Winning! What is winning and why is the word misconceived in children’s sports? “Winning isn’t important, it’s all about having fun, developing and taking part” Agree or not agree with that statement?
Here’s my thoughts, Of course winning is important 100%. From the second your born, your want, your need and your desire to win is installed into your brain. Why would you want to take that away? In fact you can’t. It’s who you are. It’s your DNA make up.
Take a dog litter for example. There’s winners and losers from the second they are born. You’ll always have a runt. The one that loses the race to be the first to the best food. No matter who or what you are, you are born to compete to either win or lose.
Let’s look at the first time you spot the most beautiful woman/man and it’s love at first sight. You don’t say to your friend “hey I kissed a girl two weeks ago, why don’t you ask this girl out for a date instead of me” What about the job interview! Imagine taking the effort to turn up to a job interview and not wanting the job. That’s like turning up to a match and not wanting to win! So yes winning is important, it’s in our DNA.
It’s what makes us who we are so never take that desire to win away. Without taking the emphasis on winning away, what if we changed the word to competing, instead of winning. “How did you get on at the weekend?” “We competed to the best of our ability and got the result we deserved” For me the emphasis should be focused around development and competing to the best of our ability.
It’s not important to win or lose. But more important understanding how we won or why we lost. If you can deliver the effort that’s needed to compete, then success will follow. The effort you put into the PowerPoint presentation will win you that job! The effort you put into that tackle will win you the ball! EFFORT x talent = Skill Skill x EFFORT = achievement We need to focus on the bows and whys, not the ifs and when.
Teach the children grit, determination and how to compete with EFFORT then you’ll create a winning growth mindset mentality. Put the emphasis on competing rather than winning. Develop the technique to compete, develop the EFFORT needed to compete, develop the skills needed to compete, develop the knowledge to compete and the word “winning” is the product you produce by combining all the other elements.
Written by guest author Dan Allen
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