BORN TO WIN
"WINNERS AND LOSERS"
"You cannot teach a man anything.
You can only help him discover it within himself."
-- Galileo
Each human being is born as something
new, something that never existed before. He is born with
what he needs to win at life. Each person in his own way
can see, hear, touch, taste, and think for himself. Each
has his own unique potentials-his capabilities and
limitations. Each can be significant, thinking, aware, and
creatively productive person in his own right-a
winner.
The words "winner" and "loser" have
man meanings. When we refer to a person as a winner, we do
not mean one who beats the other guy by winning over him and
making him lose. To us, a winner is one who responds
authentically by being credible, trustworthy, responsive,
and genuine both as an individual and as a member of
society. A loser is one who fails to respond authentically.
Martin Buber expresses this idea as he retells an old story
of a rabbi who on his death bed sees himself as a loser.
The rabbi laments that, in the world to come, he will not be
asked why he wasn't Moses; he will be asked why he wasn't
himself.
Few people are one hundred percent
winners or one hundred percent losers. It's a matter of
degree. However, once a person is on the road to being a
winner, his chances are greater for becoming even more so.
This book is intended to facilitate the journey.
WINNERS
Winners have different potentials.
Achievement is not the most important thing. Authenticity
is. The authentic person experiences the reality of himself
by knowing himself, being himself, and becoming a credible,
responsive person. He actualizes his own unprecendented
uniqueness and appreciates the uniqueness of others.
He does not dedicate his life to a
concept of what he imagines he should be, rather he is
himself and as such he does not use his energy putting on a
performance, maintaining pretence, and manipulating others
into his games. A winner can reveal himself instead of
projecting images that please, provoke, or entice others.
He is aware that there is a difference between being loving
and able and acting loving, between being stupid and acting
stupid, between being knowledgeable and acting
knowledgeable. He does not need to hide behind a mask. He
throws off unrealistic self-images of inferiority or
superiority. Autonomy does not frighten a winner.
Everyone has moments of autonomy, if
only fleeting. However, a winner is about to sustain his
autonomy over ever-increasing periods of time. He may lose
ground occasionally. He may even fail. Yet, in spite of
setbacks a winner maintains a basic faith in himself.
A winner is not afraid to do his own
thinking and to use his own knowledge. He can separate
facts from opinion and doesn't pretend to have all the
answers. He listens to others, evaluates what they say, but
comes to his own conclusions. While he can admire and
respect other people, he is not totally defined, demolished,
bound or awed by them.
A winner does not play "helpless" nor
does he play the blaming game. Instead he assumes
responsibility for his own life. He does not give others a
false authority over him. He's his own boss and knows
it.
A winner's timing is right. He
responds appropriately to the situation. His response is
appropriate when it is related to the message sent and
preserves the significance, worth, well-being, and dignity
of the people involved. He knows that for everything there
is a season and for every activity a time.
A time to be aggressive and a
time to be passive,
A time to be together and a time to
be alone,
A time to fight and a time to
love,
A time to work and a time to
play,
A time to cry and a time to
laugh,
A time to confront and a time to
withdraw,
A time to speak and a time to be
silent,
A time to hurry and a time to
wait.
To a winner time is precious. He
doesn't kill it. He lives it here and now. Living in the
now does not mean that he foolishly ignores his own past
history or fails to prepare for his future. Rather, he
knows his past, is aware and alive in the present, and looks
forward to the future.
A winner learns how to know his
feelings and his limitations and is not afraid of them. He
is not stopped by his own contradictions and ambivalences.
He knows when he is angry and can listen when others are
angry with him. He can give and receive affection. He is
able to love and be loved.
A winner can be spontaneous. He does
not have to respond in predetermined, rigid ways. He can
change his plans when the situation calls for it. A winner
has a zest of life. He enjoys work, play, food, other
people, sex, and the world of nature. He enjoys his own
accomplishments. Without envy he enjoys the accomplishments
of others.
Although a winner can freely enjoy
himself, he can also postpone enjoyment. He can discipline
himself in the present to enhance his enjoyment in the
future. He is not afraid to go after what he wants but does
so in appropriate ways. He does not get his security by
controlling others. He does not set himself up to
lose.
A winner cares about the world and its
peoples. He is not isolated from the general problems of
society. He is concerned, compassionate, and committed to
improving the quality of life. Even in the face of national
and international adversity, he does not see himself as
totally powerless. He does what he can to make the world a
better place.
LOSERS
Although people are born to win, they
are also born helpless and totally dependent on their
environment. Winners successfully make the transition from
total helplessness to independence, and then to
interdependence. Losers do not. Somewhere along the line
they begin to avoid becoming self-responsible.
As we have noted, few people are total
winners or losers. Most of them are winners in some areas
of their lives and losers in others. Their winning or
losing is influenced by what happens to them in
childhood.
A lack of response to dependency
needs, poor nutrition, brutality, unhappy relationships,
disease, continuing disappointments, inadequate physical
care, and traumatic experiences that contribute to making
people losers. Such experiences interrupt, deter, or
prevent the normal progress toward autonomy and
self-actualization. To cope with negative experiences a
child learns to manipulate himself and others. These
manipulative techniques are hard to give up later in life
and often become set patters. A winner works to shed them.
A loser hangs on to them.
Some losers speak of themselves as
successful but anxious, successful but trapped, or
successful but unhappy. Others speak of themselves as
totally beaten, without purpose, unable to move, half dead,
or bored to death. A loser may not recognize that, for the
most part, he has been building his own cage and digging his
own grave, and is a bore to himself.
A loser seldom lives in the present.
He destroys the present by occupying his mind with past
memories or future expectations.
When the loser lives in his past, he
dwells on the good old days or on his past misfortunes.
Nostalgically, he either clings to the way things "used to
be" or bemoans his bad luck. He feels sorry for himself and
shifts the responsibility for his unsatisfactory life onto
others. Blaming others and excusing himself are often part
of his games. A loser who lives in the past may lament if
only:
If only I had married some one
else…
If only I had a different
job…
If only I had finished
school…
If only I had been handsome
(beautiful)…
If only my spouse had
stopped drinking…
If only I had been
born rich…
If only I had
better parents…
When a person lives in the future he
may dream of some miracle after which he can "live happily
ever after." Rather than pursuing his own life, he
waits-waits for the magical rescue. How wonderful life will
be when:
When school is over…
When Prince Charming or the ideal
woman finally comes…
When the kids grow
up…
When that new job
opens…
When the boss
dies…
When my ship comes
in…
In contrast to those who live with the
delusion of a magical rescue, some losers live constantly
under the dread of future catastrophe. They conjure up
expectations of what if:
What if I lose my job…
What if I lose my
mind…
What if something falls on
me…
What if I break my
leg…
What if they don't like
me…
What if I make a
mistake…
By continually focusing on the future,
a person experiences anxiety in the present. He is anxious
over what he anticipates-either real or imagined-tests, bill
paying, a love affair, crisis, illness, retirement, the
weather, and so forth. A person overly involved with
imaginings lets the actual possibilities of the moment pass
him by. He occupies his mind with material that is
irrelevant to the current situation. His anxiety tunes out
current reality. Consequently, he is unable to see for
himself, hear for himself, feel for himself, or taste,
touch, or think for himself.
Unable to bring the full potential of
his senses into the immediate situation, a loser's
perceptions are incorrect or incomplete. He sees himself
and others through a prismlike distortion. His ability to
deal effectively with the real world is hampered.
A loser spends much of his time
play-acting. He pretends, manipulates, and perpetuates old
roles from childhood. He invests his energy in maintaining
his masks, often projecting a phony front. Karen Horney
writes, "The fostering of the phony self is always at the
expense of the real self, the latter being treated with
disdain, and best like a poor relative." To the play-acting
loser, his performance is often more important than his
reality.
A loser represses his capacity to
express spontaneously and appropriately his full range of
possible behavior. He may be unaware of other options for
his life if the path he chooses goes nowhere. He is afraid
to try new things. He maintains his own status quo. He is
a repeater. He repeats not only his own mistakes; he often
repeats those of his family and culture.
A loser has difficulty giving and
receiving affection. He does not enter into intimate,
honest, direct relationships with others. Instead, he tries
to manipulate them into living up to his expectations and
channels his energies into living up to their
expectations.
When a person is being a loser, he is
not using his intellect appropriately. He is misusing it by
rationalizing and intellectualizing. When rationalizing, he
gives excuses to make his actions seem plausible. When
intellectualizing, he tries to snow others with his
verbiage. Consequently, much of his potential remains
dormant, unrealized, and unrecognized. Like the frog-prince
in the fairy tale, he is spellbound and lives life being
something he isn't meant to be.
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