If Your Drawing Board and Your Strategy Are the Same Thing, You're Finished

Some of us know how to deal with failure: we put the bitter truth on a plate, stare at it, muse over it, eat it with haste and and move on. But most of us don't.

And this happens (not being able to deal with failure) mostly when we have all our eggs (hopes and dreams) in one basket (in one person, strategy or plan). It is when we cannot comfortably put that plate of failure on the table and eat it. We pretend to focus elsewhere, albeit to kill the urge to eat the failure-feed, but mostly, always falling short. Then we may either end up blaming the plate, the table or the chair instead of focusing on the failure-feed.

So, the question now is: when our present failed strategy is and was our only way out, what do we do?

I'm afraid to say that if your drawing board and your strategy were/are the same thing, then you're done. You're finished. You, are, finished.

I'll explain.

Let's imagine that you were invited to a song-writer's competition requiring participants to only sing their best original compositions. Also, participants may write as many good songs as they wish. But as for you, even after knowing these good rules, you came to the auditions with only one BEST song written by you.

Your strategy would be: "This is my best song, it will work, it will win me the award. The judges will listen to it and fall in love with it, and it will help me trump every other competitor. I have the BEST song, therefore there is no need to worry." Why do you feel overconfident? Because it is the best song! It is YOUR best song.

Unbeknownst to you, there is someone else thinking the same way as you are but they have their other three "BEST" songs.

What they are doing is this: they are imagining, "If the judges won't like this first BEST song of mine, I'll unleash my other BEST song; and if they won't think the second one is worth their ears, I'll still point them towards my other BEST song." If your competitor's BEST songs are in different genres and with different strengths in composition and lyricism, you're finished. They'll win, and you'll fail. Why will they win? Because they will be thinking about "BESTNESS" with regard to the judges, not themselves!

Back to the point though...

Now, imagine a situation where the judges listen to your one BEST song (which will actually happen if every other competitor was as well prepared as you were) and after they're undecided, they chose to ask you for a second song: "Hey! Do you have any other song you've written apart from this one?" Guess what you will tell them... Nonsense. You'll tell them nonsense.

You'll end up as the runners-up (or not, depending on the competition), not because you are a bad song writer but because you're a poor strategist. You thought your one song was enough, but your competitor came in with more tools to win. It was a do-or-die for them, it wasn't for you. So when they unleash their second song, you'll be wishing you had a "drawing board" to go back to. But you wouldn't be having any. Why? Because your drawing board was your strategy - you had already utilized its significance. Your one song was your do-or-die strategy.

This simply means this: whenever you have an opportunity to compete, don't EVER undermine your opponent. You'd be better be ruthless at wanting something than play around with wanting it then lose it in the end. You'd better be prepared for the worst, and the best may just end up smiling at you; than thinking that you are the best only to realize that the best is actually better and smarter than you in many ways.

I hope you learn this whenever you fail: that two arrows are always better than one. The second arrow enables you to eat your failure-feed with pints of salt.

End Note: The only place where our strategy and our drawing board are allowed to be the same is in our relationships and when dealing with God.

Bonface Morris.