In ourselves, are triumph and defeat

Not in the clamor of the crowded street,

Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,

But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat!

C.W. Longenecker had once said, "Life's battles don't always go to the stronger or faster man. But soon or late the man who wins, is the man who thinks he can". Whether you're playing a sport or you're at work or even personally in all the struggles that life presents, I have always wondered what it takes to win! While some would say you need a lot of luck, there are others who would say its sheer hard work and perseverance and yet, there will be those who believe winning is not the ultimate objective at all! So what does it take to win and whether indeed it is essential to win?? What better way to illustrate the point, than quoting T.A. Edison, when he remarked....We now know a thousand ways not to build a light bulb. While some didn't work, others just flashed and went dead and some only lasted a few minutes...but Edison believed that each attempt to create a light bulb was a step ahead in his learning process...he believed in himself that he could eventually succeed in getting one to work long enough that it would make sense to make it for sale to the public!

We all have bad days and moments...it could come in various ways, it could be issues with friends, family problems, illness, financial problems in our lives etc. Defeat in our lives does not necessarily mean the end of our world. Defeat comes in once in a while but the real defeat is when we fail to overcome whatever circumstances that come our way. If we think and believe we can win, we surely can. To this argument one may say, where is the role of hard work if only thinking and believing is all that it takes? Well, to believe something means to put your ideas into practice and therefore, there comes in the significance of effort/hard work! Rather than allowing defeats to demoralize us, we can turn it around to our advantage and analyze why we lost and strike a deal for effective trials in the future. Defeats are somewhat a blessing in disguise as they make us learn more about ourselves than we possibly can do otherwise. And then again, if we ourselves feel that we would lose, then of course we surely will!

Is winning all that important? I know we always say its more important to play than to win...its the effort that counts and not the result etc etc! But tell me something how many of us would go into playing a sport thinking its okay to lose? How many of us would take up a venture assuming it would be fine to fail in it? How many would take up a challenge in life with the intention of just working through the issues and not aiming to resolve them (i.e, win)? I bet the answer to all those questions is none of us! It is really the desire to succeed, the thrill of victory, the essence of being triumphant that gets us motivated to continue... to pursue our endeavours... to fight against all odds; and yet, if we do end up defeated, it is just one of the several attempts we would make to get that thing done! So I'd say winning is probably the single most motivating driver that pushes man to do everything that he does! What I am not saying is that if we don't win, its the end of life.... all I'm trying to say is that we should always enter into something and put in our best as if we wanted to be victorious - that's the only factor we can control! There are several other factors that are beyond our control and therefore the result is not purely a function of our effort, so it is our mind that needs to understand that all "I" can do is to try to succeed, to try and be triumphant...and then whether or not "I" am eventually the winner, depends on a whole lot of other factors that play a role in it! Therefore, what I say is that when we end up being defeated, we should not consider it to be an end to all the future genuine endeavours that we should make in order to pursue something..to succeed; we should just consider it as one of the stepping stones to the forthcoming success, the ensuing triumph!

And...what is triumph...is it the ability to defeat others or is it the successful ending of one's own struggle? I'd define winning as achieving a pre-meditated goal! In other words to triumph is to succeed and vice-versa. So then, exactly why is it important? The answer is simple: Man is born to win...we have a primal instinct that compels us to achieve, that drive is what's behind each thought and action...it is what initiates every moment of our lives! So we feel happy and overjoyed when we achieve what we target and emerge victorious and at the same time, get upset when the opposite happens. It is only human to be disappointed when we lose, to be dejected and demoralized by defeat and I encourage all of us to feel the resentment that defeat can cause...for it is only when we feel that ways, that we will gather up all the courage, sit up and decide to fight against it and draw out a plan to win the next time! It is indeed in our own minds as to how we want to approach something....whether to be bogged down by failures or to learn from each failure on what mistakes not to repeat in the future. One would then question: What about repeated failures on different counts? If we try several times and still not succeed? It is important to appreciate that we will not always win...there are going to be times when we will have to lose, there are going to be events in which we will have to face defeat, so then how does it matter? Well, it does!! Take for example someone who is a professional tennis player: how many of us think that he will be disappointed if he loses a chess game with his friend, if two weeks later, he has the Wimbledon trophy with him? Or, would a presiding member of parliament be upset if he fails to learn a new language after trying a few times, if he does end up winning a second term eventually? Get what I'm trying to say?? Its all about the battles we want to pick in our lives...we need to be able to prioritize in our minds on what are the few things that make life worth living and focus all our attention in winning on those fronts and I'm sure if all our energy is channelized to concentrate on the few things that we want to win, the few areas that 'drive' us...we will definitely succeed, not just in those areas alone, but also in general, for the moment we stop thinking about 'losing' on other grounds, we succeed in eliminating the word defeat from our lives altogether!!

In the end, I can only remember Sir Steve Redgrave, the man who won five consecutive Olympic gold medals in rowing...Winning is all in the mind!