Winning is the laurel that crowns a journey of learning, the natural consequence of a spirit of growth and progress.
To win, you have to learn to lose. We learn everything from defeats and almost nothing from victories, which is why winning and losing are two sides of the same coin. If you want to progress, you’re going to have to learn to lose, and lose often. The important thing is that between each defeat, you have enough time to assimilate the lessons.
When you’re obsessed with winning, you run the risk of giving up. In fact, if we value the result and it’s disappointing, we can lose patience and lose interest in what we’re doing. If all you think about is results, it’s best to avoid committing yourself to the path in question, because you don’t have a competitive advantage over others. Our motivation is conditioned by our results, so we’re fragile.
What is autotelic is what is done as an end and not as a means in itself. A soccer fan, for example, will love the sport for what it is, not for what it might bring him. Anti-fragility consists in getting stronger with every incident, which is the hallmark of anyone who experiences failure. That’s why every learner of a discipline must develop an autotelic relationship with it, in order to guarantee constant learning that is conducive to success as an indirect consequence.
Winning is good, but as we’ve seen, it’s an indirect objective. Winning at all costs creates toxicity, short-termism and a tendency to cheat. A culture of learning leads to excellence, even if it’s a longer process.
Much of what we do is learned through obligation. We go to school because we have to, and many other things. There’s nothing wrong with cultivating a sense of duty, but the problem lies in organizing our lives solely through the prism of duty, because we end up acting automatically. And being automatic cuts us off from our source, from what we love, from what drives us. To cultivate the right state of mind, we need to connect with our source.
There’s a flow that passes through the various chakras, known as kundalini. This flow can become blocked in certain places, preventing us from expressing deep joy. Unblocking the chakras means overcoming our limitations, facing up to our fears, reconnecting with who we are, and doing what we love every day.
If you’re able to feel joy (not pleasure) on a daily basis, it means that you’re being true to yourself, that you’re listening to and following your deepest self. If, on the contrary, you can’t do this, it means that something is wrong and that you’ve let go of who you were, that you’ve neglected yourself, that you’ve given too much importance to other people’s opinions. You’ve cut the ties with your source.
If you want to be the best in your week, you have to see it as an infinite game: you’ll never stop learning. To achieve this state of mind, there’s no better ally than the natural joy associated with the practice of this activity, which is why you need to reconnect with your source, the mirror of who you really are.
If you can practice your art as a child plays the games he loves, you have an undeniable advantage over others. Play is the best way to learn, because it’s selfless. And it’s by forgetting the desire to win that you triumph in the long run.
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