Winning

“Winning” is a concept that fascinates us humans. Especially men seem to be fascinated by it, and have been since we were still just mamals butting heads. But there are really three types of winning.

The first type is when you compete with your friends, family, spouse, girl-/boyfriend, or even kids. Not a very rewarding type of winning. Even destructive to many relationships.

The second type is when you compete with strangers, standards, or norms. Not very rewarding either. What are you going to say at the end of your life? “Well – I still beat a lot of people”. Often these people don’t care if they win by being good or by somebody else being bad. As long as they win.

The third type is awesome on the other hand. It’s the type where you set a goal for yourself and achieve it. I’ve had three such big wins in my life.

The first one was the Stockholm Marathon. I trained for eight months with extreme dedication. I got injured. I recovered. I got to the start. I had increadible stomach pains through 30 of the 42 kilometers. But I made it through. And crossing that finish line was just a fantastic moment.

The second one was when I’d set a goal to see central Europe by train. I planned it. I went. I got robbed. I survived. A great memory of my life. I was super happy when I came back.

The third one came yesterday and looked like this:

This is my diploma for my Master of Science degree in Media Technology and Engineering. I started out with this project in 1998 – ten years ago.

But after having kept the pace and gone through all the courses and 80% of my masters thesis, I started working in the television industry. Great fun, and extremely rewarding. One thing led to another, and suddenly I was running my own company and things just rolled along.

I changed my line of business to advertising and went for two years to Berghs School of Communication getting a diploma in advertising and copywriting (I charish it too, even though I don’t have it in my top three), and then went on to working in the brand communication business with passion. This whole time my masters thesis was in a shoe box.

But one day my friend Sara came along and suggested I should start wrapping up unfinished threads, and I decided to go for it. I finished my thesis in a few days and went down to Linköping Intstitute of Technology to present it. And here I am. And it feels amazing. My biggest win yet. And really – these kinds of wins, where you win over your own percieved limitations, are the only ones that matter.

Tagged as: Advertising, Berghs, Brand, Business, friends, media technology, Technology, Television, Writing