While writing Soccer vs. Snooker I started figuring out why I´m supporting FC Bayern Munich. As I wrote more than two sentences I have decided to outsource that content to this article. In this context I recommend to read Soccer vs. Snooker as well as it provides some background in terms of the content shared below.
Why I am supporting the winner
My attitude is as simple as true: The winner is the best. So let´s support him, her or them so that they are given the chance to perform at their best level or to set up a new record which will be remembered for history. Celebrating that incredible success together is one of my main motivation.
So yes. Maybe it´s true that I´m a fan of success. That´s what most people will name fans of FC Bayern Munich. Fans of success. Most of the time they mean it in a negative way. However for me, it fits well. And I will not say sorry for it. The point is that I simply want to see my team win. I chose to support them as at the time I became fan of them they were the best. So I simply want to see them continuing that success.
Success as a source of learning
The point is that the most successful team usually makes the most things right and makes the less amount of mistakes. In contrast, a team which is part of the second league makes more things wrong when compared to the best team in the first league. This means that team makes more mistakes when compared to the best team in the first league. Why should I support a team which allows themselves to make more mistakes when compared to another team? I´m simply not able to support that attitude.
Worth to mention that this attitude is related to my status as a fan. This means that I feel sympathies for a minority of other soccer clubs even if they are part of lower leagues. When they play a match against another team as part of the lower league I feel the need that I want that team to succeed as part of this match. But I will never support that team in a way like I´m supporting the team which I´m fan of.
Dedicating time to failures
In terms of my attitude of being a fan of success it was in 2018 when I received final prove for that. During that time a joined an event where people shared insights in terms of their failures. And nothing else. The intention was to solely provide the contrasting side of all of the astonishing success stories out there. The point is that most common literature primarily emphasizes success. Not failure. As a conclusion, success is over present. Everyone wants to be a winner. That´s why the opportunity of obtaining insights to the side of failure sounded interesting. So I joined the event.
Four persons were scheduled to share their experiences at the event. To keep it short, after the second person had finished talking I left the event. I was truly wondering about myself and my behavior. Usually I´m able to go through even the most boring events or talks that I´m offered. That´s mainly driven by the fact that it´s my intention to understand other persons and their behavior. I want to figure out how they are able to represent a specific position or what led them getting into that situation. Therefore usually I will dedicate my time to let other persons express themselves. The point is that I simply do not want to make short-term judgements. To sum it up, usually I will stay until the end of an event in order to give myself the chance or better say keep on hoping to receive enlightening content.
But that time I simply needed to leave. I was not willing to waste further time of my life as part of that event. When the first person was speaking within the first minutes I immediately recognized that I´m at the wrong place. What the hell I´m going to learn here? That´s what I was asking to myself.
Adapting the behavior of successful people
At this moment I recognized that I solely experience personal growth including learning new things by adapting the behavior of people which are more successful when compared to myself. In this context, I understood that I will never be able to look up to someone because of his or her failures. The point is that I will never be able to accept such a person as a leader.
Hence I made the conclusion that in general it´s more valuable to listen to successful people as in sum they do more things right rather than wrong. Logically, by following them I´m being offered the chance to figure out for myself what kind of behavior I can adapt in the future in order to make more things right rather than wrong. Based on statistics a person who simply provides more failures rather than successes will provide a minor amount of things to learn when compared to a person who provides more successes rather than failures. So why not using my time efficiently and focus on the successful stories out there?
Likely that the intention of the event was to provide „bad idols“ in order to reveal how not to do it. It did not work for me.
In other words, the words and behaviors of successful persons have a much greater impact one me when compared to the words or behaviors of a person who is solely sharing failures. In this context, I want to remind myself on how to behave when I reach out to a successful person or important decision maker. In this context, it´s more likely that the conversation will be beneficial if I mention what I can provide (success) rather than what not (failure).
Here are some examples of what I´m referring to:
Mark Zuckerberg used to wear the same T-Shirt everyday. What I learned from that is that I should not waste any time thinking about what kind of clothes to wear. I concluded that it´s possible to succeed even by looking totally normal. If I deliver great service, it does not matter how I look like. Knowing about that has led to deep inner peace to myself.
Elon Musk once mentioned that it´s his intention to sell all of his owned houses. What I learned from that is that if the richest person alive does not feel the need to own a house maybe it´s okay that I also do not feel that need. I can simply rent a property.
Warren Buffett has spent most of his life in a small town as part of the same region. Once while sitting at a restaurant he was reminded by an interviewer that due to his wealth he could have chosen to live anywhere in the world. When being asked on why he had chosen spending his live at his small town he answered: “People are nice. Steaks are great.” What I learned from that is that I do not need to become a millionaire in order to live at a place which I enjoy.
I can list twenty more examples. What I want to point out is that following success stories simply provides more enriching content and useful knowledge for myself rather than following failures.
Improving my skills by implementing success
And that´s the main reason why I´m following FC Bayern Munich. It´s also the main reason why I followed Stephen Hendry playing snooker and Michael Schumacher driving a formula one car. By constantly observing the best in action I´m offered the chance to study their behavior. By doing so I´m being offered the chance that my skills of assertiveness (FC Bayern Munich), precision and inner calmness (Stephen Hendry) and concentration when being confronted with risky and dangerous situations (Michael Schumacher) improve. If only my skills are being improved by 0,1% by observing and sticking to the approaches of successful people, I prefer this 1000 times more rather than spending my time with following failures.
To catch up the soccer example again: Some weeks ago I was following an interview with a German philosopher. He turned out to be a soccer fan. In this relation he provided an explanation on why people follow and support losing teams. He summed it up that the process of losing leads to a stronger connection between people rather than winning. Based on that it appears that for a majority of soccer fans who are heading to a stadium the main intention is not in experiencing their team to win. Moreover it seems that they are driven by feeling as part of a protected and saved group. To feel as one. To experience unity. To not feel alone. To feel connected.
There is no doubt that to a certain extent I also claim these needs for myself. But obviously not to that extent when compared to the majority. In addition, I´m aware of the fact that going to the soccer stadium regularly will expose me to the negative aspects as mentioned in “Psychology of Mass*“. To sum it up, I do not feel a deep interest of giving space to these aspects.
Any thoughts on this can be sent privately to send@realthoughts.me or publicly via the comment function below
Martin
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