Champion Is Not Defined by Wins
Hey team, all right, so here we are. It’s another Monday, and I read a quote by Serena Williams. She’s a famous tennis player; some of you might know who she is. Her and her sister both play tennis, and she’s pretty amazing.
She said, “I think a champion is defined not by their wins but by how they can recover when they fall.” I really like that; it kind of goes with our resolve. Improvise, adapt, and overcome. Life is hard; you have to embrace the suck. It is that perseverance through hard times, when you fall, when you make a mistake, when you have a failure in your life, that makes you a champion, that makes you successful, that builds towards greatness. Learning from those mistakes, falling down, recovering, and getting back up.
My nephew, he’s playing college football, and recently, they had a loss, and it was pretty tough. They were instant messaging back and forth with the family, talking about how it was tough. His mom obviously loves him a lot, and she got to see the game, and she was disappointed too. I just sent back, I said, “If you lose, you learn.” We always learn more when we’ve had a loss, when we’ve suffered something. I explained that to my boys and talked them through it.
Personally, every time I’ve fallen, it’s how I get up, dust off, and move forward, and learn from the mistakes and the failures of my past that have brought me to the next level, plateauing to the next level of high rise in my successes. But you learn more when you fail, and I believe that Serena is right.
A true champion is tested not because they’re a winner, but they’re tested from their losses and how they grow and overcome those to be greater later.
That’s what we need to be striving for. That’s what we are striving for as a company, right? We’re not perfect. We make mistakes; we own it. We’re transparent about it, but we’re constantly striving to get better. That’s what I love about our leadership team. Not one of our leaders thinks that they’re perfect, not one of our leaders believes that they’ve never failed, but it’s in their failures that they’ve grown. They’ve owned it; they’ve been transparent; they’ve lifted themselves up. That’s what I love about working with so many great men and women like you guys.
As we’re moving through, and we’re really close to Christmas, I know, but I just want to encourage you to continue that, even if you’ve fallen in this last week. Get up, dust off, dissect the problem, the mistake you made, the relationship mistake. Maybe you had an argument with your wife. I’ve been married 30 years; I’ve had a couple, just a couple thousand mistakes in how I’ve treated my beautiful wife Karen. Okay, I see you, someone just now shaking your head. Yes, I can believe that; I know, of course, I’ve made thousands of mistakes. I’m joking around, guys, but in all seriousness, God bless you.
Learn from your mistakes, and you’ll go a lot farther. Dissect them, and you’ll become a champion, rise from them, and you will be excellent. You can do this, but it takes the learning process, the growing process, the pain process, the perseverance process for which to have that resolve to overcome, and greatness is on the horizon.
God bless you again. If I don’t see you before, have a happy holidays, and I will talk to you later. Bye, see you.