Why 97% of people will never win!

I went to visit a client today that requested I evaluate one of his franchisees. I have been working with this client on the “Good, Better, Best” leadership principles and they have been so helpful to him, that he wanted to see if I could meet with one of his most difficult franchisees and potentially light the fire within him as well. He prepped me about the nature and “heart” of this owner. He described him to be very adversarial, loud and verbally abusive. District Managers refused to work with him and my client was ready to ask him to sell. Upon arriving at the store, the owner briskly walked over to us before we could even shut the car doors. He stood in front of us with his arms firmly crossed and a furrowed brow. The first words out of his mouth were very pointed as he stated, “What are you going to tell me now?” He was as rigid as an ice sculpture. After some small talk, I decided to steer away from the business side of the discussion and started to ask about his family. It was as if this ice sculpture was placed directly on the equator as his defense armor melted when he started to talk about his young son. Before I knew it, this owner that had created such animosity had tears streaming down his face. He ran inside of the building and brought a picture to me. It was a picture of his son when he was about three years old. His son was pointing to a sign that read “Coming Soon” with one hand and thumbs up sign with his other hand. This owner started telling me the story of how he and his family had great dreams of this business making a better life for them and instead of that, his son now hated him. He hated him because his mom and dad chose to work the business more than they chose to spend time with him. It was not really the company or the district managers that he was reacting to. He did not have a bad nature or a tainted heart. He was simply experiencing the affects of his choices and his posturing of defense instead of choosing to make a change. With this attitude, he was sure not to achieve his dreams.

Look at the people around you. What do you see? Stress? Unhappiness? Boredom?

Most people will never escape what we call the 'rat race' to achieve any semblance of freedom in their lives for some very simple reasons. A basic fact of this game we call life is that you can't win simply by playing defense. This holds true for any game really. Most people are stuck defending a job they hate so they can make a mortgage or rent payment on a home they don't care for so they can keep their credit rating and avoid bankruptcy

When you look closely, most of the decisions an average person makes on a daily basis are simply defensive in nature. This is all fine and dandy as long as a person doesn't mind fighting their way through life. You can't win a game simply by playing defense.

So how can one 'win' this game we call life? Well, for starters, we can stop defending things in our current lives that we don't particularly care for in the first place. If you loathe your job why do you keep showing up? That car of yours is probably not one you particularly care for so why do you keep making the payments?

Assuredly you've got an answer such as "I have to keep working or else __________ will happen." That's called playing defense. Once again, this is fine if you're content to struggle through life without chance of winning, but I'm willing to bet that's not the case.

You see, the first key to success in life is to stop defending the things you do have that you didn't really want in the first place and, yes, this takes courage. Luckily there is no competition in life for people who show even the slightest amount of persistent courage.

Playing 'not to lose' simply affirms over and over that you already have what you want because after all you're defending it. So step 1 in achieving life success is to stop defending the things already in your life that you don't particularly care for. When you do this you'll have time to play offense for a change and finally have a chance of winning the game! Rest assured, with 97% of people out there stuck playing defense against each other even a small offensive effort on your part is likely to win you the game. There (still) is no competition for those who choose to play this game on purpose. Life is to short not to.