Underdogs

https://unsplash.com/@familyschaffner

It was just after halftime when my coach looked at me with the question - should we change our strategy? The score was 2-0 and her unique method of keeping our entire team on our half of the soccer field was surprisingly working. As the captain, I shook my head no. It was tempting to go back to playing in a more normal fashion. She felt the urge, I felt it too, but being abnormal was exactly what was keeping us ahead. Up against Goliath - the team that had won nearly every year - we shouldn't have been winning, but we were.   

It's been nearly 20 years and I still remember that game so clearly because as much as we practiced and planned and strategized, we still thought we would get crushed. As the game came to an end and the whistle blew, I turned to look at another player on my team and our eyes grew wide with what we had just accomplished. We didn't just win; we crushed them. We beat Goliath. In movie-like fashion she ran toward me, jumped in my arms, and the whole team piled on. It was one of the greatest moments of my soccer career.

We love hearing stories like that one, when the little guy comes out on top. What's interesting though is that the chances of "the little guy" winning are far greater than we probably think. In Malcom Gladwell's book, David and Goliath, he revisits the common tale with a lot of research and a different take on things.

In Sunday school we were taught that David was a little shepherd boy with just a few pebbles. Goliath was the winner. David the sure loser. The way the story reads, we are led to believe that David had one in a million chance of taking down the enemy, however according to Gladwell "Goliath only wins 66% of the time…34% of the time someone who is one-tenth the size of his opponent wins." He goes on to talk about how in these stories something that appears to be a disadvantage (like a few pebbles and a small stature) turn out to be a key part of what leads to success.

Now I'm not saying his research is flawless, but I do believe in the general sentiment that he's going after. Far too often we look at the Goliath in front of us and give up before we've even gotten started; we overvalue the attributes on the other side and undervalue the things we bring to the table. The reason we won that year was because we didn't try to beat them at their game, we played an entirely new game of our own.

If you ever feel like you're in over your head, take a second look at yourself.  You may be the underdog, but that doesn’t mean you don't have exactly what you need to succeed.