Play To Win

Play to win. Flip that avoidance mentality and harness the passion that you started with. It is human nature to feel fear as a goal approaches because of our evolutionary predisposition to safeguard assets. With our goal so close, we feel like we have it, and then our mentality becomes that we don’t want to lose it. This is best thought of as the alternative to “playing to win” which is “playing not to lose”.

Now that we understand that, we can replace this fear with a more appropriate emotion, excitement. The best way to do that is to track your goal. Having a visual representation of how much progress you are making on your goal is a good way to remind you of the initial reason for pursuing that goal.  I suggest making a calendar specific to your goal that you can visit every evening. This is beneficial in a few ways. First, the physical nature of a calendar allows you to interact with your goal when you succeed in small ways, either by checking it off or crossing it out. It also helps you focus on daily progress and provide validation in your efforts on an on-going basis, which provides small but frequent surges of motivation. Then, as you near the end, you can look back on all of the work you’ve put in to get to that point, and feel more inclined to attach the final bit than obligated to finish it out.

We all want to be winners, and the best way to get there is to play to win.