Victorious Warriors Win First

So now that we have that out of the way, I want to let you guys know it is the beginning of fall, the temperature starting to change. Soon, the green will leave the leaves no pun intended on using leave twice. And we’re faced with the fourth quarter of the year. And to begin this fourth quarter of the year, I have a pretty cool episode in store something that we can reflect on ponder on and develop from. So without any further ado, I want you to guys to put your seatbelts on and open your mind, open your mind and just be receptive for one idea. These are short, under 15 minute episodes, and take away one thing and you could also take away every day. So let’s rock.

The essence of this episode comes from a quote from the book, The Art of War by Sun Tzu and Sun Tzu says victorious Warriors win first and then go to war while the defeated warriors go to war first, and then seek to win. As I recently ran across this quote, I knew it was appropriate for the phase that I’m in in my life as well as the phase that I see people that I communicate on a daily basis with the people that I love that are close to me and also the people that I mentor and have conversations about their own possibility. This is a relevant quote, it will be and continue to be a relevant quote for not only myself, but I felt the need to share with you the halftime talks audience.

So when we talk about the victorious Warriors win first and then go to war I, I want to understand this, or I’ve come to understand this as being two aspects of the win, the psychological win, and the planning one. Now, if we’re taking a first principles approach to winning first, like you have to begin to structure it from the beginning from the outset, you’re not just haphazardly engaging in conflict engaging in in a dream engaging in a plan hoping that the outcome that you seek serendipitous serendipitously shows up. So what we’re talking about is deep intention. There’s a quote that I think we’ve all heard at one point or another begin with the end in mind. And when we begin with the end in mind, all points lead there.

We don’t just get in our car start to drive and hope we end up at the desk stagnation of our expectations and assumptions. So begins with this deep intention. Not only from a planning perspective but sight psychologically, like you’d hear stories of Mike Tyson and, and when he got in the ring, he knew he already won, he could know upon looking in his competitors eyes that he won. And all that had to play out at that point was his training, all the preparation he’d done up to that moment. So there’s a psychological and a planning component. One of the other things that you have to keep in mind is both warriors are faced with the same circumstances. And it’s not the circumstances that change in this story.

It is the Warriors themself. And one of the things that becomes so strikingly clear, is that there’s experiences that will guide the way the Warriors move, they can be your own experiences, the times when you’ve been in the same situation before and now you know what to do. Or you could benefit from other people’s experiences, through the books through life through discussions through planning, and integrate that experiential knowledge into your own path into a path that creates this criteria and standards, because the sophisticated warriors have a clearer vision of the wind, and therefore, they understand how to point out the landmarks. The signs, the signposts that tell you the story, that the win is near. So many times, the other warriors played at a crowded it think of a short term win is the big win, win, that win itself is only a battle in the midst of this total war.

And so I have conversations and one of the conversations that I have with some of my, my mentees who are who are about to go to college is that the diploma is not the when the diploma is a receipt, a receipt of passage from freshman to senior and completing the minimum criteria and standards that the university has set forth. But the when the when of college, is acquiring those skills, of coming to an understanding, creating professional networks. So you’re not asking those questions about where do I go from here at the end, if you begin like that, if you begin trying to understand that I need to formulate these relationships and build not only my credibility, but my talent and understand how to create these skills through output and output and experience and experience college becomes a an ally that fits within the broader scheme of the war that we are ultimately waging with ourselves and the world.

Now, it’s not a war of me against but it’s with it is a colaboration. And understanding that you begin day one understanding that my professional relationships are key. I’m understanding the clarity of the field that I’m going to, I understand what I’m capable of getting here. I’m not hoping that I will come here and hopefully get something because the defeated warriors go to war first and then seek the win. Know why you’re there. If it’s the workforce, understand the capacity of skills that you’re capable of getting in a set position. And if you can’t get those skills and said position, supplement, read network, go to conferences, try to figure out how to fill your treasure chest with the tools that are going to allow you to ultimately succeed.

The assumptions and the expectations are sometimes slowing you down. Just going to war is not enough. Understand that clarity of intention that that sculpts and molds the wind that you seek, and you will begin each endeavor, each opportunity, each chapter of your life from the perspective of already having one. Also this conversation goes beyond planning and it goes into a psychological frame of mind that confidence to approach each opportunity from the perspective that I know that my training has led me to the point where I can perform at a level commensurate with success. It is the letting go of the anxiety, letting go of the mental conversations, letting go of the doubt letting go of the trepidation that creates a level of anxiety and stress within the system.

And that level of anxiety and stress inhibits our performance. If you go into it relaxed, knowing that you’ve won the second you get on there knowing that you can read the signposts knowing what the win is. When that moment happens, you will know how to react because you’ve trained for it. And so the victorious Warriors win first and then go to war. It is a level of preparation of both mind and spirit planning and purpose. Get it together.