Addicted to Winning
My 25-Year Addiction to a Game I Couldn't Truly Win
I am a competitive person. I like to win. It’s one of my addictions.
It’s easy to become addicted to winning because you receive lots of pats on the back. But there’s a high cost to this addiction. I wish I had realized that sooner; maybe I can save you from my predicament.
In high school, I focused my competitive energies on the debate team. Each debate ended with a definitive win or loss. After high school, grades became my metric for winning. I finished near the top of my class in college and law school.
I loved being a winner!
I joined a prestigious Atlanta law firm to start my career. Here the competitive landscape was muddled. As a first-year associate, it wasn’t clear how to separate yourself from your peers and be a winner. At the end of my first year, all of the rising 2nd-year associates got the exact same raise. I quit soon thereafter. Playing a game where everybody got the same participation trophy and nobody was declared the winner just wasn’t much fun.
I missed winning.
I entered the world of business, where money was the key metric. Your income made you a winner or a loser. Initially, this worked well for me. I defined winning as earning at least twice what my peers at the law firm were being paid. Turns out, that was relatively easy to do.
A sense of power surged through me. It felt great to return to the winner’s circle.
For the next quarter century, I perceived myself as a competitor in the game of business. In my mind, the rules of the game were simple.
Always act with integrity, don’t break the law, and he who earns the most wins.
The rules required me to act with integrity as I made a positive impact on my clients and colleagues. Breaking that rule would mean I was cheating, and cheaters never win. I followed the rules and used my income to keep score. I was a winner if my income grew faster than my law school peers. If my income fell, I edged closer to losing.
I went along like that for 25 years, as my wealth management firm grew ever more successful. With more than $1 billion in clients’ assets, we reached the top tier of independent firms in the field.
One day, as my wife and I were walking into the office, she asked how it felt to be the CEO of such a successful firm. I had a gut response: “I’m not successful. The Smiths (who were friends and clients) built a real business. It’s 10 times bigger and more profitable than mine.”
She retorted that if this was not a real business with more than 30 employees, 400 clients, more than a billion dollars in assets, and a sterling reputation, “I don’t know what is.”
Her comment hit me like a ton of bricks. At that moment, I realized that using money as a scorecard prevented me from ever truly feeling like a winner. I would always know someone who had a bigger, more profitable business.
An avalanche of insights followed. Business is not a competitive game. Competitions entail opponents, rules, and a clearly defined ending. In business, there is rarely head-to- head competition. Firms I imagined myself competing against may not have paid the slightest attention to me. The rules are ambiguous at best. There is no clearly defined ending. The game of business is continuous.
From a personal perspective, money mattered, but it was not my pinnacle. My relationships with my wife Heidi, my children, and my friends meant much more to me than my income.
My business goals extended far beyond profitability. I wanted to develop a new model at the intersection of traditional wealth management, behavioral psychology, and philosophy. If that meant reduced profits as I shifted my focus from client development to behavioral wealth management, so be it. I wanted to be admired, and remembered, not for how much money I earned, but for the positive impact I made on the people I touched.
All of a sudden, I felt like a recovering alcoholic in a bar with a lot of heavy drinkers. Many people in the field I was operating in used money as a scorecard. Wealth management companies are acclaimed as their assets under management and their revenue grow. Innovation and creativity are applauded, but only if they lead to greater profitability.
I could feel the insidious pull to go back to my old winning mindset. To prove that I could double down, work harder, and grow, grow, grow my firm to be crowned the winner eventually, if only in my own head.
I needed to leave the bar and get a breath of fresh air. But how? By reminding myself of three fundamental truths.
Life is not a game.
Being competitive is not an unbridled virtue. It is helpful in some situations, and harmful in others.
I am blinded to what matters most to me when I buy into the illusion that money is how you keep score.
Have I beaten my money addiction? No. I consider myself a recovering addict. I am making progress, and I still lapse into old habits and beliefs from time to time. When I realize I have stumbled, I compassionately acknowledge my mistake, lift myself up, and remind myself, yet again, of what really matters to me.
Until our next conversation,
David
Small Steps & Worthy Questions
The Race That Can’t Be Won
Are you in a race where you are constantly moving the finish line? How would your life change if you opted out?
The Game That Doesn’t Exist
When you feel the competitive urge to win, ask yourself: Am I competing in a game that only exists in my mind?
Your Real Scorecard
What matters most to you? Is it your health, your closest relationships, your ability to do what you love? Do you have a sense of meaning and purpose? All of the above? How would you score your satisfaction in each of those areas?
The people I know who live hollow lives are the ones who made money the end and not the means. What’s left when they end the game, total the final score, and declare victory? If they’re unusually lucky, they finally find meaning and purpose beyond accumulating financial wealth. I believe those who make that discovery sooner—early in life—are better off.