Understanding the player mentality

- It's easy to see the victim story in very dramatic situations. One of my greatest heroes, Viktor Frankl, who was an inmate in Auschwitz. He wrote a book called, "Man in Search of Meaning" about how he discovered this notion of responsibility while he was in the most dire circumstances imaginable. Now, that calls our attention. But it doesn't have to be so dramatic. It could be something as simple as a colleague not responding a phone call and us feeling victimized, how could he not respond? Or our partner not doing the chores. Oh, she said she was going to wash the dishes and she didn't or he was going to take the trash out and he never, or he always gets late and never calls me before. There are so many things at home, at work, with friends, I mean anything that bothers us. Anything that bothers us. It's an occasion in which this choice is possible. Will we stop with the story of the victim. Feeling out of control and at the mercy of external circumstances or other people? Or are we going to see that as the context? That's the way it is. People don't respond to our phone calls or they just don't want to connect with us or they'll do things that we find hurtful. That is just the nature of things. We are not in control of everything that happens in life. But then in each one of these occasions we have a moment of choice. We have the moment where we can stop seeing only the part of story that pertains to external circumstances and we can add to the picture. We don't exclude that. That's there, it's true. Gravity exists, it rains, there's traffic, things like that. But we add the part of the story that's within our control. I started saying yes, the meeting ran over but I chose to stay. I was afraid to stand up and say, I'm sorry I have another meeting and I am going to leave. I did not want to say that to upset, to not upset the meeting manager. But the price of not saying that was that I was late to the other meeting. This other price I want to pay or not want to pay, I'm not suggesting you always leave the meetings. I'm saying, you have a choice. And if you choose to stay, you stay. And if you choose to leave, you stand up and you leave. But you see yourself in the driver's seat. That is the shift from being a victim to being a player. I call this being a player because you are in the game. As a victim you are watching the game from the outside. When I was a child, I go to watch soccer with my dad in Argentina. And people were euphoric and excited. Oh, we won, we won, we won! Goal, we score, everybody hugging themselves there at the stadium and then some bad days it was, they lost. We didn't lose, they lost. It's the players that lost. So in a sense, we all want to be players when things go well. But we don't want to be the player when we lose. It's they lost. Somebody else lost. And I see that pattern all the time. I'm suggesting to change that. It's absolutely the opposite. When you win, okay, it's fine, celebrate everything. But it is exactly when you lose that it's most important to say, how did I participate in the loss? How did I contribute? Because by making myself a part of the problem, I can make myself a part of the solution. By realizing how my behavior influenced an undesirable outcome I can say, okay I'll change my behavior so I can create a different outcome. But I have to see the link first between the behavior and the outcome. If I cut those two and say, I have nothing to do with this. Well, I can't have anything to do with changing this, either. And that's why the player is in the game. And that's what Viktor Frankl also found out. He was stuck in a concentration camp and he couldn't get out. But he realized that the last freedom, the ultimate dignity of a human being does not depend on where he is. It depends of where he or she puts him or herself. So this spiritual commitment to choose my response to difficulties is what creates pride, is what creates peace of mind. And it doesn't necessarily create success. I mean, well, it can contribute to success and in the case of Viktor Frankl, he survived but he says the best of us did not come back. Because many people who acted with full integrity and took the player position, they still were killed. There's no promise that the world is going to work out and things are going to go your way. What the promise is, is that by making this choice of being in the game you can play fairly. You can distinguish yourself. You can choose your behavior towards success but also with unconditional integrity. So you display your values, no matter what.