it IS about winning

Otherwise, you’re just teaching your kids to be losers.

I said what I said.

I went on a slight rant on the ‘gram the other night because I heard a grown adult say that “It’s not about winning, it’s about being fair to all the kids and giving them all a chance,” and with all due respect, FUCK THAT.

It’s about winning.

If you didn’t hear me the first time, I SAID WHAT I SAID.

Telling kids:

“It’s not about winning, it’s about having fun,”

“Everyone deserves equal playing time,”

“Just have fun!”

“Everyone gets a trophy for being part of the team,”

Is literally teaching your children to embrace mediocrity and losing. You are teaching your child to be losers. And guess what that does? It teaches them to grow up and be a loser. Which, in turn, irritates that absolute fuck out of those of us who actually put forth the effort and don’t accept mediocrity or participation trophies. Ever wonder where the blue-hair, crybaby libs come from? The participation trophy crowd. They were taught that everything should be fair and that someone else is going to do all the work and make all the effort while they don’t, and that it’s totally fine because they’ll get the same reward in the end.

Again, FUCK THAT.

Let me go ahead and say that I do understand the heart behind the theory. It’s human nature to want to see kids treated fairly and to see them having fun and not to see them crushed, sad, and unhappy.

But at the end of the day, life is about winning. Pretending that winning doesn’t matter sets a poor precedent for kids, and it teaches them not one value or life lesson.

Winning Is Not About the Trophy

Here’s where you need to sit down and pay attention. Winning is NOT about the trophy. When I say it’s about winning, I do not mean:

• Belittling other kids
• Poor sportsmanship (whether you’re the winner or the loser)
• Only valuing the best players
• Thinking you’re superior to anyone else

When I say it’s about winning, I do mean:

• Trying your hardest
• Practicing when you don’t feel like it
• Showing up prepared
• Competing with integrity and class (whether you’re the winner or the loser)
• Working to be better than you were yesterday
• Learning from your mistakes
• Learning to work well as a team
• Learning to embrace your strengths and improve your weaknesses
• Having fun while also learning to improve

There’s an entire mindset shift when you pay attention to the lessons this newfound way of thinking teaches kids. When we were growing up, we weren’t giving kids who weren’t any good fair playing time. We were working with them to improve, but they weren’t on the field because it was fair. We were there to win – so the best players were on the field.

And you know what? The players who didn’t get a lot of playing time because they were not the best made one of two choices: They either practiced hard, worked diligently, and tried to improve so they could have more playing time, or they decided perhaps this sport was not for them and they didn’t sign up again the next season (because they know where their strengths lie so they went out and found an activity that plays to their strengths). But you know what kids did not do when we were growing up? They did not cry, whine, or have their parents throw a fit with the coaches because their kids didn’t get a lot of playing time. You’re good, or you’re not, and the decision to learn to be good was one you made, or you didn’t.

The Difficult Truth

Life is about winning. It’s not about losing. What I’m witnessing is parents forgetting a very basic truth – the real world does not recognize mediocrity or participation. It recognizes winners. You are not raising your kids to be kids, chat. You’re raising them to be adults…and teaching them that winning isn’t everything is teaching them to be a loser as an adult.

Let’s use this example:

You’re telling your kids that winning isn’t everything and expecting that all kids get equal playing time and a trophy just for being present, right?

Now, let’s say your sweet baby is going into the hospital for routine surgery with a surgeon. You want to know the surgeon’s qualifications, experience, and education, etc. You want the best of the best – the winner, if you will. But then the head of the surgical department comes to you before your child’s routine surgery and says to you, “Hey parents, so I know you asked for Dr. Winner Who Works Hard And Dedicates His Life to His Surgical Skill, but Dr. Doesn’t Care About Being the Best Because He Just Wants to Wear the Coat and Say He’s a Doctor who has an abysmal success rate, a high rate of post-surgical complications, and oftentimes royally messes up in the operating room is going to perform your surgery because it’s only fair he get to perform the same amount of surgeries as Dr. Winner otherwise it’s just not fair, so good luck!”

Suddenly, winning is everything, no?

You can’t teach kids that winning doesn’t matter because you’re teaching them that growing, learning, improving, and working harder to be better aren’t important if they’re going to get the playing time and still get to take home a trophy despite making little to no effort. You don’t want the attorney who doesn’t work hard and make an effort to win cases by being the best to represent you during your lawsuit.

You don’t want an underqualified doctor who doesn’t even try to improve. You don’t want a teacher who went to school and got poor grades and doesn’t care about kids or being a better teacher to teach your kids. You don’t want an airline pilot who doesn’t care how well he flies the plane, just that he gets to say he flies the plane.

Winning. Matters. Always.

• The person who works hard is rewarded
• The person who practices gets better
• The person who studies gets rewarded
• The person who shows up consistently gets the opportunities

I don’t say that to be cruel. I say that because it’s the simple truth.

Teaching your kids that effort doesn’t affect outcome teaches them that mediocrity is acceptable. It’s not.

Winning is About Effort

Winning is important because it’s a motivator. It teaches effort, skill, and motivation. Teaching your kids that it is about winning is what teaches them to strive for the best. And I’m going to be frank with you…being the most talented player on the team is almost meaningless if you’re not putting in the effort.

For example, You have two kids on one team. Adam and Bob. Adam is the best kid on the team, hands down, as far as talent goes. He’s a winner in that he scores points, makes plays, and wins games for his team. Bob is a good player, too, but he’s not the best player.

Adam is consistently late for practice. Adam doesn’t show up prepared. He shows up without his cleats and without his uniform, and he’s always late, and he’s got a bad attitude every time he messes up or someone else on his team messes up. He yells at his teammates that they suck and that they have to do better, and he knows he is the best player on the team. He doesn’t put any effort into practicing because he knows he’s the best and doesn’t think he needs to practice. He goofs off, doesn’t listen to his coaches, and he fucks around.

Bob is the second-best player on the team. Bob shows up on time, always prepared, always with a good attitude. Bob hypes his teammates up when they do well, and he encourages them when they make mistakes. He goes home, and he practices by going outside with his dad to throw and run routes and make plays. He watches videos of football players on his iPad to learn new things. He studies the sport, he offers tips and advice to his teammates, and he is quick to celebrate everyone’s accomplishments as well as quick to tell them it’s okay and they’ll do better next time when they mess up.

Bob might not be the best player on the team because Adam is, but Bob is going to get more playing time, more recognition, and probably the MVP trophy at the end of the season because Bob makes the effort to be better whether he wins or loses while Adam makes no effort because he thinks he’s a winner who doesn’t have to make an effort or work hard for his team.

Winning, chat, isn’t about being the best. It’s about wanting to be the best and working toward being the best.

Losing Is Not A Bad Thing

No one, and I do mean no one, wins all the time. No one. Losing is a good thing. The best lessons, the best teacher in life, is a loss. Mistakes and losses teach a child far more than winning and perfection. Losing teaches kids:

• Humility
• Accountability
• Resilience
• Emotional regulation
• The ability to learn

Kids won’t always win, but I’d rather my kids lose and want to improve than think, “It doesn’t matter if we win,” and walk away without learning anything.

Losing matters because it teaches kids to lose with grace and class, to shake hands and congratulate the winners while thinking about how you’re going to improve before the next game, and to work harder.

Life rewards people who work hard. Whether they work hard for someone else or for themselves. Your kids will never succeed in life if they don’t understand that winning matters, thanks to all the lessons that go with winning. Your kids will never start a successful business if they aren’t worried about winning. They’ll never get promoted at the job they work for if they don’t work hard and strive to be the best. They’ll never learn to live a successful life if they don’t learn that winning matters.

Teaching them that winning isn’t important is teaching them that they don’t have to try to be the best, to get better, to learn more, or to improve. It’s teaching them to settle and to skate through life without any effort.

I don’t know about you, but I will never teach my kids that life is fair and that winning isn’t important. Because those are lies. I want my kids to know winning matters and that life isn’t fair – because I want them to be winners.