No matter how great you think you are, there is always someone, somewhere out there, who is better.
I saw it a lot of it growing up as I started competitive tackle football at age seven. I would have started at age six, but I was caught trying to forge my parents’ signatures on the application.
My big brother was a star middle linebacker for his championship high school team and I was a star linebacker for the championship Pop Warner team I played for.
Both our teams would eventually lose to another champion.
That’s how life goes.
Without a doubt, I absolutely hate to lose. It’s not that I enjoy the winning so much as I disdain finishing behind someone else.
When I was coaching a little kids’ soccer team in the early 70’s in Tucson, Arizona, let’s say my team lost by a ten-goal margin. One of my post-match pep talks might sound like: “You played a great game today. They might have been lucky enough to score more goals than us, but you were obviously the real winners out there,” or some other horseshit like that.
Inside I was saying to them: “You little dumbasses! All week long you practice and you come out here on matchday and play like you don’t know what a soccer ball is for! Remember: you lose in soccer, you lose in life!”
But no.
I would never do that.
I used to think I was getting to be quite the hotshot as an ice carver after apprenticing under a Japanese master, first at the Hilton, and later at the Imperial Palace in Las Vegas. But that was before I met “Sneaky” Sanjin Aoki.
I had carved a piece for the Silver Slipper Sunday brunch buffet and Chef Aoki had seen it and mentioned it at the seminar he was holding at the Hilton. It was a three-tiered waterfall I had made using a little slot car engine to generate the animated water wave “rapids.”
He then proceeded to show the hundred and fifty-member audience how to improve on my piece with a few different cuts and the use of a hand-held saws-all.
It was so obvious that his deftly-finished skills were pretty much going to be the standard going forward.
I would go on to fulfill a six-month apprenticeship to Chef Aoki and the very first thing he taught me was the reason for his nickname.
The chef was always able to sneak in a pint of booze every time he entered the freezer for any prolonged (over 2 hours) period.
His hand never wavered even as he drained the last of the liquor from the bottle and the pieces he produced were amazing.
As amazing as he was, Chef Aoki placed third in the World’s Cup for ice carving.
So as awesome as Chef was, there is always someone, or as in this case, multiple someone’s, who are better.
Get over it.
I am definitely NOT the guy proposing “participation trophies,” or worse, no trophies at all.
Getting youngsters to think like that does not give them a realistic perspective of the competitive business world at the highest levels, where the cutthroat the better, more successful you will be.
That’s reality!
Stay well.
