We live in a world where winning is everything.

We see it at the Oscars, on shows like Idols and America’s Got Talent. We had front row seats to it during the World Cup. Only one team could hold that selfsame World Cup up to the spotlight of  adulation and success.

This got me thinking. Do we place too much emphasis on winning? Is success the only thing? Do we also see our own lives – our careers, our relationships – as successes or failures? If so, how are we judging ourselves?

In the last two years, I’ve entered a few short story competitions.  Some I’ve done well in, making it into the top five; others just never made it. Did I want to win? For sure. Coming second or fifth is not a great feeling.

Disappointment is a stone in your throat. It’s the same hard feeling that sits in your chest for days.

But the experience forced me to think about my motivation for entering. Why did I want the gold star? Did I think that an editor or judge’s praise would fill up all the empty places inside me? Did I think a win would miraculously boost my self-confidence? Make me more talented than I was yesterday?

Finally I saw that success is something bestowed on you – like an Oscar, a record contract or a Fifa trophy   – for something you’ve done and, let’s be honest here, something you’ve done well.

But it is not the same as achievement.

I realised that I didn’t come second because I’d done a second-rate job on my stories. I lived in those stories. I loved them. I crafted them and worked hard at them.

I’d achieved what I sent out to do: to write a good story, one I was proud of.

Achievement is something a lot more internal and personal.  To me, achievement is knowing you’ve done the best you can. It is knowing that you’ve put your heart into something and you’ve given it your best shot.

Make no mistake. An acknowlegdement of our success is great. It serves as an affirmation, it validates your hard work. It’s a nice-to-have, but it’s not essential to inner fufilment.

Achievement I think, in its own way, is almost as rewarding as outward success and accolades. Almost, I say, because there’s a reason  why people love winning. It’s heady. It’s intoxicating. It’s what we all want, isn’t it?

No one likes to come second. But I think failure tastes a whole lot better than fear. It’s better to have tried than be held back. I’m glad I’ve entered those competitions.  It’s taught me to balance praise and criticism. I know it’s important to to keep an open mind and to continue to learn.

You know what? It’s enough to do your best.

I have a confession to make.

I suffer from monkey mind. WTF?  Monkey mind?

I first learned about monkey mind in a book by a famous American author and writing coach Natalie Goldberg. She tells us to imagine that we are under a big sky and to imagine that sky is our wild mind.  Now straight over our heads someone puts one dot with Magic Marker in the sky. That dot is what Zen philosophy calls monkey mind.

 “We give all our attention to that one dot,” Natalie says. “So when it says we’re no good, are failures, we listen to it.”

Sound familiar?

A red ring on your report card and you’re never gonna pass Matric? Overlooked for a promotion and your boss hates you? (Wait. The world hates you.) One wrong look from your wife and your marriage is over? A spider in the bath and you relive your every last fear and phobia?

Natalie Goldberg’s book Wild Mind is a life changing experience for those of us who cling to our need for control, for colouring inside the lines. She explains that monkey mind is what psychology calls part of the conscious mind – always aware, awake, controlling – while wild mind is seen as the unconscious mind, that part of our being that connects us to our dreams, the underlines our behaviour without us even being aware of it.  That’s where we should write from, she says. To sink into the big sky, to sit down in the middle of our wild mind and lose control and write from a raw, uncensored place.

That’s real, that’s authentic.

Even if you’re not creative writer, I think we can all benefit from going into our wild mind now and then. At work, it could be when you’re brainstorming a new pitch, coming up with a fresh angle or hook for a press release or dealing with a client problem. At home, finding new ideas for decorating a room, coming up with a new recipe or even a way of mending a cracked relationship.

Here’s what you can do today. Grab a notebook, go to a nearby coffee shop, order a cappuccino. Without pause or inner-censure, write about what your wild mind is telling you. Write about your dreams. Write about the cars you see riding past. Write about the sound of someone’s voice. Write your fears or wishes or your deepest anger, but write.

What I’ve found is that when I give up my need for control – when I let go of my frustrated ideal of perfection - I access my creativity in a meaningful and liberating way.  I write better. I’m a nicer person to be around. I live in that big sky, either in its clear untrammelled blue or in its star-spattered mystery.

Natalie Goldberg’s book Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life is published by Bantam.

Here’s a story to make you think.

At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, a 21-year old American field athlete forever changed the face of a high jump.  Instead of using the traditional upright scissors method, Dick Fosbury brought his legs up and jumped the bar backwards.  The bar was 2.24 metres high. By clearing it, he set a new world record and earned a Gold medal.

His controversial back-first method became known as the Fosbury Flop and allowed athletes to jump 25% higher than before. It remains the most dominant high-jump technique. So. What can we learn from this?

Paul Arden, motivational author and former creative director of Saatchi & Saatchi wrote about how Fosbury turned a ‘flop’ into a success in his book, Whatever you think, think the opposite. “He jumped higher than any man before,” he says, “by thinking the opposite from everyone else.”

I got to thinking about Arden’s advice when I recently started work on my new novel. Hey, I thought, who says you must write a story chronologically? So I tried to write the final scene first. Struggled a bit, I’ll admit.  It was a bit emotionally flat, but at least I had an idea where I wanted to the story to end.

What worked better was writing key scenes as they came to me, hot and fresh in my imagination, without worrying where they would slot into the story. These gave me good key moments in the story – the characters did seem more immediate and authentic.  Some scenes I could use; others I had to scrap.

I also applied a more elliptical method to plotting the book, using a bubble chart on cardboard to map important points in the story.  While I didn’t devise any revolutionary writing methods, at least a change in mindset got me out of my usual crippling writer’s block.  (Of course, I tried to keep in mind that Dick Fosbury had been experimenting with his flop method since the age of sixteen – with many false starts and hiccups along the way.)

I think it’s important to get out of placid, pre-programmed way of thinking now and then. Complacency can become a cocoon – in our private lives, in our careers, even our exercise routines.  Why not break out? Go for something opposite in your thinking at work today.

Try it. It may seem crazy, weird, awkward – some naysayers dismissed Fosbury’s Flop outright, some spectators laughed at him, saying his jump looked like a caught fish flopping in a boat – but you’ll never know until you come at it from a different angle.   You may even reach new heights.

OK, OK, I’ll leave you groaning at that obvious pun.  I only hope this story made you think. Even inspired you.

PS: You should get Arden’s books. It’s great.

He’s a beautiful young movie star with hypnotic eyes.  He has millions of fans, mostly female. His mere presence on the big screen gets the women swooning and screaming. He’s mobbed at movie premieres, at restaurants, on set, even on holiday. He has fan societies dedicated just to him. He inspires mass hysteria and media hype on a daily basis... Who is he?

OK. You may be forgiven in thinking we’re talking about Robert Pattinson, star of the Twilight saga and arguably the most pursued male celebrity under thirty. But flash back almost 90 years and consider the male screen god of Hollywood in the 1920s - Rudolph Valentino. RPatz has nothing on Ol’ Rudy Boy, the publicist’s dream.

At the height of his fame this star of silent films - like The Sheik and Blood and Sand - was the man who women loved to worship and men loved to revile.  In fact, Valentino can be seen as the first ever young male celebrity, a prototype for those male pinups who would follow in his seductive footsteps – like Humphrey Bogart, James Dean,  Marlon Brando and, yes, Rob Pattinson.

Valentino was pursued by fans to a degree we can’t even understand: women would rip his shirt from his body. Often he had to escape through underground tunnels. Queues formed for blocks at the opening nights of his movies. When he died at age 31, riots broke out in New York; more than 50 000 people came to see his body in one day. Even today, 84 years after his death, there are societies dedicated to Valentino. His movies have been restored and shown at festivals. Clips of his work can even be seen on You-Tube.  Fame, it seems, never dies.

Valentino’s biographer, Emily Leider, sees the 1920s as “the era that saw the dawn of so much of the media-saturated, youth-worshipping, celebrity-obsessed culture of our own day.” She may be right. With the movie industry still wet behind he ears, the world was ripe for its first real celebrity.  Better quality photos and cheaply printed tabloids allowed hot movie news to be printed quickly and cheaply. It’s amazing to think that the legendary status of Valentino was built before the today’s technology of blogs and video clips.

In fact, the early 20s was the time saw the gossip mill start to grind into full motion.  Gossip columnists like Louella Parsons and magazines like Movie Weekly were precursors for notorious gossip blogger Perez Hilton and glossy scandal mags like Heat. The world was insatiable for gossip and gorgeous men. We still are, aren’t we?

Tell Kezi who do YOU think is the most sexiest and scandalous man around today and why.