“It is not the critic who counts… The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.” — Theodore Roosevelt
I remember a client — John — who missed out on a listing to a competitor and spent a week in a genuine funk about it. When I finally got him on the phone, my first question wasn’t “what went wrong.” It was: “Did you give it everything you had?” He went quiet. Then he said yes. And something in his voice changed the moment he said it.
That’s the whole conversation, right there. Winning isn’t always the point. Whether you gave it your all — that’s the point.
If you lost your last deal, can you say the same thing John did?
The Cost of Win-at-All-Costs
Michael Jordan’s famous “there is no I in team, but there is in win” captures a culture most of us grew up inside of — one where winning was conditioned into us from childhood sport, and losing meant something was wrong with you. That culture has a cost. A global study by Development Dimensions International, surveying 15,000 leaders and 2,100 HR professionals across 1,700 organisations, 50 countries and 24 industry sectors, identified managing burnout and wellbeing as one of the top global leadership megatrends. Win-at-all-costs doesn’t just cost the losers. It costs everyone, eventually.
Feeling this one? You don’t have to figure it out alone — book a free High Performance Call and let’s talk through where you’re at.
A Different Kind of Win
Alan Watts offered a different way of measuring a life well spent: “The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”
World number one tennis player Ash Barty lived this shift publicly. She said her happiness “wasn’t dependent on the results, the money or the status that winning provided her” — that her success depended instead on “whether she gave everything she could.”
Take action: After your next deal — won or lost — ask yourself Barty’s question before anyone else’s: did I give everything I could? Answer honestly, then let the result go.
This is the standard I hold every agent I coach to under our High Performance framework: not perfection, not guaranteed outcomes, just full effort, honestly given. Trophies tarnish. Knowing you gave it your all doesn’t.
If you’re ready to raise your own standard, book a free High Performance Call.
About Jet Xavier
Jet Xavier is a High Performance mindset and accountability coach who works with real estate agents, principals and team leaders to build sustainable, high-performing careers. Learn more about Jet.
This piece began as a column for Elite Agent — you can read the original here.
