Be a real winner!

Each one of us is born with the capacity to win in life. Each person has a unique way of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and thinking. Each one can be a significant, thinking and creative being—a productive person, a winner!

The word “winner” has many meanings. When we refer to a person as a winner, we do not mean one who makes someone else lose. A true winner is one who responds authentically by being credible, trustworthy, responsive, and genuine, both as an individual and as a member of a group/society. A loser is one who fails to respond authentically. Martin Buber makes this distinction as he retells the story of the rabbi who, on his deathbed, was asked if he was ready for the world to come. The rabbi said, yes. After all, he will not be asked, “Why were you not yourself?”

Few people are one hundred percent winners or one hundred percent losers. It’s a matter of degree. However, once a person is on the road to being a winner, his or her chances are greater for becoming even more so. Winners have different potentials. Achievement is not the most important thing. Authenticity is. The authentic person experiences self-reality by knowing, being, and becoming a credible, responsive person. Authentic people actualize their own unprecedented uniqueness and appreciate the uniqueness of others.

Authentic persons/winners do not dedicate their lives to a concept of what they imagine they should be; rather, they are themselves and as such do not use their energy putting on a performance, maintaining pretence, and manipulating others. Winners can reveal themselves instead by projecting images that please, provoke, or entice others. They are aware that there is a difference between being loving and acting to be loving, between being stupid and acting stupid, between being knowledgeable and acting knowledgeable.

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