Winning is not everything; Risk losing

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

This famous quote is from F. Scott Fitzgerald who is better known for his masterpiece - The Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel by this American writer. Later?Gatsby?has been adapted for the stage, films, and television multiple times since its publication. The latest adoption is a 2013 movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Toby Maguire of Spiderman fame.??

I really like this quote from Fitzgerald and pondering upon it for a couple of days. It is perfect to say keeping two or more opposing ideas in your mind and I am sure many leaders follow the same in spite of the fact that they may lose occasionally.?

Winning and losing are a part of?life. They are two sides of the same coin. Winning and losing come in cycles; neither is permanent.

Winning is not everything and too great a focus on it can block learning. There?is an example of the importance of losing in order to learn how to win:

If a big strong guy comes into a martial arts studio and someone pushes him, he wants to resist and push the guy back to prove that he is a big strong guy. The problem is that he isn’t learning anything by doing this.

In order to learn and grow, he needs to give up his current mindset. He needs to lose to win. The bruiser will need to get pushed around by little guys for a while until he learns to use more than brawn.

William Chen calls this investment in the loss. Investment in loss is giving yourself to the learning process.

Make winning a habit and risk losing.