This evening, on my LinkedIn page a motivational video from a colleague and friend popped up. The first sentence was something like “You were born to win”.
It is very important to remember to ourselves our value and the fact that even if life sometimes sucks, still we are loved, and we will achieve great results.
But sometimes I ask myself, “Why should we all win? What’s wrong with loosing?” and “Can we actually all win?”
Whatever is the angle that I assume, ‘win’ as a verb needs, to be fulfilled, an agent that defeats, overwhelms, overcomes someone else (who sometimes is ourselves, when, for example, we try to win a temptation or an impulse). “To win” means to subjugate, exert control, dominate. Therefore, the resulting scenario is not one of those in which everybody is happy, but one in which someone loses, coerced by force, while the winner reaps the fruits of the conflict/battle/fight.
I find this way of thinking exhausting. So, I propose a new sentence that would be something like “You were born to struggle, but at least with others that can support and share the burden”.
In this way, the attention is not more on the victory or the delivery of the ultimate achievement, but instead on the quality of the path, the communion in facing difficulties and the sharing of solutions that are acceptable, satisfactory, and yet temporary and fallible.
Of course, we all need to deliver results, whether they are specific outputs, reports, or revenues. But this shouldn’t be anymore the only framework through which judging our performances.
Results might vary, a boss might be slightly satisfied while the employee is happy, and still, all these feelings don’t tell us if we achieved that result harmoniously or fighting, with compassion for others and ourselves or through animosity and antagonism. Therefore, what should matter is the way in which we conduct ourselves every day, the quality of the experiences that we share with our people, the satisfaction that derives from the fact that we developed meaningful relationships, empowering exchanges, and rich conversations. Of course, what we deliver is important, but how we achieved that result is, in my humble opinion, crucial, because is not true that the ends justify the means if the means were empty, arid, or unkind.
If you want to know more about this topic, contact me and I will be happy to provide further information.
