Wicked Winning

Boston, MA has probably the single best sports culture in the history of American cities. In the last two decades, the city has seen 6 Superbowl wins, 4 World Series wins, an NBA championship and an NHL championship. And although they may never mention these achievements (yeah, right 😝), Bostonians are a damn proud group of people. Living there for the past three years, this truth has been rubbed in my face constantly. And you might be thinking “yeah whatever, it’s just sports anyway.” But if you really think there’s no significance in having a winning culture, you couldn’t be more wrong. When I look around Boston, I see only two kinds of people. There are the people who are fresh off a win and already thirsty for another. And then there are the people who are losing in the first half, but excited and ready to make a comeback in the second.

By the way, this is backed by research. Check it out.

I recently read a study conducted the University of Miami on the causal impact of  happiness and optimism in a community on its economic prosperity and recovery from recession. What they found was exactly what I’ve suspected for a long time. The overall mood of a city has a direct effect on its level of economic activity. And among the most significant factors impacting the amount of optimism in a community is the success of its sports teams. The researchers leading the study even suggested increasing funding for stadiums to bolster recovery in depressed areas.

Sports are probably the most obvious symbolic representation we have for economic competition. Teams develop strategies and cooperate on a high level to try to out-compete the others. Just like companies in any industry. But most importantly, winning in sports involves a huge amount of risk-taking. In order to win, you have to shoot your shot. Those three words are something I hear on a regular basis in Boston. Way more than any other place I’ve ever lived. It’s a phrase that gets repeated when people talk about dating, finding jobs, even answering a tough question on an exam. Bostonians may not be consciously drawing any connection in their heads but I’m pretty damn sure there is a connection. One of the reasons the “shoot your shot” mentality is so popular among Bostonians is because they’ve seen the reward that follows risk-taking time and time again— right there in their own backyard.

And this isn’t exclusive to America either. I see this in my parents’ home country of Serbia too. Although it’s been in a recession for decades now, athletic achievements are one of the things keeping national pride and optimism alive in Serbia. Every time Novak Djokovic wins a grand slam in tennis, I see his countrymen come alive with excitement and a newfound motivation to make their friends and family proud too. When that kind of idealized success becomes consistent enough, it could mean the start of an enormously powerful cycle of optimism and persistence— a cycle that encourages people to start businesses and support their neighbors just like a team would.

The other side of this phenomenon is a viciously negative cycle. The most common way I’ve seen it happen is within families. Imagine having an uncle with a strong entrepreneurial spirit and a lot of big ideas. But he can’t catch a break so he keeps losing money and the failures stack up. Your family would probably use your uncle as an example to discourage you from taking risks like he did. The same thing happens on a larger scale to communities full of empty shops, failed restaurants and hopeless young adults.

That kind of cycle can seem impossible to break. But it’s not. You can never overstate the power of one person, one team, one generation to set an example for the rest. One role model is all it takes to push the dominoes back the other way.

Yeah it’s corny, I know. Sometimes the truth is corny 🤧.

Filip, again.