"Are you a winner in your life, or simply a whiner?"
How do you respond hearing or reading this? The first time I heard this simple yet powerful question, I found myself defending, explaining and justifying my lack of personal results, something I referred to as "dexifying" my life in an article here two weeks ago. I sure had my reasons.
I had just turned 19 when my family was forced into bankruptcy (my father had died a couple of years earlier) and I wound up living in my car for a while. At the time that Ernie, the workshop leader, fired that question at me, I was living on a dollar a day. There were all kinds of people around who felt sorry for me, but not Ernie. He was intent on driving home the point that we each have the "response-ability" to make of our lives what we choose.
A couple of years later, in another workshop, Randy cemented the deal this way: "You can have results in your life, or you can have reasons why you don't have them. Which do you prefer: results or reasons?"
These two juxtapositions, "winner or whiner" and "results or reasons," have provided a solid foundation of personal power and transformation for 40 years now. While both Ernie and Randy are gone now, the transformation they helped me set in motion lives on. They taught me that choosing to whine and blame is a choice just as much as choosing to do something about your circumstances, but one is more likely to produce a meaningful result than the other.
Together, they helped me understand that no matter how unfair the cards I had been dealt might have seemed to me, if I were going to overcome my situation, I was going to have to stop adding negativity to it. Whining about how difficult things were wasn't going to help. Blaming the insurance company that refused to pay both the health and death benefits from the policy my dad had taken out when I was born wasn't going to change anything.
Randy and Ernie echoed one another with the sage counsel that if anything was going to change in my life, it would be a direct result of my choice to do something about my circumstances. As it turns out, each demonstrated considerably more care and compassion to me with their direct, perhaps even blunt, advice.
Was any of this fair? Not so much. Did the insurance company behave badly? Indeed it did. And none of that changed anything no matter how many times I repeated the story.
How about you? Are you a winner or a whiner? Do you have the results you want in your life, or do you have a litany of perfect reasons that you don't? Make no mistake, I understand that there are all kinds of really rational reasons that each of us can cite for why we don't have what we want, for why our circumstances suck.
Let me share something else that Randy taught me about reasons that also serves me to this day. Whenever you start to serve up reasons that things aren't where you want them to be in your life, you can probably rationalize your predicament pretty well. However, whenever you find yourself starting to rationalize, you might consider reframing the word rationalize as telling yourself "rational lies." Of course, what Randy was really underscoring is the simple truth that even if there are rational reasons that you're stuck, the more you focus on what's in the way, the more stuck you will become.
So, what do you do if you find yourself stuck, with all kinds of rational reasons? In my book "Workarounds That Work," I use the example of someone out on a sailboat when the mast breaks. Whining about your fate or blaming the manufacturer won't get you moving again. In the sailing world they resort to a workaround called a "jury rig" -- putting up a temporary mast -- something that, while not perfect, will at least get you moving again.
Life presents challenges just about every day that require creative workarounds. There are all kinds of things you can do, some of which might be only marginally helpful, much like the temporary mast. But at least you can get going again.
Back when Ernie challenged me to think about moving from whining to winning, I found a "jury rig," a job washing pots in a dormitory cafeteria. Hardly glamorous, but at least it got me moving again, providing both a meal each day and a couple of dollars. And with Ernie's encouragement in the back of my mind, I focused on improving rather than whining. It wasn't long before I was "promoted" to dishwasher, then to line server, then to line cook, and eventually wound up as the student manager of the facility.
Over these many years, I have had all manner of setbacks and have certainly found myself back in the whine-and-blame game with all manner of good reasons for my predicaments. However, I keep reminding myself that "dexifying" won't change anything, no matter how compelling these rational lies might seem in the moment.
So, what are you whining about in your life? Where are you pointing the finger of blame? What could you do to get yourself moving again? You don't need a perfect solution; you just need something to get moving again.
Please do leave a comment here or drop me an email at Russell@russellbishop.com.
If you want more information on how you can apply this kind of reframing to your own life and how you can take a few simple steps that may wind up transforming your life, download a free chapter from Russell's new book, "Workarounds That Work."
You can buy "Workarounds That Work" here.
Russell Bishop is an educational psychologist, author, executive coach and management consultant based in Santa Barbara, Calif. You can learn more about his work by visiting his website at www.RussellBishop.com. You can contact him by email at Russell@russellbishop.com.
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However, my particular issue is partly that the majority of self-help “experts” are totally un-qualified but mostly that they are re-enforcing the “problem” or “need for change” in the first place. They are dealing with the symptom, which in this instance is to become a winner, rather than asking why and trying to re-educate that there is no such thing as a winner.
We create that adjective, attach it to a definition (that could be personally defined or not) and give it weight and importance in our life (as defined and dictated by society) which in turn manifests pressure and stress when we cant attain it quick enough, or in the right way. Naturally, this makes us feel like we have failed and need another “expert” to fine tune our approach.....and so it goes on......
Helping people is the best thing in the world. Lets remove the self-created, self-perpetuating suffering which is based on a false sense of need.
Craig Ing
www.craiging.com
www.blog.craiging.com
The above is meant to put yourself on an even keel with sufficient advance preparation to win the next assignment or project, but not breaking bones to do such.
I knew the man referred to in this article as Randy. If you had asked that question of Randy I'm confident he would have asked you "What do you want more of in your life?" This isn't about some societal definition of winning its YOUR definition of winning. Randy once told me "You have to be bigger than your reasons". He was right. I've had lots of great reasons why I can't achieve something. As long as they are bigger than my desire to achieve it ... the reasons win, and I achieve nothing. All excuses are filled with reasons. Usually good ones! Whether its love, adventure, career, money, personal achievement, fitness, whatever you think of as a "win". You won't get it without getting bigger than your reasons.
Or perhaps we are talking about an entirely different outlook on life, where "winning" not only does not matter, but may not even be applicable. Looking at life as an achievement worthy of rewards and prizes (however understood), or as a continuous string of achievements as you personally define them, is rather one-sided and one could even say limited. It is certainly not the only or a universal way of approaching life, although I'm sure that it works for many and is, understandably, very popular in the US.
"I can't loose weight, I don't have the time to work out"
"I can't learn (fill in the blank) I can't afford to go to school.
"I'll can't make money, the government keeps taking it"
"I'll never be able to do that, I'm not smart enough"
These are all very good reasons. And if you choose to focus on them ... you will always get the same results you are getting today. If your current results are results you are content with, then continue to stand by your reasons. If they are not the results you want, perhaps you'll want to consider not focusing on these "reasons".
Not only is this not a "limited" way to think, it is an UNlimited way to think.
This is exactly the sort of social conditioning that is pressurising most of us to believe we have to have ‘a’ to be happy, achieve ‘b’ to be happy, drive ‘c’ to be happy, wear ‘d’ to be happy etc etc.
Winners? What for? What In? Who defines a winner? You certainly cannot define a winner for me…… I totally agree with Bellanova’s comment. Where is the context? Was the real secret the way the advice was given rather than what it was? By someone who seemingly cared for you at a time when you believed you had nothing?
I comment a lot on this website and others and I always end up saying this......Please don’t get me wrong, if you are helping people then it’s a good thing as there are a lot of people who need help. HOWEVER, lets start looking beyond the social conditioning, the sociological boxes that we think we have to sit in to be happy or to achieve something. Lets focus on removing these self-created pressures and realise we are already happy and we are allowing such things to put blinkers on our eyes and mufflers on our brains.
I would be interested if Mr Bishop could re-write the article focusing less on the “winner or whiner” part and more on the softer, subtle elements of what really worked through his journey.
Craig Ing
www.craiging.com
I invite you to take a look at my archive here on the Huff Post: if you read thoughtfully, as I suspect you will, you will certainly notice a theme about the reader defining what matters to him or her. The real secret is not so secret: figure out what matters to you, and then get of the blame/complain game and start doing what you can to lead the life you want. It's never going to be about perfection, but it can be about direction. It's pretty hard to steer if you won't engage the engine - so my constant advice is to pick a direction, notice the feedback (both internal and external) along the way and course correct as you choose. Of course, that also requires the individual to be awake.
Rather than finding the fault in all of us faulty human beings, how about finding what could work and working it?
Blessings to you,
RB
Thanks for the reply and I have started to read some of the archived articles with interest and they do provide a little more context.
I think you may have totally misunderstood my aim when working with people. It is not about finding fault at all – far from it. I help remove the fact they even think there is a fault. Remove the false reality of winners and losers, rich and poor, work towards understanding desire versus need.
If I understand your comment about the "individual being awake" correctly, then I totally agree with this! Thats what I meant by “removing these self -created pressures” and I provide that awakening. I work with the person to remove what they thought was in their way in the first place. The rest (or direction and changing course as you describe it) will then work itself out.
Each and every single one of us is bombarded through life and most of us start to believe these images of desire are our needs, conversations we have about them re-enforce that perceived need. Over time that need puts pressure on us to achieve and when we don’t, or it takes longer we end up “faulty human beings”. However, the clarity comes back with the awakening process.
As you say, the secret is there is no secret!
Really enjoying throwing around the thoughts and ideas – thanks.
Craig Ing
www.craiging.com
www.blog.craiging.com
I thoroughly enjoy a good whine now and then, because sometimes life is frustrating and unfair.
A good pity party can help get all of the nastiness out into the open where you can look at it and evaluate your options. I just had one today (right here at HP) over my despair over finding a new hire, and it led me to think about the fact that I might be too willing to consider exactly the wrong type of person to do the job and should be spending more time looking for what I want. Insight doesn't happen if you aren't willing to look at the problem, even if you're doing it in a negative way for a while.
It's a fact of life that we have negative emotions from time to time, and I just can't see any reason to avoid exploring them, as long as it leads to some kind of action at the end.
Seriously, there is a third way not mentioned here and that is the path of stoicism. We can't all be winners all the time in life. While I do believe that we all have the responsibility to make the best of our situation and "keep clam and carry on," sometimes in spite of people's best efforts, they "loose."
It's important to remember that not everyone is able to pull themselves up by their boot straps, especially in a society that is so unfriendly to the working poor.
What's most often helpful is to have a philosophical or religious belief that you can turn to, to get you through the tough times, along with strong ties to family and friends.
I'm also curious what were those (self-help?) workshops that Mr. Bishop attended when he was a homeless teen, living in his car.
And isn't it possible that, rather than the confrontational (and, let's face it, pat) advice, what really made a difference was a keen enough and personal interest taken in him by these two influential men, Ernie and Randy?
There is plenty of so-called life advice all around us -- it is available at our fingertips these days. Yet we remain oblivious to its wisdom (if there is wisdom in it in the first place) because it is general and impersonal, and may or may not apply to us. What makes such wisdom (if it is there) ring true are, most of all, the relationships through which it is imported to us.
The presence of just one person who genuinely cares about us -- not the generic us, the objects of indiscriminate "words of wisdom," but us the unique people in our unique, individual circumstances -- is what really matters.
Even if the advice is trite, the fact that somebody bothered enough to notice our particular predicament and step forward with words of recognition and sincere encouragement, whatever they may be, is the key factor. And if that person is in a position of some influence and power, his/her interest is all the more important, especially to a young person without much social support (although certainly not only).
"Years from now, people will not remember what you've said, but they will forever remember how you've made them feel."
The older I get (and the more my own memory fails), the clearer I see that she was right. (Although of course everything we say to anyone on them interwebs will be there forever, whether we like it or not. Another reason to think twice before opening one's mouth. If only it were easier to do... :)
-RFK
I look at the challenging Task and say we have an opportunity and others say there is not a chance
-ME
Joy can be achieved without physical action, but Joy with physical action is no less JOY
-ME
I've learned that how I interact with my son may not be what works for other parents; as a single parent, we have to communicate in a softer manner because we have to keep working at our relationship. When he "whines" I now have to look at it in different ways, such as, is he truly being difficult, or is something else going on? I have a coworker who has Asperger's; I have changed how I interact with her, because I don't want to go crazy. There's a lot of whining in my office, but I have adjusted my attitude. Whether you're the whiner, or the other person is, you need to make your own decision about how you act or react, and what you want. There are a lot of people who are very snarky on Huffpost, but I am learning to not respond to the negative.