Healing from the Need to Win

A few years ago when I worked at a mortgage company, we would celebrate the loan officers who had brought in the most sales at our monthly company meeting. As long as they cleared a certain threshold of loans sold, they would make it onto the Champions list. But the list was also published in a specific order: The loan officer with the greatest dollar amount of sales first, then the next, and so on. Our CEO would read the list in order and congratulate everyone.

Overall, I think the Champions list spurred a sense of healthy competition. Our loan officers weren’t cutthroat; more experienced ones would still help the newbies figure out what they were doing, and even those who were vying for first or second place on the Champions list each month spoke well of each other.

Competition can bring out the best in us. The challenge posed by someone else doing excellently in our field makes us rally our internal resources. This is even true in church, where competition is sometimes discouraged. In a town with more than one preacher, the preaching is better. It has to be; people leave the churches with bad preaching and go down the street to another one!

But competition obviously has a dark side, too. At its best, competition spurs us to become who we were meant to be, to accomplish things we wouldn’t otherwise accomplish. But at its worst, competition feeds our insecurity and makes us incapable of loving other people.

[Thanks for reading. This post continues our series The Work of Healing. Check out our other posts on faith and work and emotional health for more resources on living an integrated Christian life. Subscribe to get the next post in the series in your inbox.]

Wanting to win can be a good thing–especially if it translates to wanting to do our best. But needing to win–to do better than others–is always evil. It twists us, wounding us, our teammates, and our competitors.

In our teenage and college years, the vicious need to win likely showed up in athletics and academics (and somehow, also, the arts). As adults, the main arena where we compete is the workplace. That is where we get wounded and wound others in the fight to be not just our best, but the best.

So how can we heal from the need to win at work?

Who Really Matters?

Much ink has been spilled over the supposed entitlement of my generation, the millennials, who grew up “winning” participation trophies at sporting events without having to, you know, win. The critique is that a participation trophy creates a false equality between just showing up and demonstrating competence. There are in fact, differing levels of competence. Some people are better at soccer (or selling mortgages) than others. If we’re going to celebrate, let’s celebrate the excellence that results from hard work. Just because Mommy thinks you deserve a trophy for existing doesn’t mean you do.

But if there can be a false equality between just showing up and demonstrating competence, there can also be a false inequality between people of varying competence. The emotional energy behind the critique of entitlement isn’t so much about whether some people are better than others at soccer. Someone who can’t see that really is living in La La Land. It’s about what it means to be good at something. Who is worthy of being celebrated? Who really matters? Who has worth?

Needing to Win Is Needing to Matter

In so many ways, our cultural norms say: Winners matter. Losers don’t. 

In the worlds of music and sports, Taylor and Travis are both on top of the world right now. There is no post-game parade for the losing team. Grammy and Super Bowl winners matter. Losers don’t.

In an election year, the outcome determines who matters in the White House. Even before the term is up, the sitting president is a lame duck if we know someone else is taking over. Election winners matter. Lame ducks don’t.

And of course, at work, like in the name of the sales list at my old mortgage company, it’s the Champions who matter. 

If you believe that winners matter and losers don’t, then you’ll need to win. Because we all need to matter. The ironic thing is that regardless of what level of competence you have, you can still be controlled by the need to win. The same insecurity that runs through Kindergartners on the soccer field is driving many of the pros.

What Makes Someone Matter?

Our prevailing cultural narrative about winning and losing reinforces our social divisions: The rich matter; the poor don’t. The powerful matter; the oppressed don’t. The famous matter; the obscure don’t. Nobody wants to be a plebe. 

Contrast this with the teaching of the Bible. When it comes to human beings, the bedrock teaching of the Judeo-Christian tradition is that every single person is created “in the image of God” (Genesis 1:27). This rich and mysterious poetic phrase has been unfolded in the history of Israel and the followers of Jesus to mean that all human beings are of infinite value, bearing the creative mark of God in a unique way not true of other creatures. We are image bearers.

The status of image bearer is given to us in our creation, not by virtue of anything we have achieved. An image bearer matters just because. They are celebrated just for showing up in this world.

Not only that, but the honor we owe to each human being because they bear the image of God is of greater weight than any other honor we might owe them.

Our prevailing cultural narrative says: If you’re wearing a Super Bowl ring, you deserve a parade and the adulation of thousands of fans. The Bible says: Every person standing in the crowd on the sidelines of that parade is an image bearer. The honor we owe them just because of that is far greater than the particular honor we owe to Super Bowl winners for being Super Bowl winners.

In other words, you already matter. You are an image bearer.

Image Bearers at Work

At first glance, this teaching on human beings as image bearers sounds inspirational and extremely egalitarian. It’s the kind of thing that might inspire a fist pump: We matter!

But living out this teaching cuts against our normal emotional responses to other people. It doesn’t just say that pleasant people matter, even if they’re not famous or powerful. It also says that unpleasant people matter. Downright mean people matter.

Let’s ask ourselves: Do I really treat the people around me at work as though each of them is an image bearer?

Do you know the names of the janitorial staff at your office? Why or why not?

Is there someone in your workplace who is genuinely rude? Or perhaps sexist or racist? Or perhaps overly concerned, in your view, with dynamics like sexism and racism? What is your inward monologue about this person like? Do you feel contemptuous superiority toward them?

They, too, are an image bearer.

You, too, are a sinner.

Now, who are the “losers” in your workplace? Which of your coworkers didn’t make it onto the Champions list this month? Is there someone who is genuinely bad at their job?

Again, examine your own heart: Do you hold these people in contempt? Are you pumping your fist that you’re not a loser like them?

Turning the Tables

This teaching on the image of God in each person forms a backdrop to Jesus’ famously counterintuitive beatitudes:

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
    for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
    for they will inherit the earth.

Matthew 5:3-5 NIV

The prevailing cultural assumption, of course, is that such people are not blessed. Those who are rich in body and in spirit are blessed. Those who have no reason to mourn are blessed. Those who are powerful will inherit the earth.

But Jesus turns the tables. He says that, in the final analysis, wealth and human power are of no lasting advantage or importance. They may, in fact, primarily be a hindrance. In Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, there’s a corresponding list of woes:

But woe to you who are rich,
    for you have already received your comfort.
Woe to you who are well fed now,
    for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
    for you will mourn and weep.

Luke 6:24-25

One of my friends is always at pains to remind me that wealth is not evil as such, and that riches can be deployed for kingdom purposes. He likes to imagine the things he could do with more money in the future. (Honestly, I like to imagine the things he could do with more money in the future, too. I think he would use it better than I would!)

But the point Jesus is making is that the unstated law of our lives is that getting rich is winning. It’s true that you can do things with money; that’s why people want it. You don’t have to twist people’s arms to get them to buy lottery tickets. But in God’s economy, wealth tends to be a disadvantage. It so easily skews our perspective on what really matters in life. Most of all, it skews our perspective on who matters.

We need Jesus to turn the tables for us. We need him to teach us who matters, and why.

We Already Have What We Need

The teaching of Jesus rules out one of the pathways to significance that the world prizes: feeling better about ourselves because we are better than other people in some way. C.S. Lewis points out that this existential strategy is a manifestation of the sin of pride:

We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.

Within the “winners matter; losers don’t” framework, it hardly comes as a surprise that people would try to shore up their ego on the basis of winning. But Jesus would not have us seek such a victory. We must turn off the path of proud competition if we want to follow the way of the cross.

But of course, Jesus supplies what we need. If our pathway to significance is robbed of us, are we left alone in the dark, not mattering at all?

Of course not. You are an image bearer. You already matter. Not only that, but you are deeply loved by God.

The struggle of the Christian life is the struggle to believe that we really are already loved. When we really believe that, then we don’t need to win anymore. That’s how we heal from the need to win. We let Jesus persuade us, again and again, that we are already loved. We already have what we need.

Winning at Losing

It is only when we don’t need to win that we can pursue winning in a healthy way. We can draw on the drive that competition inspires not because it’s an existential threat, but because we want to thrive and excel in our domain. The love of God for us as image bearers frees us to do the work without worrying about comparisons to others. It allows us to celebrate our fellow image bearers with genuine enthusiasm when they win.

But for most of us, our motivations in a competitive environment get easily entangled. To what extent is my drive healthy and to what extent is it prideful? It can be hard to tell, even with thoughtful reflection and prayer.

That is why God sometimes weans us off of winning entirely. It is when he allows us to experience losing that we realize we are still loved even when we lose. 

If you’re in a season of failure at work, where it seems like you just can’t hack it, could it be that God is trying to tell you something? Have you considered that you don’t have to win to be the one he loves?

This is also the lesson that we learn from practicing the “disciplines of abstinence”—solitude, silence, and fasting. We learn that God gives us what we need even when we are without company, words, or food for a time. In this season of Lent, we can all learn the “good of giving up.” By God’s grace, we can start winning at losing.

Crystal Thomas and Cool Runnings

There are two images from the sports world that have always stuck with me. They show what it looks like when you don’t need to win.

One is a moment in the soccer career of my high school classmate Crystal Thomas. When she was a junior, she had this incredible streak where she was leading all women’s soccer players in the state by scoring.

But when a reporter asked her how many points she had scored so far that season, she said, “I have no idea.”

I love that. It shows she wasn’t reducing her work to a number. She was focused on her own performance: getting better every game. Doing better than everyone else was just a byproduct, not a goal.

The second moment is from the classic Disney film Cool Runnings. We all need the wisdom of John Candy’s character, which he shares with the captain of the Jamaican bobsled team: “A gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you’re not enough without it, you’ll never be enough with it.”

You are enough without it.

You already have what you need.

You are an image bearer.

You are loved.

So now, you can go give it your all.

Reflect and Practice

Take a moment to consider your own heart.

• Who do I think really matters?
• When I compete, what’s really motivating me? Do I need to win?
• In my workplace, who are the winners and who are the losers?
• Do I agree with C.S. Lewis that comparisons with others are often an expression of the sin of pride? How do I fall into making these comparisons?
• What do I make of Crystal not even knowing her season score? Of the Cool Runnings quote?
• What kind of healing from vicious competition is Jesus leading me into?

Photo by Stuffedbox NG on Pexels.
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