Business English
Focus on the Effort, not the Outcome
By Marilyn Elias
日本語
Fourteen-year-old Richie Hawley had spent five
years studying clarinet at the Community School of Performing
Arts in Los Angeles when he was invited to try out for a concert
solo with the New York Philharmonic.
Ninety-two young people were invited to the
auditions; only nine won Lincoln Center solos. Hawley was
among them.
The audition could have been the perfect setup
for fear, worrying about mistakes, and trying to impress the
judges. But Hawley says he "did pretty well at staying calm."
"And I couldn't be thinking about how many mistakes
I'd make-it would distract me from playing," he says. "I don't
even remember trying to while I played. It's almost as if
they weren't there. I just wanted to make music."
Hawley is a winner. But he didn't become a winner
by concentrating on winning. He did it by concentrating on
playing well.
"The important thing in the Olympic Games is
not to win but to take part," said the founder of the modern
Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin, 88 years ago. "The important
thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential
thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well."
Some people might think de Coubertin's words
are naive, even self-defeating. But new research shows that
his philosophy is exactly the path achievers take to win at
life's challenging games.
A characteristic of high performers is their
intense, pleasurable concentration on work, rather than on
their competitors or future glory or money, says Dr. Charles
Garfield, who has studied 1,500 achievers in business, science,
sports, the arts, and other various professions.
"They're interested in winning, but they're
most interested in self-development, testing their limits,"
says Garfield, president of Performance Sciences Institute
in Berkeley, California, and a clinical professor at the University
of California Medical School, San Francisco.
One of the most surprising things about top
performers is how many losses they've had-and how much they've
learned from each. "Not on of the 1,500 I studied defined
losing as failing," Garfield says. "They kept calling their
losses 'setbacks.'"
A healthy attitude toward setbacks is essential
to winning, experts agree.
"The worst thing you can do if you've had a
setback is to let yourself get stuck in a prolonged depression,"
says Milton Wolpin, a clinical psychologist at the University
of Southern California.
Instead, Wolpin says you should analyze carefully
what went wrong. Identify specific things you did right and
give yourself credit for them, he says. He even suggests keeping
a diary of all the positive things you've done on the way
to a goal.
Psychologist Lorraine Nadelman says parents
should play games of both chance and skill with their children,
and should emphasize the difference between the two.
Concentrating on the game instead of the outcome
will also help you keep realistic expectations.
"A lot of people think if they win something
big, it's going to make a drastic change in their lives,"
Wolpin says. "Then, if life settles down pretty much as before,
it can leave you disappointed. Don't build up a lot of…unrealistic
expectations."
Resources: Spectrum New Edition, Student Text
5/Prentice Hall Regents 1995
Published with permission from the Pearson Education
Company
© 1995 by Prentice Hall Regents All rights
reserved
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