This goes against the importance of sportsmanship, playing by the rules and the whole bunch of life lessons gained through practice, training, preparation and adjusting. Self-improvement is supposed to be the main purpose of sports, not winning and not, not losing. To put winning and losing above self-improvement is to win and lose in the worst way. To think of winning and losing in such limited terms is to place a gigantic weight upon self to perform and accomplish something that is not able to be 100% controlled by an individual or a collective in any sport or life endeavor. Again and again we must remind ourselves in life and in sports that self-improvement is the most important thing - more important than winning or losing.
Winning is a byproduct of self-improvement. Winning is the automatic result of continuous self-improvement. Winning cannot be achieved directly. Winning most be achieved through process.Despite self-improvement, losing, in sports, can still occur. Even so, an athlete or team that loses, despite self-improvement, still wins. An athlete or team that loses sight of self-improvement as the ultimate prize, loses and wins in the worst way. The same is true in life.Self-improvement is the greater good. This must be properly understood. As long as we are self-improving, we are winning. When we stop self-improving for too long, we start losing. Even though someone must lose and someone must win in sports, all competitors can always win as long as the life lessons that lead to self-improvement are always the greater portion of the experience.
By the way, this also applies to many other things in life such as losing weight. If we believe losing weight is winning and not losing weight is losing, then we completely miss the point and purpose of the need incentive and the process. We somehow believe we can achieve what we want or need for self, thus improve self, without self-improvement. We somehow believe that meeting a goal or need comes first and results in self-improvement when it is the other way around. We don't focus enough on the need incentive of being healthy overall and we don't break down the goal enough to affect our weight in the way we want to. We focus on the goal of weight loss or looking good, rather than spreading our focus also to improving the mental, emotional, spiritual and to increased understandings of the physical and nutrients and nutritions. Weight is linked to, and caused and affected by, all these things – tangibles and intangibles. In other words, if we want to make our bodies better, we must also make our minds, emotions and spirits better by getting to know all four of these areas better. All must be improved. Self-improvement is an overall concept that always includes the entire self. Self-improvement helps us become healthier so that no matter the sport or goal in life, we begin to develop increased awareness that the need incentive to win or to be the best or number one or champion is actually the need incentive to improve self through improving understanding of the four inseparable aspects of self. This is the best way to lose the weight of the worldview that is interfering with our health, thus peace, within and on Earth.
If we focus on winning and losing in relation to what others do and in relation to other competitors or in relation to others who are pursing similar goals, then it is possible to “win” without being at our best and possible to “lose” while being at our best. Under this ill-advised approach and suboptimal context, what we are doing is grading ourselves on a curve based on how well others are performing, which is the same as “living outside of self” because the dominant consideration for self-esteem (which is what winning and losing relates to) is defined by what others do rather than on what we know and do. In fact, this is exactly what Europeans and others are doing who feel it is necessary for the African and others to look bad in order for them to look good. They do so because they are unwilling to put in the work necessary to be better in relation to the higher universal nature. This is what happens when the human standard is our standard rather than the standard of our Creator, our Oldest Ancestor and Oldest Parent. The best we can be has everything to do with the higher spiritual nature of the universe. Aspire to that.Our topmost comparison must be to the self we are continuously getting to know as it relates to the Creator's intentions (destinies) for us. Thus, if we are getting to know ourselves better and doing better because we know better, we are winners.
