I bet you read that subject line and thought…
Of course I am playing to win!
But let me finish the question….
Are you playing to win OR are you playing to not lose?
I remember being obsessed with studying success stories when I first birthed my business idea.
I wanted to know what made people successful.
Geeking out on their stories.
Motivated by their wins.
I took assessments like the Entrepreneurial Strengths Finder to see if I could fit the bill.
Searching for THE special ingredient.
Looking outside of myself for validation.
But what it really came down to was just getting started.
Being ok with it being messy and making mistakes.
Taking on the saying “Done is better than perfect” so I could get out of my own way and start.
You see, when you play to win, what that really means is you are moving towards your desired result.
It means you aren’t focused on the journey as much as you are committed to finishing strong.
If your strategy is about NOT making mistakes….guess what happens…you make decisions from a place of lack, scarcity and limitation which creates more of what you don’t want.
You don’t want to get stuck – you get stuck.
You don’t want to fail – you never start…
…and if you do start, you prove yourself right by falling flat on your face and then getting derailed.
You can’t win and achieve greatness if you expect to have a perfect record.
Check these out:
Wayne Gretzky: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
Michael Jordan missed more than 9,000 shots, lost almost 300 games and twenty six times had been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed.
Colonel Sanders, the founder of KFC, started at 65 and failed 1009 times before succeeding.
When you’re afraid to make a mistake, afraid to ruffle feathers, afraid to fail because of what other people think, you end up doing NOTHING.
Earlier this year I interview 50 experts for my Scaling for Passive Profits masterclass series and you know what the common theme was when I asked them about their secret?
Their willingness to fail, get messy and get back up again.
As Zig Ziglar said,
“Failure is just a detour not a dead end street. Failure is an event, not a person. Failure does not identify who you are as a person, it only gives you experience and wisdom.”
Tell me this, what is one action you’ve been avoiding out of fear of making a mistake?
Comment below and tell me what it is, THEN go take one small action on it to get the ball rolling.
