Don’t Cry to Win, Try to Win

These were my words to my 4 year old daughter who started crying as she did not become the ‘king’ by finishing her dinner first. The competition was about finishing up the meal first and the person who does that becomes a ‘king’. While I was trying to match her pace and was eating slowly, at some stage she let her efforts go down and incorrectly  assumed that she can be winner by default all the time for just playing.

As I uttered these words, I realised that not only children but adults too cry when they don’t win. Winning can have many meanings but to put it simply in this context, when something does not go as per the wishful thinking of the person. The crying is in the form of abusing the system, authorities, seniors, blaming fate etc. Just because of wishful thinking, does not make anyone a winner by default. The person under this wrong impression most probably does to win and starts crying. To win, people need to try first, take action and that too bold actions.

Even following this mantra is no guarantee that you will win, but at least you know that you tried. The people involved will also know that you tried and  just not crying of failure on your wishful thinking. That is what makes a difference.

If you make crying your strategy to win whatever you are trying to win, it may work for one time or two but eventually people will get sick of it and leave their goodness hat aside . And there is a name for such people – Crybabies.