These guys finally figured it out:
Of course, “winning the battle but losing the war” and “winning
at all cost” are two of the most sobering roads to infamy.
The terms by which “Winning” is defined demand fair
consideration.
- · Tweens and teens – and more than a few otherwise – frequently define “Winning” as whatever they can “get away with”.
- · One of my former bosses matriculated through an elite academic institution which encouraged predatory “bullying” behavior, with senior staff routinely asking, “Who have you licked lately?”
- · In my non-academic, self-help study of the art of management, I happened across a book entitled, “Black Belt Negotiation”, which armed one for withering take-no-prisoners destruction of a competitor’s or a client’s position.
- · At monthly Executive Committee meetings, one particularly acerbic senior leader would challenge every proposed action, assuming “intellectual high ground privilege”, with arguments extended indefinitely until he “won” … sometimes even changing his position multiple times until “winning” was assured!
The political races of 2016 were graphic illustrations of
the art of “winning at all cost” / “winner take all” / “take no prisoners” strategies,
accompanied by fear-mongering, trumped-up moral outrage, character assassinations
and standard-issue political promises as bait tactics to seduce voters on the
campaign trail, while hiding behind stupefying special interest personal agendas
that only became obvious once officials took office.
In his first five days as a Kentucky
state representative, C. Wesley Morgan, a longtime Richmond liquor
dealer, filed six bills that he thinks would make life better for the liquor
industry.
Morgan … lists himself as a vice
president of the Kentucky Association of Beverage Retailers, an industry group
that represents the interests of package liquor stores before state government.
When Morgan ran for election last
November, seeking to oust Democratic Rep. Rita Smart, he campaigned on
a platform of tax reform, fixing the state pension system and
fighting crime and addiction.
To an apparently diminishing cadre of observers, the “ends”
don’t always justify the “means”.
Finally, winning is not the same as not losing. You can’t win by choosing not to compete. In fact, losing can become a significant “slingshot
accelerator” toward winning. You engage,
you lose, you learn, you work to improve, you prepare, you
over-prepare, you WIN. You have
to risk the possibility of losing if you want to win BIG, but you pick your
battleground according to your skills and ambitions, and play it out to the
best of your ability … preferably like there was no tomorrow … and you will win something. (Most of the “competition”
is watching cat videos on social media!)
What “prize” is worth investing everything you’ve got – even
if you risk not winning the “Brass Ring” or the championship trophy? Two prizes even more valuable:
Legitimacy
&
Respect
“The credit
belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
whose face
is marred by dust and sweat and blood;
who strives
valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again,
who knows
the great enthusiasms, the great devotions,
and spends
himself in a worthy cause;
who, at the
best, knows the triumph of high achievement;
and who, at
the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly,
so that his
place shall never be with those cold and timid souls
who know
neither victory or defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt
So here we are at the auspicious beginning of 2017. Let’s gird ourselves to enter the arena, and not
be deterred by the dust, sweat, blood and tears of temporary disappointments we
may encounter in the pursuit of worthy causes; let us dare greatly, struggle
valiantly and find sufficiency in the legitimacy
and respect we find in the company
of worthy soldiers. Winners will come to
KNOW and accept us into their ranks by the ownership we take in our mission and
by the courage and passion we demonstrate in the arena. Quartermaster
No comments:
Post a Comment