Life consists of a continually evolving set of elements. It is difficult to carry the nuts and bolts of planning of one facet of life into another and yet, there are certain principles that have the potential to be an everlasting support system that is not dependent on anybody else but yourself. One such eternal philosophy of life is what we are discussing here today: to learn and not to win.

Although, winning does have its own importance in everybody’s lives, it should never be the primary objective. Although, it may prove to be a source of motivation, it must not become the only source of motivation. Although, winning would sometimes act as a source of satisfaction, one must not design the life plans around this outcome.

The Mindless Hunger To Win Every Single Time

Whatever we do in our lives, it does seem to be driven by the ambition to win, doesn’t it? Think about the recent social interaction you had with other people or you probably saw any form of social interaction like a discussion or a back and forth argument. That interaction that you’re thinking about must have been driven by a dominant desire to win more than the desire to learn. This is what I come across quite frequently and when a social dynamic is primarily determined by the idea of emerging victorious, it leaves little room to add to existing knowledge, that would have otherwise occurred, through a healthy learning approach.

To go a step beyond just the social interactions, the idea of learning can be extended to almost everything that one does. Even in the matters involving direct competition, one can make use of the learning approach to greatly maximize the learning potential than if the competition is approached purely by the desire to win.

Not Living In An Ideal World, Am I?

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not living in a utopian world where I’d believe that there is no room and space for competition. When there is a finite amount of resources, competition is bound to happen which sometimes could turn into a ferocious one. Neither does this philosophy reject competition nor does it suggest to avoid competition. What it really requires from you is to fill yourself with the passion to learn, to excel, to grow and to become a better person tomorrow than you are today. With such a mindset, you are bound to experience personal growth which will, over the passage of time, become monumental and for some, unbelievable.

Wonders Of The Desire To Learn.

The attitude of making learning a primary outcome of your actions opens up a completely new side to life, one that was hidden and unexplored before. You may say that you already have such a mindset and it’s not something extraordinary for you. I used to make the same mistake of fooling myself into believing that I have a learning attitude while in reality, it was nothing more than reinforcing my existing beliefs. Sometimes, there’s only a subtle difference between exploring new ideas just to prove oneself right and actually adding to your existing knowledge. You are your own best judge and you must objectively view your present belief system and evaluate all its components.

If you have been lately going through a feeling of boredom, monotony, stagnancy or just a hold of pessimism around you, you need to shake things up a bit the first step of which starts with changing your perspective that governs your actions. The moment you get rid of your insecurities and break through the boundaries of your own delusional state of mind, you would save yourself from going for the win every single time you come into interaction with a new idea or a person. It would be made possible because after having addressed your negative mindset, you would not feel threatened and would not feel the need to satisfy yourself by winning.

Following the neutralization of the negative attitude, you must replace it with the objective of learning as your major factor of initiating any action. This would also have its impact carried over onto other areas of your life, for instance, it would make you go for that experience that you have been dreadfully avoiding. When you know that you’re going to learn new stuff from an experience and are going to come out of it a better person than you went into it, you would have the motivation to just go for it.

What Is Happiness?

William Yeats, an Irish poet, once expressed his thoughts on happiness: “Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing or that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.” This shows you that the emphasis on learning is not without a purpose in fact, it is something that gives birth to the most sought-after feeling in the world i.e., happiness. When you learn new things, you gain knowledge, you expand your mental horizon and you experience growth.

While you can transform yourself into a learning machine, making your everyday life all the more exuberant and lively, there are conscious ways of learning new things as well. Pick up a new book, go attend an event of interest in town, meet someone new, talk about a new topic and dare to permanently crush the comfort zone.

Somewhere down the line, you will start to get a feeling that all of this is intertwined with each other and that’s what so amazing about this approach. You learn, you grow, you feel real happiness which compels you to chase more experiences, meet new people, discuss new ideas and the chain reaction keeps building up. When you learn a meaningful new idea, what you essentially do is that you reap a thousand crops by sowing a single seed.