What happens when you do not win? Do you see it as a loss or as a learning? Your answer to this question will determine how sustainable your success will be. How much impact you can make in long run. How far will you go. How many times do you hear people say - Oh, I do not do that. I tried once and it did not work. I am just not made for that. Well, what we believe we achieve. So this becomes our truth. If you are in win/lose mode, you may be highly motivated for a while. By burning wish to win or terrifying thought of loosing. Someone told me once it is like ever running bicycle, if you stop you fall. You may be highly competitive and see your competitors as a threat. You are very likely to also be highly sprung. Everyone loses eventually. It is not matter of it, it is statistics of life. It is not about if you lose, it is about what will you do afterwards. It took me very long time to understand this and to learn from my losses. When I left my high end corporate position at age of 35 I felt utterly defeated. I would not admit that at the time but I can see that now. My career prior to that was sky-rocketing, I achieved everything so easily. A lot of time, a lot of work was required from me but reward in terms of promotion and money was always there. I believed in myself. After defeat I was disappointed, bitter and opinionated, holding a grudge against my former boss and the way corporate world functioned in my country. Convinced that I picked myself up I moved onto better things only to found myself with energy drained. Like I was on half a battery. Now I know this was because my grudge was using a space of my energy drive. Without releasing the grudge I was not able to truly move on. I attended recently an event where my mentor Mary Morrissey mentioned how Kabbalah teaches that we need competitors in order to better ourselves. And the pieces of puzzle have fallen in place. Once we are willing to learn and release our victim story of losing we are also willing to see that our nemesis was essential part of learning. We all need a reflecting mirror as it is difficult to see oneself without it. Our spare partner can be just that, someone who shows us our weakness and our strengths. Someone who pushes us to go further and maybe not immediately but eventually we can be grateful to them for doing that. However, as long as we are in losing mode we will not see it that way. We will continue to see an enemy. We will defend ourselves and will be rejecting precious life’s feedback. Once we are ready to receive our lesson we are ready to win again. That win becomes more of achievement and celebration than just win. It is much wider event. Thomas Edison, when asked how he handle 10000 failures when experimenting with light bulb until he got the one working, replied that he never had a failure he always had feedback. This is more than inspiring attitude, this is golden food of achiever.