Excellence & Human Nature - Winning vs. Losing

Aristotle says the following. Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution. It represents the wise choice of many alternatives. Choice, not chance, determines your destiny.

You know? And I'm I'm wondering why are why are we as humans so obsessed with excellence? We're in the middle of football season right now. Actually, it's about 3 quarters of the way through the NFL. Love watching a good football game every now and then.

And last night, it was an amazing game with, Philadelphia Eagles and the Buffalo Bills. Buffalo Bills just are underperforming this year. This was a critical game for them. You know, if they won, it'd be 7 and 5, which means they still had a chance to get into the wildcards and it's, you know, they get planned and that'd be alright. Philadelphia is overperforming.

They're 10 and 1 right now. I mean, after they won last night, so they beat Buffalo, but it was a great game. But it's like, as we watch sports, why are we so obsessed with excellence? Why are we so obsessed with winning? And why is it such a depressing thing to lose?

To me, there there's value in both. Some of the greatest experiences in life, even though it's hard come when you lose. Yes. You but there seems to be something within us with the within the human Genome, whatever we wanna call it, that we're we're obsessed with excellence. We're obsessed with getting a's.

A's are better than b's, b's are better than c's, c's are better than d's, and failing is, well, it's failing. And I see that now that I'm older and I have my own grandchildren, and I've I've known so many people. Perhaps you know someone like me when when people have kids of their own. They'll come to you and say things like, you have no idea how brilliant this kid is. This kid's different.

He just kinda stands out. He's he's the teacher said this or someone said this. Everyone thinks their kid's gonna grow up to become the president of the United States or something like that. No. Most of us grow up just to be normal people, and we struggle to put bread on the table, we struggle to make sense out of life, We struggle with our children, we struggle with relationships.

I've never met never met a person who has everything altogether, and everything is working and just peachy dandy all the time. So the very essence of life is surrounded by non perfection, by failure, by underperforming. It's the process and the task of learning from it where life seems to have its meaning. Life is meant to be challenging. It's meant to be difficult.

I was listening to a podcast by an f sixteen fighter pilot, when what they do in their in their training. And he said, they'd go out on a mission. I mean, there's a lot of things you said in the podcast, but remember this mostly. Go out on their mission, they they plan the mission, and they'll do a a little brief right before the mission. K.

This what exactly we're gonna do. They go out and fly the mission and then they come back. Let's say the mission took an hour. There they'd go through what's called a debrief. And when they go into the room to do this debrief, They take the patches off of their shoulder signifying what rank they are in in in the military.

And they put them in a little basket, and then they go into a room and everyone is free to say whatever they want about the mission. And they analyze it. They analyze Every little aspect of the mission. What happened here? What can we do to correct this?

So that next time this doesn't happen. And they will take twice as long in the debrief as they did flying the mission. And I imagine, you know, so as I started talking about the NFL because that's on my mind right now. That's what they do. Right?

You you hear them those who study films films over and over again. That's like they watch. They learn. This in this player always does this. He has a tendency to do this.

This player does that. So that when we face him, let's do this, let's do that. It's a constant learning, debriefing process, and continuing to pick yourself up and and move on. But I think I think the greatest joy in life is actually to be engaged in something. Those who I'm working with in the therapeutic world right now, the ones that are having the most difficult time aren't engaged in anything.

They're they're stuck. They're frozen. They're unable to move forward with confidence and faith in themselves. And so it's a curious thing to examine is when we underperform, and we don't do as well as we think we can do or should have done. Why do some pick themselves up and learn from it, and others completely get stuck and frozen.

And for those who are stuck and frozen, How can we help reignite them again? Help them to find that spark of life again where they're willing to go out and try and attempt things. And from what I've seen, they they come across things that they don't quite understand. And instead of breaking through that barrier and getting themselves to understand, believing that they have the intelligence to really pick it up, they quit. They stop.

Because they've they've tried to learn something a few times, they just quit. Well and I don't think quitting is ever permanent either. So they've stopped learning. They're they're stuck and frozen, so That's that's one of the most challenging things that a therapist face in working with clients who are at that place. A lot of it goes back to this thing called internal dialogue, the things that we say to ourselves, the words we use to ourselves.

Right? In the previous in a previous podcast, I I mentioned that that that quote by, Bruce Lee. Right? Where he said, don't speak negatively about yourself even as a joke because your body doesn't know the difference. Words are energy and cast spells, that's why they call it spelling.

Change the way you speak about yourself, and you can change your life. What you're not changing, you're also choosing. And and so we gotta look deep inside of ourselves to find our self esteem and to master certain things on our own. Learn to drink up stream. Bruce Lee also made another comment that Levius says, the more we depend on others for esteem, the less we are self sufficient.

Because if we have bay we base our value on what others think of us, It's it's like waking up and going, well, what's the weather today? Is it gonna be clear or cloudy? Because people change their minds all the time. Confidence is attractive. Self sufficiency is attractive.

It is not attractive to complain and moan about things in life in general. The only place to work on those things is to find a safe arena to do that, particularly in therapy or another safe individual, a pastor, someone you can go to who you you trust. You can really talk about what's going on. If you're stuck, just keep getting up. The only way through is through.

So so just something to ponder. When were you successful in life. When did you something when did you do something super great? When you actually succeeded. And how can you take that and transfer that into whatever is happening right now where you don't think you're you're going so well or doing so well.

Believe in yourself. Talk yourself up. First of all, you're you're responsible for you. You've gotta save yourself. And if other people have fed you with negative messages your whole life from this moment on, refuse to believe them any longer.

Recreate yourself right now by speaking positively about your itself. So take away from this podcast, the next time you see yourself in the mirror, you talk yourself up. Tell yourself that you love love yourself. You're grateful for your capacity to get up and keep trying. Honor yourself that you're still involved in the struggle, and that means the war is not over.

The battles the battles not won yet, and there is still time for you to do whatever it is you truly desire to do. Just keep working on it.