I’ve been doing a fair bit of work with the good folks at 888casino recently, and been delving into the deep psychology of gambling as a result. There is, of course, a big debate about gambling in this country at the moment, and no one would deny that for a significant number of people it is an extremely serious issue. But rather than debate the ins and outs of gambling, what particularly grabbed my attention was the broader psychology of winning and losing, and the implications it has far beyond the world of bookmakers and casinos.
Several in depth studies point to the fact that for most gamblers, the emotional rewards they take from the game are not so much about how much they win, but rather how their performance relates to their expectations. Happiness is a state that reflects whether things are going better than expected, not how well things are going overall. It seems that most people are satisfied with relatively small wins, and will tolerate even smaller losses. What’s more, they tend to be conscious that, in the long run, they are more likely to lose than win. And that could, momentarily at least, boost the positive response to a win.
I suspect this will resonate with many of us. It’s a very different concept to the ‘fail fast’ mentality that’s currently gaining so much traction. That’s a very powerful thought in its own right, but is more about trying, learning and adapting. What I’m talking about is how losing makes you feel, both in itself and how it prepares you for winning. And in particular, how expectations can even affect your performance.
Sports psychologists often talk about fostering a winning mentality, and point to winning and losing runs among seemingly equally talented competitors as evidence. And in professional services, those firms who are in desperate need of a win can often want it too much, trying to please their prospective customers instead of challenging them, while those with a few wins in the bank can display a certain sort of alluring swagger. In these cases, winning begets more winning.
But back to expectations. If you expect to win all the time, then winning itself only matches your expectations, and losing falls a long way short. Not everyone can win all the time, so taken together, the combined outcome is likely to be one of disappointment. Performance is about embracing the possibility of losing and being ready to fail. It’s only when you resolve to dealing with losing that you can embrace the possibility that you might actually win, and do all that you can to ensure it happens.
No one sets out to fail, but acknowledging the possibility that you might actually makes it less likely, and makes winning all the more rewarding.
#winning, #losing, #psychology, #gambling, #professionalservices, #marketing, #branding