Winning Is Winning Right?... Wrong!

Picture this…

You’re a professional golfer and have won your last 3 tournaments. You’re on top of the world! You’re killing it right?

During each round you had a number of lucky breaks with lucky bounces off trees and some poor shot choices which missed disaster by a couple of centimetres…

Now imagine how you would react to those poor shots if you didn’t win. What if those poor shots led you down a losing streak? Would you stay out later than everybody else on the driving range? Would you have your coach help you more with your swing?  

While the golf scenario might not make sense to everybody this next one should hit a little closer to home. I see it play out in the gym environment all the time…   

Imagine you have been CrossFitting or training for a while now and you have made amazing progress to date. While making this amazing progress you have still been able to eat what you like, stay out late drinking and sacrifice sleep for Netflix…  

It’s as if those things don’t have any impact on how you perform so you haven’t considered them…

Now picture this. You have instead of making amazing progress gone the opposite way. Instead of losing weight and getting fit you have put on 5-10kgs and your fitness has decreased. What would you think of your food choices, drinking habits and Netflix addiction then?

It’s human nature to in moments of defeat or undesired results place more importance on these factors. Whereas if things were going well or you were winning you would say something like “Hey, winning is winning right?”

Just because things are going well doesn’t mean you can get complacent. If all you focus on is results this can happen at times. So how do you avoid this trap? Bring your focus back to the process and the little things to avoid complacency…   

Don not accept in victory that which you would not accept in defeat…

Shaun Diachkoff

@shaundiachkoff