Captain Falcon: The Mind of a Winner

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As we touched on at the end of Show Me Your Moves, Captain Falcon has an incredibly competitive personality, with a flamboyant style to go with it.  He’s not just all fluff and no stuff, however.  Captain Falcon is a world class F-Zero racer, quite possibly the best in the world.  As if that were not enough, he’s also an incredibly successful bounty hunter, AND a very talented fighter.  That’s a lot of different arenas to have “the best ever” contention in.  So what’s the key to Captain Falcon’s success, beyond just a thirsty sense of competition?

Winning Through Failure

I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

– Michael Jordan

The fact is, people who we see as “winners” do one thing more than the rest of us.  They lose.

Seem counter-intuitive?  Maybe.  However, being perceived as a winner does not mean you win all the time, it just means you win more than everyone else does.  Yes, practice, skill, and natural talent do play into it, however, merely by taking more shots than everyone else, you already increase your odds of making them (plus it’s practice, right?)

The best way to learn is through failure.  Because our failures hurt more than our successes do, we tend to dwell on them longer, and think about them more.  As emotionality (hopefully) gives way to rationality, we begin to dissect, analyze, and try to reason out why we failed.  Hindsight is 20/20, as the saying goes, and being able to look back at why you failed in certain situations gives you a better perspective than you had “in the moment.”

I’ve failed, quite a lot!  I wrote about this in my returning blog post a couple weeks ago, and that’s not my only failure in life.  We all suffer little and big failures every single day, and the fact is, we need to stop thinking of them at failures.  Failure is a purely negative word, with lots of negative associations.  Instead, I propose this:

Failure is gone.  Instead, we have New Game+

In RPGs, when you’ve completed the game, sometimes you have the chance to play the game again in New Game+ mode.  This is where you get to keep your stats (and sometimes your items) and attack the game again with a superpowered, already-leveled character.  The cool thing is, we get to play life in New Game+ mode every single day.  You woke up this morning with a whole lifetime of experience points and levels behind you.  A lot of those experience points came from failures.  You can take those, however, and use them to craft a newer, better version of yourself every single day.

HYES!

So, let’s bring this back to Captain Falcon.  That bright, flamboyant, over-the-top-personality is not just a random trait he has, or the result of his resounding success in life.  Instead, I propose that his over-exuberance and confidence are the reason he has such resounding success.  He’s obviously a yes man (or HYES! man.)  By that, I don’t mean a corporate “yes man,” who tells the boss what he wants to hear.  Instead, Captain Falcon is the kind of “yes man,” that says…

• “Yes, I can do it.”
• “Yes, I will try it.”
• “Yes, I will be there.”
• “Yes, I’ve got more to give.”
• “Yes, I can get back up again.”
• “Yes, I will take the shot.”

He takes on challenges, and rises to meet them, unafraid of failure.  He knows that even if he fails, he can still get up and try again, because he has that bright internal fire burning inside of him.  The fire of competition.  The firey soul of a winner.

Building Your Inner Fire

First off, you have an inner fire.  Everyone does.  You may sometimes feel like you don’t, but you definitely do.  You may feel it when you’re listening to a particular song, watching a particular movie, or playing a particular game.  Personally I feel that fire ignite whenever I listen to power rock music, or watch Dragonball Z or Star Wars.  You need to get in touch with it, and find what fans your flames.

What do I mean by fanning the flames?  Well, you want to figure out what makes you passionate.  Captain Falcon is obviously an adrenaline junkie (like me!)  He seeks out high speed races, high risk bounty jobs, and crazy hand-to-hand combat tournaments.  Adrenaline and competition keep his fire burning bright, and ignite his will to succeed.  Adrenaline may be your inner ignition, or it may not be.  Your fire may burn brightest when you’re making art, or composing music, or winning a video game.  It may burn when you’re in a long-distance race, or lifting weights, or spending time with your family.  Hell, there’s probably multiple things that fan your inner flames!

A good way to find this is to take an hour of time, sit in a quiet place, and just think.  Think about what you would do if you had NO limits at all.  You have $10 million, unlimited time, and all your expenses and needs are taken care of.  What would you do?

That’s your inner fire.

Once you find it, pursue it.  Not necessarily to do for a living (some people who turn their passion into a job absolutely hate it,) but something to do to help you feel alive every day.  Captain Falcon’s inner fire shows itself in his explosive punches and kicks, and your inner fire may show itself in other ways.  The important thing is that you let it burn bright, and that you show it to the world when you are ready.

Whenever you get knocked down, ask yourself, WWCFD?  What would Captain Falcon do?  Would he stay down, defeated?  Or would he RISE up with a mighty kick, in all the radiant splendor of a fiery phoenix?!  Be the phoenix.  Be Captain Falcon.

That’s it for Captain Falcon, our first character covered since the blog came back!  I hope you liked it!  Please let me know how you feel over in The Guild Hall!

We’re going to take a break from characters next week, and bring out some other cool articles I’ve been working on, the first of which you’ll see on Monday!

Until then, remember to live boldly, change the world, show me your moves, and continue to be awesome!

Dan “DaRatmastah” Wallace