Quotes about Winning

Sarah Lewis Quote on How A ‘Near Win’ Could Be Better Than ‘The Win’

“To reach an audacious goal, we sometimes benefit from having it lie just beyond our grasp.”
Sarah Lewis, The Rise

Beyond the Quote (130/365)

Think about a time when you won – by a lot. What was going through your mind?

“Who’s ready to celebrate?!”
“What are we having for dinner?”
“All of my hard work has finally paid off.”

Think also about a time when you lost – by a lot. What was going through your mind after that?

“If I fail more than you do, I win. Built into this notion is the ability to keep playing. If you get to keep playing, sooner or later you’re gonna make it succeed. The people who lose are the ones who don’t fail at all, or the ones who fail so big they don’t get to play again.”
Seth Godin

Beyond the Quote (121/365)

If you try and you fail—and you quit—you lose. If you try and you fail—and you adjust and try again—you win. The ultimate failure in life isn’t the failures we inevitably stumble upon from our trials, it’s the failure to not try (or to stop trying) at all. Without trial in life, you defer to passivity. You choose to watch rather than play. And while it’s fun to watch sometimes, playing is where all of the magic happens. Playing is the active process of interacting with your surroundings in a way that allows you to learn. When you try, your whole being makes an incalculable number of adjustments and improvements so that you can better play moving forward. You just can’t do that from the sideline.

“Consistency beats talent. Consistency beats good intentions. Consistency beats luck. Consistency even beats quality.”
Unknown

Beyond the Quote (96/365)

**When does consistency beats talent?**

Well, you have to be consistent enough to bridge the talent gap. The fact that somebody is ‘talented’ in a certain area implies that they have innate aptitudes, abilities, or skills that start them ahead of you. But just because somebody has a head start doesn’t mean that they are always going to win. In fact, this is the basic premise for every underdog story you’ve ever heard.

“Our progress is paved with mistakes, failures, and defeats, and it’s our resilience that keeps us keeping on. Every misstep is a teacher, and not all the things and people we lose in life end up being losses. Our obsession with winning can cost us much more than losing a healthy outlook when life doesn’t go our way. There’s always a lesson, a nugget of wisdom or a jewel waiting when things look like they won’t be going in our favor; we just have to be willing to pay attention and do some digging if need be. Once we remind ourselves to find opportunity in any situation, there is no loss, just learning. Failure isn’t the opposite of success, it’s a path to it.” ~ Humble the Poet, Things No One Else Can Teach Us (Page 268)

Vince Lombardi Quote on How Winners Never Quit—And Why I Disagree

“Winners never quit and quitters never win.” ~ Vince Lombardi

Beyond the Quote (70/365)

I disagree. In fact, I believe that winners actually quit more than those who lose. The difference is that they know what to quit, when to quit, how to quit, and have the courage and discipline to do so. Of course, Lombardi is likely referring to the idea that winners never quit in pursuit of their primary goal(s) in life and those who do quit in pursuit of their primary goal(s) will never win at them—this might be obvious.

“You have a career and friends and family members and personal projects and artistic endeavors and athletic pursuits. You might consider judging your success across all the games you play. Imagine that you are very good at some, middling at others, and terrible at the remainder. Perhaps that’s how it should be. You might object: I should be winning at everything! But winning at everything might only mean that you’re not doing anything new or difficult. You might be winning but you’re not growing, and growing might be the most important form of winning. Should victory in the present always take precedence over trajectory across time?”
Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 88)

Beyond the Quote (15/365)

If you’re winning all of the time, every time, at everything, then one of two things has gone wrong: either you’re playing the wrong game(s) or you’re playing the wrong people. Who cares if you win against a two-year-old in chess all of the time, every time? There’s no challenge, which means there’s no growth, which means there’s no value. Either you need a new game to play or you need to find a new person to play the game against. Even if you were playing chess against one of your peers, and you were crushing them every time, it’s the same issue—no challenge, no growth, no value.

“Every Olympian wants to win a gold medal. Every candidate wants to get the job. And if successful people share the same goals, then the goal cannot be what differentiates the winners from the losers. It wasn’t the goal of winning the Tour de France that propelled the British cyclists to the top of the sport. Presumably, they had wanted to win the race every year before—just like every other professional team. The goal had always been there. It was only when they implemented a system of continuous small improvements that they achieved a different outcome.” ~ James Clear, Atomic Habits

“To win anything, we must first win control over our minds.” ~ Mark Divine, The Way of the Seal

“The day you stop racing is the day you win the race.” ~ Bob Marley, via Money: Master the Game

The art forms you still might have to learn:

It’s not over until you win…

“Your potential, the absolute best you’re capable of – that’s the metric to measure yourself against. Your standards are. Winning is not enough. People can get lucky and win. People can be assholes and win. Anyone can win. But not everyone is the best possible version of themselves.” ~ Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy

“Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.” ~ Goethe, via Blog of Jonathan Fields

“For me the joy of athletics has never resided in winning. I derive just as much happiness from the process as from the results. I don’t mind losing as long as I see improvement or I feel I’ve done as well as I possibly could. If I lose, I just go back to the track and work some more.” ~ Jackie Joyner-Kersee

Increase Your Results by Expecting to Win.

“In our own lives, having a mindset of expecting to win increases our odds of winning. It helps us get better results. And better results help us increase our credibility and self-confidence, which leads to more positive self-expectancy, and more winning – and the upward cycle continues. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. As Harvard Business School professor and writer Rosabeth Moss Kanter has observed, ‘Confidence consists of positive expectations for favorable outcomes… winning begets winning, because it produces confidence at four levels.’ The first of those levels, she says, is ‘self-confidence: an emotional climate of high expectations.’ The second level is ‘confidence in one another.’ So if you want to increase your results, expect to win – not only for yourself, but also for your team. Not at all costs, but honorably. Not at the expense of others, but in conjunction with others. Expecting to win – and expecting others to win – is a fundamental approach of helping to bring it about.” ~ Stephen M. R. Covey, The Speed of Trust

“If you want to play the game and win, you’ve got to play ‘full out.’ You’ve got to be willing to feel stupid, and you’ve got to be willing to try things that might not work – and if they don’t work, be willing to change your approach. Otherwise, how could you innovate, how could you grow, how could you discovery who you really are?” ~ Anthony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within

“A near win shifts our view of the landscape. It can turn future goals, which we tend to envision at a distance, into more proximate events. We consider temporal distance as we do spatial distance. (Visualize a great day tomorrow and we see it with granular, practical clarity. But picture what a great day in the future might be like, not tomorrow but fifty years from now, and the image will be hazier.)” ~ Sarah Lewis, The Rise

“In our own lives, having a mind-set of expecting to win increases our odds of winning. It helps us get better results. And better results help us increase our credibility and self-confidence, which leads to more positive self-expectancy, and more winning – and the upward cycle continues. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.” ~ Stephen M. R. Covey, The Speed of Trust

“Wanting to win isn’t enough. You have to go through a process to improve. That takes patience, perseverance, and intentionality.” ~ John C. Maxwell, Leadership Gold

“If you don’t think you’re a winner, you don’t belong here.” ~ Vince Lombardi