Dare to Be Different

Where are you going with your life? If you are presiding over an organization or a department within an organization; where is your organization headed? How are you conducting the business of life? In a free world like the one in which most of us are privileged to live, there is absolutely no limit to what one can achieve. You can win at life and achieve your wildest dreams. However, in order to win or succeed you need to conduct yourself in such a way that you win. 
In all matters of human achievement, there are causes and there are effects. There are actions and there are results. There is sowing and there is reaping. Furthermore, just as sowing must precede reaping, so must actions come before results. This is common sense and yet the world revolves around it. In the achievement equation genes, fate and external circumstances play a very minor role. It matters little what type of genes one possesses. If one sows the right kind of actions, one will as surely as the sun rises also reap the right kind of fruit.

Winning is therefore an effect that follows certain actions.
Winners Don’t Do Different Things. They Do Things Differently
In every field of human endeavor the winners and the champions do not necessarily do different things. However, invariably they do things differently. Winning sales people usually sell exactly the same commodities that failing sales people sell. They win because they do it differently. Insurance agents are a case in point. They market the same portfolio of products at exactly the same price for the same companies. However, while most agents fail dismally, others make great fortunes in the same circumstances. Tiger Woods plays under exactly the same rules as other golfers but he is a champion because he plays his strokes differently. Service organizations such as hospitals provide identical services, yet others succeed while others flop. The same is true of supermarkets and other retail shops.

Winners are winners because they dare to be different. They have the courage to differentiate themselves in a world where there are too many copycats and imitators. Winners deliberately and consciously pursue a strategy of differentiation. By so doing they choose to travel on the road less often traveled and enter through the narrow gate when the mediocre and the losers opt for the easy road of commonality.

Winners see every day as a special day, every task as a special assignment, and every encounter as an opportunity for progress. To the winners there are no mundane tasks and small games. Every opportunity is treated as a life defining opportunity.

Furthermore, winning teams take every game seriously, including and especially the so called small games thereby guarding against complacency which is excellence’s great enemy. Small contracts are treated as meticulously as if the future depends on them. While the mediocre and the losers treat little matters dismissively, nonchalantly and even mockingly, the winners realize that exactitude in little matters is the very soul of excellence and discipline. Thus they build a reputation for excellence, and by continuously striving for excellence they make superior performance their norm and habit.

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Winners Do Things That Losers Don’t Like Doing

The commonest way by which winners differentiate themselves is by diligently doing the things that losers don’t like doing. There are far too many people competing for the low ground and easy things. Everyone likes to pick the proverbial low lying fruit. Competition is always intense when the challenge is small and the rewards are little. It is like competing to fish in a pond when there is a lake nearby. However, as most people discover in the course of life the sweetest fruit normally is found higher up the tree. To obtain the best fruit one has to climb up the tree. Thus sweat comes before the sweets. It is the sweat that the losers are averse to.

When the majority of the people are disinclined to go the second mile, the winners deliberately adopt a strategy of going the extra mile. This always pays off handsomely because there is no congestion on the extra mile. When most companies are offering a basic product, the winning companies augment their core products with after sales service and a plethora of other little extras that create an impression of difference in the eyes of the customer.

Winners Focus on the Gain, But Losers Focus on the Pain

Winners see the gain in applying themselves wholeheartedly to difficult tasks that ultimately shape the contours of their lives. Quite to the contrary losers flood their minds with images and thoughts of the pain that they must go through in order to achieve something meaningful. Winners because of their focus on the gain and benefits are able to face the challenges with dignity. Losers on the other hand succumb to the human tendency to avoid and minimize pain. The end result is that the winners will obtain a premium from their efforts. This gain will reinforce the winner’s desire to go after those things that most people run away from. The winner thereby embarks on a virtuous cycle of achievement.

Winning, therefore becomes the winner’s habit. The loser constantly sees the pain, and also enters a different kind of cycle, the vicious cycle of failure. The painful truth is that most people know more or less what they need to do to change the circumstances of their lives, but they are too addicted to the loser’s predilection with pain aversion. Losing also becomes the loser’s habit. Thus winning is a habit and so is losing.

The bottom line is that winners specialize in excelling in the things that the losers dislike doing. Sometimes this takes the form of working longer hours when everyone else is in bed. Sometimes it calls for going back to school when one is no longer young. Sometimes it is risking one’s own life and wealth. Sometimes it is creative action and relentless innovation. It comes in different shapes and sizes.

Being different is a choice. Make it your life’s assignment to prospect, seek out and mine the opportunities and treasures that come with doing the good but challenging things that the majority dislike doing.

Dare to be different.

Learn About: Tollie Schmidt

Founder Tollie's Out of the Darkness Project

CEO - Tollie International Inc. & International Speaker

"Empowering Greatness - Creating a Dream Infused Life"

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