Won Silver or Lost Gold?
London 2012 Olympics is just round the corner and London and rest of the world is so excited about this and looking forward for this event. One thing which comes to mind on the sports event is prizes and medals.
Olympics are bundled with lots of sports like athletics, football, swimming, etc. At the end of every event three prizes are given, it is mostly GOLD, SILVER and BRONZE.
What do you think is going on in the mind of an athlete who has got Silver medal, is she happy about the prize? I can hear you saying – “of course, she is”. I heard some of you saying, “No, she is upset”. If we analyse it, she might have both the feelings; happy for winning Silver and upset for losing Gold. So what do we call this as Won Silver? Or Lost Gold?
I see this kind of feeling happens in our workplace as well, one of the situations I can think of is performance appraisal. If one gets “Exceeds Expectations”, does she feels happy about it or upset for not reaching “Outstanding”. In my opinion one should have both the feelings, “Won Silver” feeling should give confidence on oneself and a great motivation to keep going and at the same time “Lost Gold” feeling should help to reset the goal, identify gaps and striver harder to reach gold (goal?). What is your view about this? What is your feeling in similar situations? What do you think is a good approach?
