Sacrifice Your Pawn: How To Win in Life (A Controversial Approach)

Life is a series of negotiations. Here’s a tested and trusted method to win almost every one of them.

“Uzochukwu!”

[Silence]

“Uzochukwu!”

Me: Sir! *starts running towards the sound of his voice*

“Get me water to drink”

Me: What kind of nonsense is this?! You call me all the way from the other flat to get you water and you’re seated at the dining with cups and water dispenser right beside you! You must have lost a nut in your…

“I said get me water to drink!” he roared and cuts me short of my thinking, and I immediately obliged.

This is how most of my conversations with my dad went all through my childhood.

As unpleasant as this ordeal was, letting him win on these fronts meant I could win in the bigger picture. I got my school fees paid amongst other things that would probably not have been done if I had tried to argue everytime.

A friend of mine recently told me about how she had to confront the CEO of the company where she works. Apparently, her NYSC (National Youth Service Corps) program was over and the company was refusing to increase her salary to the full time staff salary as she was made to believe upon resumption.

To make matters worse, she found out that other staff that worked there who started from NYSC were not given a salary increase either. Now it was really starting to seem like a lost cause. How was she going to convince the CEO to do something he had never done before?

Guess what? She did! She got the full salary. In her words “Getting the letter that I wasn’t going to get a raise riled me up badly. So I had to first try to calm down before going to meet him, and even while I was in his office I had to constantly remind myself to be calm.” she said. Thinking about it that’s a logical move. I mean, it won’t make sense for her to go from attempting to get a raise to getting fired would it? “It was a painful discussion because I was fighting for what was rightfully mine, and even in that pain, I had to laugh to his not so funny jokes…just to feed his ego”. She fed his ego and took his money. Who do you think won on the grand scale?

Imagine she had said the things that were really on her mind? How do you think the negotiation would have gone? Sometimes the need to win every argument blinds us from seeing the bigger picture. And I’m not talking about with just your superiors because this applies to our mates and even our juniors.

In a previous article, I gave a golden formula for life: E + R = O (Event + Response = Outcome). Our response to certain events in life is what would determine the outcome. Our response not our reaction. If you react instead of responding, you’re giving up control.

It was some years back in high school, I recall my class pissing off a teacher so much that he was hell-bent on dealing with us severely for our actions. We called another teacher to help us beg. The two teachers had exchanged words for a while and the argument seemed to be going nowhere, until out of the blues the teacher we called to beg for us blurted “don’t mind them they’re stupid children, just forgive them”. That till today remains one of the best magic tricks I’ve seen. The teacher we offended just let it go as if nothing had happened.

Self-control > Self-will

Only those who have true control over themselves can go against their self-will when the need arises. Think about it.

And I’m not saying you should be a pushover, what I’m saying is that life is a chess game and the picture is always bigger than what’s right in front of you. Learn to evaluate situations because sometimes in life, you have to sacrifice the pawn. Sometimes you have to loose the battle to win the war.