Lessons in Winning

I found this video amazing in many ways, and I watched it several times. Other than the obvious message (which is the value of teamwork) I felt there are many other great lessons one can learn from watching this:

1- Perseverance is the key to success. If you keep trying and never quit, success is bound to happen.

2- Failure is not lack of success on the first try, failure is when you stop trying before you succeed

3- You need a mentor (the child’s teacher in the video) who can help you learn from your failures, and help you to keep trying. Mentors are a very important part of one’s life.

4- Every time you try, there are some people who will be cheering for you (the child’s team mates) regardless of whether you win or lose. You always have their full support. These people are extremely important.

…and others who will be watching with very little interest or enthusiasm if you’re not winning (the parents in the video)

5- The lack of enthusiasm from those people doesn’t mean you are bad or irrelevant, it just means that they don’t care about your success as much as your team.

6- But when you win, everyone cheers for you, even those who weren’t interested in you before (the parents in the video). Suddenly you are relevant to them, because you’re a winner now.

7- The lack of cheering from people around you is not a measure of your eventual success, success is completely up to your desire to win, and never giving up till you do.

8- When the task is bigger than your abilities, only your team can unlock your inner abilities that you can tap into to defeat those odds. And only through the support of a strong team can a person achieve seemingly impossible things that appear to be beyond his reach.

9- You must be surrounded by a team of A-players, who are organized, disciplined, strong, supportive, and know how to help you to overcome your failure. Your success is their success. This spirit is imperative for success. B-players won’t help you achieve this.

10- You will feel sad and distressed every time you fail (the child cries every time he can’t make the jump), but in the end the glory of success wipes out all previous pain, and it makes it worth everything you’ve been through (in the end the child proudly walks to all the parents, and takes his final bow to the cheering audience)

11- There is no time to sit and cry over your failed attempts, wipe your tears while you’re running to try again. Winners don’t waste their time crying

12- Winning is hard, failing is easy, the difference is up to you

M.