Always pick the winner!

If you thought this is going to be related to betting, you are wrong but dont be harsh on yourself because it was inspired by betting, off the subject, I have to mention about my Architect guy at the office who predicted Liverpool to win 2-1 and Liverpool to win both at half-time and full-time, just lucky you think? He wagered 20 dollars on Chelsea to win 4-1, if he was right it would have earned him 660 SGD!!! One can only imagine his reaction to Ballack's dive 93 minutes into a 90 minute match that changed the result from 4-1 to 4-2........

Returning to what I wanted to write about, when we feel inadequate in things that we want to be a success at, we usually tend to boost our self-esteem by joining up with people obviously inferior in that same thing that we hold dear. Mixing with people who are superior most often is threatening and leads to a lot of self-reflection, the outcome can be positive but we dont dare. Mixing with equals is the next best option but its not too comfortable and mixing with people who havent made it actually makes us feel a winner and we tend to do that often because that inflates our ego and makes us feel better.

I am sure at some point of time we would have found ourselves in such a position, one thing that we should hope that happens to us, is to realize that we are in such a position because its such a comfort zone that its quite reasonable not to wake up. The lesson from sports that we should learn is that we can only improve by playing against superiority, only then will we push ourselves. If we dont mix with people better than us, we may find comfort in the knowledge that we will never be challenged, but then we will never find out what the next step is all about. Remember if we avoid "growing pains" by sticking with people who either haven't made it or who are not interested in "growing", we will NOT grow.

Australian Football team joining the Asian Football Federation to avoid playing against the team that finishes 5th in the South American Qualifying FC is a perfect example for this discussion because, from the Aussie point of view is that since they are not being challenged all the way till they reach the play-offs, they cannot raise the game just for those 2 games and thus fail to qualify. So they say that they are willing to muck it with the Asians because they feel will be challenged more by the Asians that their pacific neighbours. I am still not ok with this because, the Asians teams are not going to test Australia any better than thier local rivals do, they gain by not meeting the South Americans and so instead of playing 2 tough games every four years, they will qualify to the World Cup and will play 3 first round games against better opposition - just a game extra. Australia is to gain from this and Asia will lose in the short term.