Failure can be disguised as success (and vice versa).
“I passed on investing in Uber.” – Gary Vee
Gary loves to brag about how he “makes mistakes,” but is it really a mistake? If someone in front of him said, “I have a lotto ticket and I have a hunch it’s going to win, wanna buy it?” Would it be a mistake if he passed and it won? Absolutely not. Gary probably also passed on 100s of terrible bankrupting ideas, but that’s not as sexy and humble as talking about passing on Uber.
“Winning doesn’t mean you’re a winner.“ – Truth Cake
Ask anyone that plays poker for a living and they’ll show you the loser players that go all-in on terrible hands where the odds are stacked against them. When that gambler goes all-in and wins, they’re not winners…they just happened to win one hand, but on a long enough time line their decisions will bankrupt them, because they still act and think like a gambling loser. Lots of clichés orbit around this idea like how someone may win a battle but lose the war, and so on.
Selling your business for $1M when it gets valued for $500M the next year isn’t really losing either.
However, I hear countless stories of people that moan and groan over making incredible sums of money that feel like a big win to them at first, and then they find out they could have had more and feel like a loser.
If your goal is “more” then you’ll always be a loser. – Truth Cake.
In a truly abundant world, there’s always room for more and somewhere along the way, someone will be able to get ‘more.’ When you sell your house and the buyer turns around and sells it for $250k more than what he paid, it’s tempting to feel like you lost, but we’re all losers relative to ‘more.’
Be cautious of always wishing for ‘more’ – it’s too vague, you can wish for a specific amount that happens to be more, but if you’re goal is just “more” you’ll always feel screwed in the end. Even professional stock traders sell a stock while it’s still going up and often sell out far below the stocks ultimate peak. The FOMO of not having sold for the perfect highest price has to be given up, because trying to achieve that is both a) unlikely to be able to be replicated at all, b) unlikely to happen to begin with, and c) isn’t necessary to be a winner.
What’s something that you did where you felt like a winner but saw someone else get “more” and suddenly you felt like a loser? Maybe it’s time to leave your FOMO in the past, get specific on what you’d like, and drop vague goals like ‘having more.’
