Revealing the importance of healthy winning
by COREY CIOCCHETTI
What’s the first thing that we think of when we hear the first part of the song Eye of the Tiger by Survivor? You know, the duh… duh-duh-duh… duh-duh duh? Rocky Balboa, of course!
To me, the song embodies Rocky’s continuing battle to gain respect, learn from his mistakes, overcome obstacles and emerge from his fights victorious—even when he was a huge underdog. Many of us see a lot of our lives in the storyline. Rocky’s character taught each of us about desire, hard work and competitiveness and in the end, Rocky taught us about winning.
The current generation of young people today is lacking competiveness. This non-competitive nature is not universal by any means—but it’s noticeable. In my academic role, I find it odd that some very intelligent young adults find it difficult to motivate themselves to reach beyond the assignments for insights, to attend anything offered outside of class or to sit and think deeply about their purpose in life. Instead, they ponder what to wear to the parties happening that evening, whether X is going to be at the bar, if their fake ID will work or how many text messages await when class is over.
It’s as if the hard work necessary to achieve at this level is too overwhelming, too stressful and that gaining the ability to think is not as important as their professors claim. In the end, they don’t seem to care that other students are outperforming them. This lack of perspective shortchanges the profound opportunity each student has to make meaningful life improvements and succeed academically and in the workplace.
Although poor results will always stem from poor preparation and a lack of desire, what is happening here is discouraging to me and, I can tell, even more discouraging to those directly involved. These young people recognize that something is wrong with this picture. I can see it in their eyes but not in their subsequent efforts. You might think that this is a characteristic of every generation of young people but I disagree. There is something different about what’s going on here.
Parents and educators seem to be shielding kids from the downsides of competitiveness. And, there are downsides. It is wrong when competitiveness turns people into bullies or when the desire to win morphs people into poor losers.
What I am advocating for is a reinvigorated motivation in young people to achieve healthy victories.
Sometimes it is important to be a bit competitive and strive to do the best you can given your resources and priorities. Adopting this attitude provides motivational fuel helping you achieve your goals. Instead of excessively pondering the social scene, you should expend the extra energy and ponder how you can use your passions to make a contribution to the greater good.
Think of it this way—achieving one of the best grades in class or outperforming your peers/competitors ethically and with integrity is a healthy form of winning. The point is that we all need to realize that it’s okay to try and win in life. And, who knows, actually striving towards overachievement might even make positive results more likely to occur. Commensurate with this statement is that trying to win means that you will certainly lose at times. It is also okay to lose in life as long as you prepared sufficiently, gave it enough effort and learned something from the occasion—at least you gave it a shot.
It’s time to adopt an attitude of healthy competitiveness and a desire to win. The world needs you to get up when you fall and try again, to rise above seemingly insurmountable challenges and to strive for authentic success. None of this can happen by osmosis. Find the energy, take a few risks, try to overachieve more often than not or watch a Rocky movie—whatever it takes. Now it’s your time to make it happen… duh… duh-duh-duh… duh-duh duh!
Corey has keynotes that are great for character building, first year experience, Fraternity & Sorority life and leadership programming. Check out campuspeak.com/ciocchetti to learn more about Corey, his keynotes and to watch his video.
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