If You Can't Lose, You Can't Win

I have a habit of falling asleep with the television on. I have a sleep setting on my remote which will cause the television to automatically turn off after a set period of time but sometimes I fall asleep so fast, I don't even have time to set it. Then I awaken in the middle of the night with an infomercial blaring. Now don't get me wrong here. I have absolutely nothing against infomercials themselves, but as with all things, I think we need to take the claims with a grain of salt.

The other night I awoke after falling asleep with the television on. As usual, there was an infomercial on and I really did not pay that much attention to it. I just found the remote to turn the tv off. As I was in the process of finding the remote and hitting the off button, I heard the host say, "With this offer, you can't lose." As for this specific offer, it may be was true but many life lessons have taught me that is usually not the case. However, it was at this moment that my subconscious mind took over as I fell back asleep in a matter of seconds.

Throughout the rest of the night it seemed like my mind kept repeating, "If you can't lose, you can't win." Over and over.

I heard a voice in my head all day the following day practically repeating, "If you can't lose, you can't win!" I continue to hear this repeated even to the end of the day.

I has been a week and this phrase continues to scream out to me because in most things we do, there is a chance to lose. I think back to my days in school. I was a good student and many times I was very confident going into a test. A seemingly "can't lose" situation. I knew the material, I did not panic at test time, and a good memory that often helped me in situations that the teacher had covered but I had not studied in detail. But there were times when I read a question wrong or got in too much of a hurry that I missed more than I should have on an exam.

When we start to grow up we apply for a job. If there wasn't the possibility of not getting the job (losing) there would be no need for the application process. We would just show up at a company where we want to work and say I want a job doing this, that, or the other, and we would be hired.

And of course, where many of my life lessons come from, there is the field of athletic competition. It may have been an advertising slogan or just a t-shirt slogan from a few years back, but a popular phrase was, "You can't win if you don't play." The continuation of that truism is that if you play, there is a chance you are going to lose. Probably the most basic examples of this comes from my favorite sport of baseball. On any given play, either the pitcher is going to lose or the batter is going to lose. The batter steps up to the plate and he is either going to find a way to get on base or he is going to make an out. The pitcher toes the rubber and pitches to the batter, knowing he is either going to get the batter out or the batter will get on base. Every single at bat results in one of the two players losing to the other.

But if a pitcher never takes the mound, he can never strike anyone out. If a batter never goes to bat, he will never get a hit. If a baserunner never takes a chance of getting thrown out, he will never steal a base.

It is the same thing in life. If you have ever dreamed of opening your own business, but have never done anything toward this goal, you will never know if you could have become a successful entreprenuer. If you have ever dreamed of writing the great American novel, but never put a pen to paper or tapped out a thought on the computer, you will never know if you could have been a successful writer. There are so many things that can be looked at here but I think you can understand the point I am trying to make.

Yes, there is a chance that if you try to open a business it will not succeed, but if you never tried, how will you ever know. Sure if you write a book, publishers might reject it and no one will ever read it, but again, how will you ever know? Of course, if you don't try, you never have to worry about fear or rejection. If you can't lose, you can't win.

At the end here, I am putting in of my all time favorite quotes. It comes from Teddy Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States. Pay special attention to the last few lines. I have drawn strength from this at times when my fear of losing kept me from getting into the game.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. ~Theodore Roosevelt

Keep Smiling!!

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(c) Copyright 2007 Eddy Seegers