There is a very profound statement that says when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. One of the most powerful changes that you can make in your life is a seemingly simple shift of perspective.
There may have been a catalytic event or sequence of events that caused the radical change in your perspective, and you can actually pinpoint the exact moment when you felt the shift and your attitude and motivation changed. It would have been like flipping a high powered switch, partly in your mind, but mostly in your heart.
Here are the main mindset differences of a change in perspective:
For example before the change you may have been focused on making your business successful. You may have been pursuing lucrative deals, money, and projects as if they were essential things to be acquired as quickly as possible at whatever cost. You may have wanted to create best selling products that sold well in large quantities. Motivation has a lot to do with proving yourself, and making your mark on a particular field. You may have visualised your business’s products getting glowing reviews, and imagined feeling the thrill of them selling in stores around the world.
After the change you will be focused on having fun, enjoying your life, and creatively expressing yourself. You have stopped worrying about whether or not you are ever going to be successful. You may have some tangible proof that you have already failed dismally, and so do not see any point in continuing to pursue the same priorities that led you there to that pit of despair. You will have decided to change the rules and try your hand at the “Just play it for fun” game.
The essential difference between the two mindsets is that in the latter you are not “trying” to make money.
This is a radical view and goes against mainstream business thinking, but you may be in a position, not out of choice, that you want to try this new avenue. The advice may not rest easily with some people but for others it will be a life saving inspiration.
Bypass the Avenues of Advancement
So you have decided to stop trying to make money, and stopped trying to achieve success. You have had some years of failure to convince you that it is time to change your approach, so you need to make immediate changes and have little choice but to try a different path.
When you tried to succeed, a twist of fate, or whatever you like to call it, always showed up to defeat you. You could never defeat it no matter how hard you tried. The harder you tried, the more vigorously you were put down.
So stop trying to win, accept the irony that trying to get a higher financial score may actually doom you to a negative score. The opposing force may always greater than anything you can overcome.
Instead of trying to win, begin to play for a draw. Bypass what seems like obvious avenues for financial advancement, recognizing that they are exactly what you are expected to do. If you had made those self-maximizing moves, you would have simply been knocked back, and you would be worse off than when you started.
In practice what this means is that you stop trying to maximize revenue or profits. In each business transaction, you opt to give more than you receive in return. You always strive to leave extra value on the table.
For example, you may release a product priced at only $9.95, even though you believe a competitive price would be $19.95. You began giving advice for free. You commit to some hours unpaid volunteer work. You make it impossible for your moves to be countered because your moves are not competitive.
Deliberately and intentionally earn less revenue and less profit than you feel you are capable of earning. When it comes to income generation, you hold back when it seems like the logical move would be to advance. When you are expected you to play to win, you actually play for a draw.
Playing for the Draw
When you played to win, you may have lost for significant amounts of time. You may have never actually won. Even when it seemed like you nailed a winning move, it always turned out to be a mistake that led to you being checkmated several moves later.
When you play for a draw, you should be able to make money more easily. And you do not have to work nearly as hard to make it happen.
When you play to win in a competitive game, you are playing for someone else to lose. If you want to maximize revenue or profits, you need to maximize the amount of money your customers or clients pay you. The more money you make, the less money they get to keep. You can only go so far down this path before you start meeting serious resistance. And the more tactics and techniques you use to try to combat that resistance, the stronger the resistance becomes.
How many businesses have had to learn this lesson the hard way? The more they try to extract the maximum amount of money from you, the more you feel driven to resist them.
Which businesses do you dislike most? Do you feel those businesses are playing to win at your expense? How does that affect your ongoing relationship with them?
What are your favorite businesses? Why are they your favorites?
Becoming an Enigma
What does it mean to win? What does it mean to succeed? Does it even make sense to pursue these ideals?
You may already have learned the hard way that it is actually easier to enjoy an abundant and fulfilling lifestyle by playing for a draw instead of playing to win or succeed.
When you play for a draw, you change the way others relate to you. They may not understand this consciously, but they’ll behave differently towards you nonetheless.
Some of your decisions may confuse people at first, especially if they are used to dealing with businesses that play to win, but generally people seem to respond positively. A business that plays for a draw is a breath of fresh air.
When you leave extra value on the table without trying to extract it, that value rolls over into goodwill, which is the lifeblood of a sustainable business.
Even by adopting this method there should be plenty for you to sustain a positive cash flow and to enjoy an abundant lifestyle.
It may be a major lesson for you to learn that you can actually make more money by trying to make less money. You can achieve more success by trying to succeed less.
The path of abundance is not necessarily the path that maximizes velocity. It is the path that minimizes friction. If you try to maximize velocity, you end up maximizing friction too, thereby causing massive amounts of heat and burn up.
Success Equals Sustainability
Instead of seeing success as some kind of accomplishment, victory, or conquest, you must align your thinking that it is wiser and more effective to define success as sustainability.
This is not just about how we run our lives or businesses. It is about how we relate to each other and to our planet as a whole.
Is the most successful energy company the one that extracts and sells the earth’s resources as quickly as possible? Is a successful relationship one in which you extract maximum value from your partner, leaving them drained at the end of each day?
The game of business may not be winnable, and matter how hard you play to win, you may always lose in the end. Even if you become an extremely cunning player, laying waste to all who oppose you, will eventually cause your demise.
But if you largely ignore the score and play for a draw instead of trying to win, you cannot be defeated. You can play the game for as long as you like.
When you seek sustainability, the games of money and business are transformed. Instead of competing for survival and success, you can relax and enjoy yourself. Playing for fun is a whole different world.
When you play for fun instead of trying to win, most people will relate to you in the same manner. Some players may initially assume a competitive posture with you, but once they realize you are playing for fun instead of trying to win, they will quickly lower their shields, and they will begin to play the game with you at your fun level. Even highly competitive players naturally sense there is no honor in thrashing an opponent who is not trying to beat them. No real victory can be achieved against a player who stands no chance of winning. Players that try to overwhelm defenseless opponents simply make themselves look ridiculous.
This is not to say that you will never encounter a stubborn victory-minded person who seeks to trounce you anyway, but it is a lot rarer when you decline to resist them. Competitive people tend to expend more energy on those who resist them. If you offer no resistance, they are more likely to consider you a potential ally.
When you try to win in business, you experience frustration and failure. When you play for a draw, you have fun and enjoy sustainable success.
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