Ryan’s Journal: Live To Win
by Ryan Pew
Winning and competition are fundamental to our lives.
It starts early with your siblings fighting over the same toy and progresses to fighting with your spouse over the TV remote.
It is also something that enables us to push past what our preconceived limits are. I am sure you have had a time when you thought you could do no more, but then you see someone else succeeding a bit more and you push on.
The competition was what helped you achieve your goals and at the end of the day, everyone is better for it.
I have been watching the World Series, full disclaimer I am not a baseball guy, but I do love to see a winner. I happened to be in Houston for the start of the series and that determined the team I would root for, so for the past week or so I have been an Astros fan.
As I watched the series I started to get invested in the lives of the players and what had enabled them to get to this grandest of stages. It was interesting to learn about their paths to the big league and what challenges they faced.
I learned an interesting fact from my wife this morning. Her high school friend is a relief pitcher for the Houston Astros by the name of Tony Sipp. I looked up his stats and as far as I can tell he didn’t pitch a single ball, but he will get a ring.
What I found to be interesting about his life, though, was the path he took to get to where he is. He is from Pascagoula, MS, where he also played for the football team that took home the state championship in 2000, so the guy was a talented athlete that had been around success. He then went on to play at the local Junior College before transferring to Clemson. From there it was a series of double and triple ball teams before entering the majors many years later.
As I read a bit about this guy, I am realizing that he is a winner. He isn’t the big time flashy name that you hear every day, he is the grind-it-out-and-pushes-on kind of guy. He has continued to push his way to the top of his talent and been able to surround himself with others who are doing the same thing.
I am pretty sure we can do the same thing in business.
Let’s face it, we are not all going to be the next Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos.
But there seems to be plenty of room for us all to push a bit harder each day and surround ourselves with winners.
It is up to us to make that happen.
Image credit: Wikipedia
