Winning and learning: Why winning is more important than competing

Claim your role as a winner and stop competing in life. It will only bring you misery.

Winning is more important than participating. I know that "Participation is more important than winning" is a popular saying, and you see it in school. At our elementary school these days there are only teachers. There is one master and otherwise there are only teachers. You generally see - and now, of course, I am going to tread on gigantic slippery ice - that women find winning less important than men.

Of course, this is certainly not the case with everyone. Yet you see that in schools, that winning is somewhat secondary. As if it's not that important, because everyone is important. Well I agree, everyone is important. Otherwise you wouldn't be here, I think, that's natural selection. You are important

But why are you important? You are important because you have certain qualities. Maybe you are very good at drawing, math, language or you name it and you can excel in that, you can win in that. You might even win a prize.

Research shows that there is a correlation between children's motor development and the option to win. So that development improves when winning is important[1].

What bothers me so much is that precisely by participating in that, by focusing on someone's weaknesses, focusing on making that better, that in that you start pointing out precisely how bad someone is at something. Instead of focusing on how good someone is, you create a kind of mediocrity. There are always one or two who stand out. A few excel in sports, for example, or in math and language.

Drawing and music are obviously not that important and then you go already. What to do with it? It's nonsense, of course, but again children excel at that.

Winning is in our nature

The mindset of “participating rather than winning” is holding us back. This is not in our nature; in our nature lies struggle, lies winning. Our brain is tuned to conflict, to duality. Are you going to do something or not? It’s all conflict.

You might also believe that everything is one and that we’re all part of it. That’s true, but we have to deal with the struggle—even the struggle within ourselves. In martial arts, they say—and for good reason—that you are your only opponent. For example, in the struggle against that pink cake, the struggle over whether or not to go to the gym, or to start meditating. The struggle of having a conflict with someone or a textbook you have to read.

You just want to win that battle and that takes energy. It takes strength and that doesn't always feel good because you have to leave something for it. If you don't do any of that, it does feel very comfortable, but then you're a loser.

Then you lose to yourself. You lose out on what you really want, so you don’t do it. That doesn’t feel good, so what do you do? Forget it—why should I do it? I might as well snort, drink, or eat. Isn’t just participating important, too?

No, joining is for losers.

Participating is not more important than winning, because participating means giving up, losing, never mind. That means I'm participating too.

But you're already participating. You were born, so you're already participating.

But for now, just be a winner for yourself. Not for another, not for comparison. If you start comparing yourself to others, it will never work out, because there is always someone better or more beautiful at something.

But by winning from yourself, you end up learning more.

Comparing to win doesn't work

Comparing is a very annoying strategy to adopt, because then you want to win for your ego and that doesn't necessarily make you happier.

Research shows that people who have the drive to win are motivated by it. That motivation leads to three things: it feels good to win, it’s motivating to develop yourself, and in some cases, winning requires you to develop yourself to a high level.

To achieve this, it is important that you focus on the task you want to win with and not on what winning does for your ego[2].

Winning for the sake of your ego is about proving you’re better than others—that’s not where you’ll find happiness in life.

Stop there.

Win and learn from yourself

Position yourself as a winner, but not a comparator. Don't "I'm the best," because that doesn't make sense. Win from yourself. Compared to the person you were yesterday, you can win today. Focus on the task instead of your ego, focus on what you want to be able to do.

That's a better comparison to make. For me, that's winning.

Winning is...

Beating that part of your mind that wants to be lazy, that wants to eat chips and Ben & Jerry’s, and that would rather stay in bed. Beating that voice, moment after moment—that’s what makes you a winner.

Not necessarily being the best of everyone, but being better than you were yesterday.

So winning is important, because if you go along with that inner voice—with laziness—you’ll become lazy, fat, sick, and then you’ll die.

But do you want to lie on your deathbed thinking you've been a loser all your life or do you want to say you've been a winner?

If you're born a winner anyway, if you've fought the biggest battle and left 80 million behind you anyway, you should claim that spot. Be a winner.

Winners don’t put others down; those who do are just participating. That’s what most people do. Winners look at themselves and think: “Where can I make progress, what are my pitfalls, and what are my weaknesses?” They dare to ask themselves these questions and dare to address them within themselves.

You can also have the realization that you can't do everything and then delegate things to win that way.

It doesn't matter what context you see it in. In sports, it's pretty logical that you compete to win. You don't play soccer for the sake of competing. That's very irritating when you have a team of 11 people and five just want to compete, while the rest want to win. Those five have to leave then. Those eleven people should all just want to win.

It is very crazy to claim that want to win in the Netherlands. People will find you pretty quickly walking beside your shoes. But why else participate in a tournament?

In business, it's the same way. You want to win! Not at any cost, but you just want to win. You just want to be the first, biggest or best in your field. You pick something you can win at and that becomes your playing field.

It's like this in business and like this in nature, there is always a winner and a loser. You can think a lot of things about that, but that's the way it is.

There also used to be six human races and now there is only homo sapiens, because they won. You can have some opinions about that too, but those others participated and we won.

I'm not necessarily proud of that, but it's in our nature to win.

So the question is not: how can you join anything? Rather, the question is: how do you emerge victorious? Then you don't have to compete against anyone else, but only against yourself.

If you make a little progress every day, at some point you can say, "I'm a winner."

Be sure to listen to this podcast as well:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/195236/1234853-winnen-is-belangrijker-dan-meedoen

When winning gets in your way

Do you find it difficult to compete with yourself and do you get caught up in competing with others? Does this even get you into trouble (because you lie about what you’ve achieved)?

Then hypnosis can help you change that focus so that you start to like winning again and work from your own strengths.

There are multiple ways you can get this done with hypnosis. For example, you can get a guided visualization of what your life could look like if you win over yourself.

You can undergo regression to find out when and why you started comparing yourself to others and why it’s so difficult for you to stop doing so. During the regression, you can then address that moment. The hypnotherapist will help you with this, so that you can let go of that comparison with others,

You are given affirmations that you can repeat during self-hypnosis to keep your focus on yourself daily and to even forget that equation.

Want to know exactly how all this works? Then come join a free online masterclass.

Would you like to see hypnotherapy in action? Then come to a seminar.

Would you like to learn the techniques to help yourself or others? Then sign up for one of the courses offered by the Hypnosis Institute of the Netherlands.

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cch.12298

[2]  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0191886995000355