If you don't know how to lose, you'll never know how to win

                                                         

A story is told about Juma Owino, employed as excavator driver by a construction company that built Tanzam railway line which stretches for a distance of 1,860 kilometres connecting the port of Dar es salaam in Tanzania with the town of Kapiri Mposhi in Zambia. Owino’s duty station was Tunduma and his company operated eight-hour shifts and didn’t provide mid-day meals or refreshments. Employees brought packed meals and refreshments from home. They took meals in a large building that was erected initially to serve as a warehouse but was later converted into an eatery. 

One day, as everyone sat down to refresh themselves, and take lunch, Owino ran to his pigeonhole, inserted keys into the nozzle, opened it and pulled out a lunchbox. He opened the lunchbox. Slowly. Looked at the contents, frowned and said, “Oh no, rice and beans. I don’t like this food. I hate it.” Surprisingly, he finished the stuff. Clean. No single grain of rice was left in the box. The second day, he repeated the same thing. He opened his lunch-box and started complaining; “Rice and beans, again. How many times should I say this? I don’t like this food.” The third day, as usual, he pulled out his lunchbox and was about to start complaining, when an elderly man, sitting next to him, stood up and tapped Juma on the shoulder, saying; “Juma, please, give us a break. If you don’t like rice and beans for your lunch, why don’t you tell your wife to change recipe or if anything, tell her to prepare something different for your lunch?” To everyone’s surprise, Juma replied; “I live alone. I make my own lunch.”

Albert Einstein defined insanity as ‘doing the same thing, expecting different results.’ Juma held a picture of something better and he knew deep down his heart what he wanted, but he wasn’t keen to take action or change his behavior to create it. Isn’t this insanity? Most of us take life as a dress rehearsal. We’ll come back to perform at our best in the life to come. Nope. We live once. We must treat each day as an interview day.

It is time to stop complaining, stop blaming others, stop making excuses, stop pretending, stop posturing, stop coasting around. It is time to own up. Taking 100% responsibility is the hallmark of a winning life. You must acknowledge that you are the one who created the life you experience. Every performance that we experience today is a result of how we responded to events in the past. You failed exams because you didn’t study. You put on weight because you forsook gym membership. Your spouse left matrimonial home and abandoned you because you showed no care of them. You didn’t meet income budget because you were scared to make cold calls to prospects. Business associates are avoiding you because you’re arrogant. Nothing in life happens to a person by accident.

You get from life what you give it. You were promoted at your workplace because you put in excellent performance. You own property because you practiced the discipline of saving and investing judiciously. You got enrolled into college because you set aside time to study course material. Everything that happens to you and me, is attracted by our own actions or reactions. Intentionally or unintentionally. We attract outcomes. Blame it on the law of cause and effect.  

Life Has a Fair Accounting System

Life always hands us two options - blame or claim. Blame the event or claim your rarity in response to the event. You and I have no control of what happens to us. Certainly, we have control of how we respond to events. Enrolled in schools – whether you like it or not, exams will be administered to you. Whether you like it or not, your body grows naturally. Whether you like it or not, arguments with spouse are inevitable. The list is endless. To get results that you want, you must change your attitude towards events. Someone once said - life is a game. For you to win, you must know its ground rules. 

In our social orbits, we have and know people that want quality life but are not keen to work or apply themselves to achieve that quality life. They always find scapegoat to cast blame on. This reminds me of a story about Greek army general, Alexander the Great. He got down on a military campaign in Persia. He landed on the shores of Persia with a sizeable fleet of ships and hundreds of indomitable soldiers from Greece. As they prepared to wage war against the Persians, the soldiers’ determination fizzled off. They realized that the Persian army had outnumbered them. They smelt defeat at the hands of Persians and immediately approached their leader, Alexander, with a plea to sail back home to Greece without waging war. 

Alexander did the unthinkable.

He called his soldiers together and candidly told them that they had to fight the Persians. The soldiers grumbled. Undeterred by his soldiers’ protest, Alexander responded in his own way. His response was unbelievable - he stripped off his shirt. The soldiers were terrified because they didn’t know what their general was up to. With clothes off, Alexander moved close to where his soldiers were standing. What they saw was beyond everybody’s imagination – their leader’s body was scarred. His body was covered with bruises, fresh and healed wounds. As if that was not enough, Alexander turned around; this time with his back facing the soldiers. Silence engulfed the place. What they saw surprised and disturbed them even more – his body was only scarred at the front. The back was as spotless as that of a four-year old child. Up to this moment, he didn’t utter any word, but he certainly knew that the message was delivered - he fought every enemy that he met head-on. He never turned his back on the enemy. He never got cowed. He never quit. He never ran away from the enemy to allow them to hit his back. 

After the episode, Alexander called one of his trusted lieutenants and gave him two orders:

“Run to the beach. Burn all our boats to ashes!” He stood still, waiting for a sign from the beach. Then, he saw smoke billing into the sky. He turned to the soldiers, pointing his finger to the beach, where smoke was coming from, saying; “See, all your boats are burning to ashes. You have two options: You and I sail back home to Greece in Persian ships, or we die here and become carcass for the hungry vultures and vampires that roam in this country.” Two months later, Alexander and his men triumphantly landed on the shores of Greece in Persian ships. 

Repeated Failure Strengthens Your Success Rate

The lifestyle that you experience today is in fact the result of the response that you took to certain events in the past. Re-read the story of Juma - he wanted better meals for his lunch but wasn’t willing to take action required to create it. Consider Alexander the Great, he built a vast empire because of his character. He never feared loss. He never quit.  

If you want a better life for your family and significant others, be prepared to put in resources and effort required to achieve the quality life that you yearn for. Most of us don’t take the required action because of fear of failure, fear of making mistakes, or fear of looking foolish or being ridiculed. Understand that failure is part of the process of success. Failure and mistakes give you good education. Psychologists assert that when you face your fear, you’ll come to appreciate that it isn’t as big as it one imagined it initially. The longer you avoid facing your fear, the bigger it becomes and the more discouraged you become to take appropriate action. Achievement of poor performance becomes a new normal. 

John Bogle, founder of Vanguard Finance, put it better than I can: “Many of us have a rowboat mentality. We move forward into the future the way we row boats. That is; facing backward looking at only the past.” If you made a mistake in the past because of poor judgment that shouldn’t stop you from making another decision today. Understanding that today’s action determines future lifestyle brings sense of purpose in our lives. Be prepared to make as many mistakes as you can. Learn lessons from your mistakes and move on. 

High achievers have ageless brain tattoo. They are hungry for failures because they understand that the more they fail, the more they learn. The more they learn, the better they act. The better they act, the sooner they succeed.  

Let me challenge you. Go into the street near you. Buy yourself a newspaper. Scan through the vacancy column of the newspaper. You’ll decipher a pattern. Almost all job vacancies look for candidates with a certain particularity - experience. What job advertisers don’t tell you is the type of experience that they look for. Isn’t it true that when one graduates from college, one barely lands a job in the labour market? Ask any employer and they’ll tell you that they don’t fancy new graduates due to lack of ‘hands-on’ experience. No employer wants to engage someone, who has never made a mistake before, who has never failed before, or who has never been defeated before. Similarly, leaders look for followers that have failed and made mistakes before. In workplaces, bosses fancy subordinates that are able to work with lessons of failure in mind. 

Great leaders appreciate that in order for one to achieve business and personal goals, one needs to make good decisions. Verily verily I say unto thee; Good decision comes from experience. Experience comes from poor decisions. Experience of knowing what works and what doesn’t work and why. In case you didn’t know: This is the type of experience that every boss (including your boss) craves for from his subordinates.

I don’t need to be a prophet to prophesy your future if you are a type of person who avoids trying new things out of fear for failure or making a mistake. 

Lester Chinyang’anya ǀ General Manager - Operations ǀ Minet Malawi