Playing to win

After my scholastic athletic career had long ended, I learned the difference between playing to win and playing not to lose.  Slowly, it became clear to me as I learned the difference between positive and negative statements.  A profound shift in the way that I saw myself in the world happened and contributed to a tremendous amount of the success that I have created in my life.

Once it became clear, I realized that I had been playing not to lose most of my life in sports and in everyday activities and business.  Playing not to lose can be the same as playing to beat the other team rather than playing to win yourself. 

Playing to beat the other team is a negative action while playing to win is a positive.  It is just a slight tweak in your thinking, but it has profound effects on the outcome.  It can be simplified further into the difference between these two statements:

I hate to lose

I love to win

To many, and to me most of my life, these two statements meant the same thing.  As I learned later, they are opposites that sometimes end the same result, but not always.

This is something to think about in your daily business.  Are you playing to win or not to lose?  Are you driven because you want to defeat others or because you want your business to grow and thrive and add positivity to the world?

Check your language that you use.  Do you regularly use words like awful, horrible, struggle, fight or battle often?  Could you replace those words with positive statements like thrive, grow, awesome, terrific, effortlessly, love, fabulous or win?

There is much more to this subject and we will return to it occassionally, but to me, this realization was a paradigm shift in my life for the positive. 

Here is the simple question that I will leave you with: Do you love to win or do you hate to lose?  Do you know that there is a difference?