When you find yourself in an unwinnable scenario, what do you do? Do you “patriotically” keep fighting to the death or do you admit that this round is lost and give up? Unfortunately such situations aren’t too uncommon in life – and we all end up in those critical decision-points of our lives where we have conflicting interests, and we don’t know what to do.
I read an interesting analogy recently – if a soldier is wounded in battle, and if he cares for the cause, he would first go back and heal his wounds so that he may fight with renewed strength the next day. Only a fool would keep on fighting with bulletholes in their chest and die – thereby really “losing” the battle (their goals shall forever remain unachieved).
It’s also an important concept is Poker. Movies like Casino Royale misleadingly portray the character who keeps on raising as having “guts”. Watch the World Series poker tournaments and you’ll find that knowing when to fold is perhaps the most important strategy towards winning. If someone has a Royal Flush, and you know it’s obvious, then how much do you think you’ll scare them by going “all in”?
I had to learn this the hard way in my job, but it’s an important point to know about yourself. If you find yourself in a situation where you know you won’t win, it’s not easy to back out, but it takes much more courage to live for your cause even under ridicule, than to give up and die on the battlefield and lose sight of what you were fighting for in the first place. It’s important to let go of false pride, and really fight for pride.
Then again, let’s focus on that ridicule angle for a moment. I dare you, if you can find one instance where the persons ridiculing you for giving up, were not the very persons who had something to gain from you not giving up, I’ll retract this entire article. I won’t use the word “in most cases”. I’ll guarantee a 100% complete certaintyof this fact. Your loved ones would be the first to ask you to back out and leave. Your loved ones care about the cause you’re fighting for, than a false pride which you will never gratify anyway. Do you really believe the people who ridicule you for giving up, won’t do so inspite of you dying for your cause?
You really want to win? Go back, rethink your strategy, and actually get what you set out to achieve! That’s how you shut up those who dare make fun of you.
