The Secret to Winning
What makes a “winner?” To inspect it let’s think of the most important questions you can ask yourself in a full intropsection checkup. The life components both large and small. What you have versus what you want. What you dream versus what you have. What you do and what you haven’t, won’t, dare not or will not do. Is your commitment a maybe or a yes, are your tasks a line of accomplishments or a list of yet to do. In the little games we play for seeking success the answers depend on how you are playing the game, what game you are playing and, who you are playing against and, what the stakes are relative to your motivation and moral compass.
Winning, one would suppose, can be a summary result for those who have a plan, fuel and a destination. They are the ones who boldly jot from accomplishment to accomplishment. They are winners. Not every win is equal, there are degrees of winning. Little games to get by or major deals that shake the bank account. The extremes of success in these games are often about playing in a very small field, or perhaps creating it. Most examples mega-success are people that had a combination of three things: Ravenous Desire, Continuous Drive and Bankable Detail.
What makes winners? They are usually the ones with a success formula combination of desire, drive and detail. Add to that they seem to attract luck, in fact they often plan on it. It is this therapist’s view that we can plot your success curve using these three dimensions of attributes. While it’s the aggregate that defines the business character it makes sense to break down the three aspects. As with any triumvirate, the balance and coordination tells the real story, your story.
DESIRE
For what do you want? How badly do you want it? Why is it so important? Is it a virtuous or a narcissistic motivation? How does this want impact, dominate or create your morality? Are you the Houston Astros or New England Patriots whose culture became dominated with a desire to win with a broad moral view of right and wrong. Is corporate spying to unlock trade secrets fair actions. Is our desire to keep up, save ourselves, prosper wildly. For winners it is the desire to win that is fundamental to their success. Few achieve top tier status by accident, most want desperately to be there, top shelf looking down. There is another key question to ask though many ignore it: Why this desire? (But that’s another therapy.)
DRIVE
Every desire is translated into actions toward an end but it is your drive where the hours and the capital; physical, mental and/or financial, will be spent. Your early failure response, trial and error, overlooking or learning from criticism or using it’s as fuel are all part and parcel to to see if desires manifest, change direction or fail. As with desire our drive can also be a boundary-pusher for the line of too far, too illegal, too overstepping. It is where the ends and means have their centuries old argument over who justifies whom. Drive starts as primal, what we need to get by but as it engage our imagination where desire resides the two combust for action.
DETAIL
And here’s where so many “2 out of 3 ain’t bad” stories are told. What would you expect when it is where the devil lives? Detail is the strategy we chart for our drive to engage toward our desire. Get it right and good builds on good, get it wrong and you may meander beyond recovery. Detail is the land of broken dreams as well as the immaculate successes. Both reside here but the broken dreams are stored in high rise towers padding the view for those whose mastery of detail landed them on top.
WINNING
By any measure this is a variable. Not everyone needs gigantic wins, one or two little wins a day can make for a rewarding life. There are those who have made winning the only desire and become addicted to where the actions stop being about anything other than winning. When that happens did you win? Did you stack the deck, do you care? The first deck was stacked moments after the first deck was invented but whether you gain from it or struggle to overcome it you can win. Do you want to, do you need to? Are you willing to do what it takes, smartly?
Accomplishment, self worth, satisfactions…among many other things are factors you can control in your professional and personal life. If the desires line up and lead to happiness then it’s a blessed life. How do you know when you get there? What if the desire was the climb and not the view? Success is a simple concept with endlessly complex variations. What is likely true is that your sense of, and actual, success are both a product of your Desire, Drive and Detail, that is what has put you where you are. More important perhaps, it is a roadmap for a new journey at any time.
©2020 MyEureka Solutions LLC. For help with WINNING or BUSINESS THERAPY insights contact or follow @TomFoxTrainer, on LinkedIn or at www.myeurekasolutions.com/thoughts. His current book: Business Therapy: Ideas and Inspirations To Help Build Sales, Leadership, Management, and Personal Performance is available on Amazon.