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Old July 13th, 2014, 08:18 PM   #4
The 14th Colony
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Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Texas
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Default Re: The Falsehood of Failure and the Truth About Winning

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lara View Post
Interesting, and yet if you had gone to manage the area of the manager who'd consistently come in the bottom three and you had 'won' there without trying, I would accept that its about believing (law of attraction and all that positive affirmation stuff) and nothing to do with the circumstance of the other managers. or is the message some people are natural winners, and therefore some are born to lose regardless??

House is annoying because he is always right in the end, and doesn't have to 'try' to be brilliant. Like Sherlock Holmes (and the new iterations are deliberately House-like) the right answer comes from the deeper levels of intuition an intellect, missing in the rest of us. He would be insufferable if he bragged how easy it was. Its bad enough that he is smug sometimes.
The writers walk a fine line because few people like figjam mates.
His character is therefore balanced by his flaws and failings, often his inability to do the simple things that make the rest of us happy, like interact with people, to love and to trust.. his inner struggle with pain and addiction, or the way he drives away the people he needs most.
It's funny you ask what you did in your first paragraph. At one point right in the middle of one of the contests, in which I was in first place, they transferred me suddenly to one of the busiest store in the region. Turns out that store manager there who had a lot of pull, whose photo lab had never won a sales contest, knew my reputation and wanted me in his store to win it for him. So I got taken out of 1st place and put into a lab running in roughly 15th or so place. He asked me to win the contest for the prestige of his store, which the promise that since he had the District Manager's ear (this was the truth, they were friends) if I won it he would get me a raise. I told him it was a daunting task, but that I would do it.

Well, it wasn't easy, not easy at all. I had to teach myself to use the different equipment there, train the employees to sell my way, and get to know the steady customers there. It was hard as hell, and in that case I really did try, not just do automatically, but tried like hell. When the contest was over I was in 2nd place, one percentage point from tying with 1st place. So I lost, but then again, I took that lab 1/2 into the 8 week contest all the way to .1 from tying with first. So I lost, but in a way I won. I didn't get the $200 prize, but I still won, from a certain point of view. I don't think the previous manager tried anywhere near as hard as me, because he didn't believe in the contest, in his ability to win it.

I am definitely no House, although I have his limp. I only wish the brains and problem solving abilities came to me so easily.
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