Trophies

 

I watched last night a short Prager U video narrated by formed Olympian and professional soccer player, Cobi Jones. The title of the video is Trophies Are For Winners.

 

Jones relates as to how he did show and gave effort but did not seem to be pushed forward by coaches, so he doubled and tripled his effort to improve physically and he started to start on the teams he was on, and eventually he played professionally.

 

He reminds us that it is not enough just to be present, and when losing one should not get a loser trophy or participation trophy for competing in team sports—or in the classroom for grades, for example.

 

These are sound lessons for life. Everyone should have to compete on merit, and those with less ability, may have to work three times as hard, but they can as super-achievers accomplish impressive things, and that is the message that we want to send children.

 

We grade and promote them based on merit and excellent performance, nothing else. If they fail, or perform poorly, or do not attend class or practice, they are flunked.

 

We build self-esteem in all children by teaching them self-realization theory. The winner is the one that is honest about himself and others, where all actually and accurately ranked by performance against each other and against the self of yesterday. This grading of personal performance occurs each day for students and adults  on the soccer field, or in class, or on the job, in terms of performance. The one that is a winner is rewarded, and the one that fails is considered a loser and is not rewarded or promoted, and standards are never dumbed-down in the name of sparing someone’s feelings or damaging their self-esteem. 

 

Cobi Jones is the perfect exemplar of a man with average ability that achieved sports greatness through hard work—he did self-realize in his own way. He does not use my language to describe a winner as someone that self-realizes, and a loser as someone that refuses to self-realize.

 

Whether one fails in life—and we all do repeatedly—or not is not the issue. Failing is a blessing to those that are resilient, confident, realistic, self-aware, ambitious and desire to learn and grow constantly. The grades we got or not, and the promotion we got or not—these temporary victories or defeats are not what define us.

 

What makes us winners is we persevere, and get as far as we can. That is winning and that generates earned self-esteem and pride, pride quietly held, deserved and never bragged about.

 

We can compete with others and ourselves, and not worry about the grades we get, but we have a plan for ourselves and we are chasing after it, and we keeping improving and winning for a life time. This is what Cobi Jones lives and advises, and this is why in sports and in grading, kids need trophies based on merit and performance, not on their mere participation.

 

We cannot shelter kids too much—we do want to keep them innocent and protected against wordly evil and predators, of course—they will suffer, life is hard, and they will be losers in certain instances, many times in their lives.

 

If we raise them to be godly, moral, truth-loving individuators, they will be winners, and they will absorb their victories without being swelled up by them, regarding themselves as demigods, and they will be able to absorb, regroup and try, try again, after each defeat, without being devastated by bad reviews from teachers and coaches.