When Miss Z started school she became competitive… to the point that when she plays with Mr A, she always wants to win.
In our house we implemented the rule that everyone is a winner. There are no losers. There is someone that comes first, and someone that comes second, but that doesn’t mean that they lost. Mr A is normally second, so much so that now he likes being second (I don’t think he fully grasps the concept yet).
The other day I read an article about the 7 things parents are doing today that hinder the children from becoming the leaders of tomorrow. Whilst I agree with a lot of what the writer is saying, there is one thing with which I disagree. He says that it’s not good the way in which parents and schools say to children that we are all winners. “This is not a reflection of reality” he says.
And I agree that this is not the reality. But it needn’t be that way. And if you’re going to change the world, what better place to start than in schools?
Capitalism brought with it this mentality of winning. Everyone wants to be a winner, be the best. Climb the ladder of success. Even if it means leaving a whole load of people behind. I like to think that things are changing. Even my own employer – a worldwide and well known IT company – has just adopted a performance reward system where rather than having a grading based on how individual objectives were met, employees will be rewarded mainly based on how they collaborated with others, contributed to the team’s results and the company as a whole.
This is how it should be – we should value team work, because work is much easier when the load is shared. When people synergise.
So I am all in favour of team work as opposed to competition. I was playing a “supermarket shopping” board game with the kids the other day. Miss Z was extremely excited because she only had 1 item left to find for her shopping cart. And then she won the game. It was the second time in a row that she won.
And then I said “what if we could all win?”. All we have to do is help each other get the items for the shopping cart. And so we did – when one of us picked a card and the item wasn’t in our list, we looked at the others’ list, and if they had it, they could put it in their cart. Rather than ending the game when the first person had all the items in the list, we ended the game when everyone had their cart full. There was a first person (Miss Z), a second (me) and a third (Mr A), but the important thing is that we were all winners!
I used to like Monopoly as a child. I loved the idea of growing up and being rich (who doesn’t?). But it was a frustrating game at times, and I didn’t always win, which made it so much worse.
Now, I have a completely different view about money and prosperity. I think that if people worked together (an extended family for example), it’s much easier to get financially free than if each household struggles along to save money and invest/create something for the future.
I hope more and more schools, businesses and governments embrace the philosophy of “we’re all winners”, because in reality, we are all One, and we if we don’t all win, we certainly will all loose.