On Sunday night during the Survivor finale, Russell lost again. He has now made it to the end of the game 2 times and hardly received any winning votes in the process.
I’ve been saying it ever since I watched Russell start playing the game of Survivor; he is the best Survivor player ever. For 2 straight seasons, any strategic move he has wanted to make has been made. No one has ever had his ability to manipulate and play the right move at the right time.
In reality though, Russell had one MAJOR weakness: He played the game so hard that everyone hated him.
Each of his two seasons the person who has won instead only won because Russell was hated so much, not because they played well.
I’ve always thought the game of Survivor is a great example of how people interact in life. Russell is a great example of the incredibly successful businessman who has made it so far with his incredible schemes and has burned everyone he knows in the process.
I think we learn one key thing from Russell’s Survivor game play: In the game of life, it never works to burn people.
Russell did a great job of getting everybody out who was not in his alliance, or who was in his alliance but wasn’t fully devoted to him being the top dog. It isn’t the first time that a player has dominated the game, but it is the first time someone has been an absolute jerk to everybody in the game while almost winning.
I used to play sports in a way where it was outside the rest of my life. I was a cocky, arrogant jerk on the basketball court and often even on the golf course. As I grew older I quickly realized that doing anything in that way will quickly turn people against you because they don’t think of them as games outside of real life.
Have you learned anything about the game of life from the game of Survivor?
