Winning vs. Not Losing: A Guide to Enjoy Playing the Game of Life

Are you focused on winning, or just trying not to lose? 

In this episode, Justin dives deep into “poverty mindset” and how it affects our ability to live abundantly, joyfully, and fully present in the moment. Drawing on personal stories, surprising insights, and even ice-skating adventures, Justin challenges listeners to evaluate their current thinking patterns and embrace the art of living life like a winner.

Key Highlights:

• The Poverty Mindset: What it is and how it blocks abundance, joy, and connection.
• A Winner’s Perspective: Shifting from focusing on what you might lose to what you can gain.
• Letting Go to Make Space: How decluttering your life—physically and mentally—can open doors to more joy.
• Justin’s Personal Journey: Ice-skating, friendships, and lessons in choosing joy over fear.
• Practical Takeaways: Tools to identify where you’re stuck in a “not losing” mindset and how to shift toward winning.

Watch the full video episode at Justin Wenck, Ph.D. YouTube Channel!

Check out my best-selling book "Engineered to Love: Going Beyond Success to Fulfillment" also available on Audiobook on all streaming platforms! Go to https://www.engineeredtolove.com/ to learn more!

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Transcript

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Even though there is no end, there is no completion, it's just one game ends, another begins. And you get to change the game, and you also get to decide how you want to play it. So choose the game and choose to play it like a winner, even though there's no end, there's no ultimate winners or losers. So it really is how you live life. You can play it like an artist that's winning. It's enjoying as many moments as possible, even the ones that are painful, hard and challenging, because you know that they're the ones that are the teachers that let you know of what's to learn, what's to let go. So then you can enjoy even more amazing, beautiful stuff coming in. Are you ready to live a life with enough time, money and energy have relationships and connections that delight you? Are you ready for the extraordinary life you know you've been missing? If so, then this is the place for you. I'm a best selling author, coach, consultant and speaker who's worked in technology for over two decades. I'm a leader at transforming people and organizations from operating in fear, obligation and guilt to running off joy, ease and love. It's time for engineering emotions and energy with me. Justin Wenck PhD, today, I want to dive into the question, are you focusing more on winning or not losing? Or maybe another way is, are you looking at what could be coming to you, or are you worried about what might be going away from you? And the reason I asked this is because had some recent experiences where I noticed that it's still still as far along as I've been, as much as I've learned, grown, changed, shifted, and, you know, we often all will find this as we're, you know, learning, growing, improving, that there's some areas that we've made improvement, but more could be made. An earlier episode was talking about how our life is a work of art, and that, you know, sometimes we're going to backtrack so we can go over again. And, you know, an area I've recently gone back over is it's a little bit related to what's commonly referred to as the having a having a poverty mindset, which is just kind of that this can often just lead to supporting items, or being really, really frugal with money, you know, not wanting to spend on things, even, even if you have the means. So this, this can happen regardless of how much actual income you have, how much wealth you have. It's, it's, that's why it's called the poverty mindset, not, not actual poverty, because there, are people that could be in poverty, poverty, but not have a poverty mindset, because they feel grateful and abundant with what they do have. I find that the people of Bali exemplify this really, really amazingly, where it's like, you know, their annual income might be way lower than even the the lowest of income here in the United States yet. And I think there's something to do with, you know, tropical areas where just the land is so abundant with with fruits and foods and all of this replenishment from nature, that it just kind of can not saying it's probably everybody, and I'm sure there's, there's the issues and challenges, yeah, there just seemed like an appreciation for what all there was, even if it might not have been a lot by our standards in the US or in the Western world. And on the flip side of that is you can have so much, so much money, so much food, so much shelter, so much of everything, and still feel like there's there's still not enough, that you're still missing out, that you don't have enough. And the this, I believe, is a part of focusing on, like, what's, what's going out. There's, I think, I think it might have actually even been Adam Adam Corolla, whether you you love the guy, I hate the guy now, whatever, he's hilarious, and often has some very interesting insights. And I think you would call this like, you know, it's like a you're focusing on saving it and on saving a dime instead of making$1 type of a thing. Because so many people I this is just a lot of people do this with, like, taxes, especially people love I live in California, and I live near San Francisco. These are places that many people in the US love to hate. Just hate because the taxes are high, the property taxes that are high, and also the cost of the cost of living is like some of the highest in the country and even the world, right? And I. Like to mess with people and go, like, Do you know why it's so expensive to live here? Playing along, they go, why is, why is it so expensive to live here? And I go, because it's worth it. And why do I Why is it worth it? And again, it different places are worth different things, different people. But to me, it's the amount of beauty that I get to enjoy, from the from the nature, the ocean, the weather. And then there's also just the financial opportunity and opportunity to impact the world that is, there's probably, you could probably debate it's, it's, it's probably somewhere top five in the world, the amount of opportunity to earn money and have outsized impact on the rest of the world, based off of the tech sector and a lot of other things that go on in this area, so many people are worried about, like, you know, oh, you know, wait, wait, I could only have to pay, you know, less than $100,000 for a house out somewhere else, but you know, I'd have to pay a million dollars out in California. Like, that's ridiculous. And it's like, Well, is it ridiculous? If you know that place where you could would only have to pay $100,000 if that place you can only earn maybe $50,000 a year, whereas maybe based off of your skills and other opportunities, things like that, back in California, you could make $500,000 a year, or a million dollars a year, or even more. Skies could be sky's the limit, because often people love having a salary because it's like, you know what you're going to get, and it's not going to go down. So worried about the the least you can get. But the thing is, when you have your own business, yes, the it can go to zero, but also there's no, there's there's no limit to how high it can go. Whereas in a salary position, often it's like, I think one of the biggest raises I ever had was 10% that was the highest of over, like 12 years. Usually it was like somewhere between 1% and 3% whereas, you know, there's many, there's many, many businesses and things like that, that, if they, they come up with something, execute, well, they're, you know, they're able to have these, you know, double the business every year, every year, every every year. And that means, if you're your only business, then you can be making more and more and more. And I know I've been talking a lot about money so far, but this isn't just about money. This is also about like your your your energy, your life force, energy, how well you feel, how much happiness and joy you have. Often we're worried about, oh my gosh, you know, I might, I might lose this friend. I know, when I first started grad school, I almost had no motivation to make friends, because most of the people there were in master's programs. And I was like, Oh, these master's students are only going to be here two years max, because I was already there for the PhDs. I'm like, I'm going to be here a long time. And so it's like, why bother befriending them? It's like, by the time I'm friends with them, I'm only going to get to be friends with them for like, a year, and then they're gonna leave. So I better just not even try to make friends with these people. And eventually I realized that was that was fucking stupid, because then what I'm just gonna not have, isn't it better to have a great friend for a year or three months than to have zero friends but not have to worry about losing them or transitioning or being different or them going away. I often find this in the dating world as well, where I date women, but, you know, I also have a lot of women friends that date men. And so it's this is this happens. This happens to everybody. So both men, women, every everybody can do this. But it's, you know, kind of say, like, where I'm at in my life and what I'm looking for, and inevitably, many. Yeah, no, not many. But because I'm I'm pretty good at finding people that are relatively close to in alignment with where I'm at. It's still, I mean, it's part of this is part of the process of dating and getting no people, I'll describe that, and it's like, ooh, that's not that that's not 100% of exactly what I want. God damn you are fucking awesome though. Justin, you're good looking. You got a lot going on. They're amazing. I feel like there's a lot going on, but who? Man, everything went the way that I would like it to go. Ooh, I think there's gonna be this 1% of incompatibility, and it's not going to work out. So peace out, bitch. I'm not going to date you anymore. Sorry. And it's like I used to get frustrated and annoyed, but now I'm like, good you are not for me. You are not for me. You are focused on the future. You're not living in the here and now. You're not focused on what can enrich and uplift you. Now, now, because it's like, somebody is great now, they're great now, and that's gonna even if they're not the perfect person, forever, the more they are enlivening you and invigorating you and helping you realize, like, how amazing you are, and the joy of just being in connection with someone, the more attractive you're going to be, and the more enlivened, and the better you're going to feel to go out and meet other people and attract that person who maybe is that 100% match, even though, I don't know if that's that's a possibility, but maybe it is. And this also goes in line with just having fun in life, enjoying life, because I recently had an experience where I got in touch to do something that I don't even know. It'd probably been at least six years since I'd since I'd done it, and there's been many things like this, where it's like I'd always been focusing on the cost or the challenge of doing the activity. So what I did recently was I went, I went ice skating for the first time, and like six in like six years, you know, I've probably may have mentioned about, you know, getting ready to go skiing again. And I think I talked about buying roller skates, and maybe I've even talked about paddle boarding, but I hadn't ice skated. And then the Union Square San Francisco, I noticed about a month and a half ago that there's an ice skating rink, and I was like, Oh, I really would like to go. And turned out I caught the last weekend it was open, so I went this, this most recent Sunday, right before they closed down, and I had an amazing time. It was so much fun, so much fun, so enjoyable to Justin be out on the ice and, like, see how I'm able to, like, get my skills back, even though a little wobbly and took a little bit of work. But to, you know, see that like, oh, I can. I can do my spins and my my twists, and I can go fast, and I can still kind of stop when I want to. I was so much fun. It's so much fun when I focus on that and really put my attention on that. Then what I used to focus on was all the challenge and problem and the possibility of things going wrong. Like, yeah, it took me. I had to get into San Francisco. I had to purchase tickets in advance, and there was other people. And, you know, yes, there's things, but oh my gosh, how much fun it was and how exciting. So worth it. And now I'm still excited whenever tell people about it, as I'm telling you guys. And so my question to you is, What things have you cut yourself off from that energize you, that bring you happiness, bring you joy, probably bring you connection, bring you money, all these things that you are missing out on in your life because you've been focusing on, what does it cost? What is going to go out? You're just trying to keep everything in, but you're forgetting about the other part of the equation, what's what's coming into you? Right? It's like, what's your the fullness of your life? It's a combination of not just what go what exits, but also of what comes in, right? So again, had an episode recently about decluttering, like, if you focus on how easily it can be for amazing things to come in, how much more easy is it going to be to let go of the things that aren't bringing you joy, if you're only focusing on that? Oh, if this goes out, something's going out, of course it's going to be really hard, really, really challenging, but if it's going like, if this goes out, then, oh, there's so much space for the new stuff that lights me up, that I enjoy, that brings even more happiness, more joy, more connection and more fun. And those things ultimately lead to us doing things that also bring us more financial abundance as well. So that's, that's today's show, basically, is I want you to focus on living life like like a winner, and not like someone who's just trying to not lose. Because if you focus on the losing, even if it's to not lose, you're still basically living life like a loser. Yeah, pretty fucking harsh, yeah. You might, might have been living life like a loser, and I want it to hurt a little bit so that you then go, ooh, what do I need to look at and how do I need to shift? What do I need to change? What do I need to do differently? Think differently, behave differently, what patterns starting to break, what habits we need to change so that you can start living life like a winner, even though in life there, there is no end, there is no completion, it's just one game ends, another begins, and you get to change the game and. You also get to decide how you want to play it, so choose the game and choose to play it like a winner, even though there's no end, there's no ultimate winners or losers. So it really is how you live life. You can play it like an artist that's winning, that's enjoying as many moments as possible, even the ones that are painful, hard and challenging, because you know that they're the ones that are the teachers that let you know of what's to learn, what's to let go. So then you can enjoy even more amazing, beautiful stuff coming in soon enough. So with that, thank you so much love to hear maybe what it is that you've learned or gotten from this episode. So in the comments, shoot me a message or send me an email. All those details are, you know, in the show notes and coming up, but I'd really love to know like, what is it? What is it you're ready to start, you know, doing differently. So do you feel like, oh my gosh, I'm I'm winning. I'm winning in life, because I'm going to do this differently. I'm going to allow that, you know, I'm going to splurge a little bit on something that brings the light and joy like that just brings a smile to your face. Like, what is that? What is that thing that it's like, there's this makes this makes no sense, but it makes me happy, so I'm going to do it, because when you think about it, absolutely nothing makes sense. Nothing makes sense. There's no point. There's really no point to anything. I could seriously. I could explain away anything and make it seem completely pointless. If you you know what, you know, try me send it, send in something, and I'll, and I'll, show you, it's completely pointless. It's ridiculous. It's made up. There's no point. But the point is the experience. It's to have the experience and the emotions along the way. That is the point. And so if you're not having the emotions, you're missing the point. Because if you just make more money or you just have more stuff, you can't take it with you, and the point is to have the experiences and the growing and the learning and the joy. So I'd love to hear what it is that brings you joy as brings you happiness, brings you connection, that you're gonna allow yourself to have more of going forward, and if you're having trouble thinking of something, then you let me know that too, and let's figure it out. All right with that, thank you so much and good day. Thanks for tuning in to engineering emotions and energy with Justin Wenck PhD, today's episode resonated with you. Please subscribe and leave a five star review. Your feedback not only supports the show, but also helps others find us and start their journey of emotional and energetic mastery. You can also help by sharing this podcast with someone you think will love it just as much as you do together, we're engineering more amazing lives you.