Winning Is a Choice
The biggest difference I’ve found between winners and losers:
Winners want to win more than they fear losing.
Their benchmarks are higher than everybody else’s.
They don’t let head trash get in their way.
I recently rediscovered my will to win—out on the open water.
***
I’ve been sailing for 30 years, and every summer, I race. I’ve won plenty of those races (and also lost more than my fair share). I’ve won awards, and so on. Objectively, I’m at least a pretty good sailor.
But sometime in the last few years, I lost my will to win.
I didn’t feel as good in the new boats. I had other priorities in my life that felt all-consuming.
At a certain point, I just stopped caring about being great.
During races, I would sit in the middle of the boat. Trim the sails. Do the job. Go home.
Until one windy day…
***
I like meeting people, so when I sail with our yacht club, I’m often placed on different boats. On this particular day, I was paired up with a club member I didn’t know well. The wind was whipping up around us as I prepared to take my seat in the middle.
He turned to me and said, “Why don’t you drive?”
“No thanks,” I told him. But he was insistent.
“You’re going to be fine,” he said.
The boat was practically sideways from the wind. But at that moment, I made a decision.
I was going to focus on being a good sailor again.
We won our first race by a fair margin, and then came in a very close second in the next two races.
***
I had stopped caring about winning, and I was content to tell myself a story about not being great.
Then I told myself a different story.
The people in my life who I would consider winners, they would tell me I was whining (I am blessed to be surrounded by people who care enough to say these things to me).
“Cut the crap,” they would say. “Are you going to win or not?”
It’s not a matter of if you can. It’s a matter of whether you will.
Of course, I have thousands of hours of experience sailing. I didn’t wake up one day and decide to be good at it.
Winners are like that, too. They put in the work.
But then, crucially, they choose to win.
Later that day, one of our crew members (a great sailor in his own right) posted about it on social media. “One of the best days of sailing I’ve had in a long time,” he said.
It was a pretty good day for me, too.
Ask yourself—do you care more about winning than you fear losing? If not, changing your perspective might be a good place to start…
