It appears that our society is training losers.
We’re seeing it fold out on college campuses across North America and Europe, where young adults who’ve been given participation awards their entire lives now need safe spaces to protect them from hurtful ideas.
We know that rewarding everyone no matter the outcome hurts everyone. The idea of equity, this pursuit of equality of outcome and not just equality of opportunity removes drive, initiative, and eventually innovation.
The logic is silly, it’s child-like, this desire to want everyone to be equal in the end. Every time you wake up early and hustle you’re trying for inequality, you want to be better than everyone else and if you are you should be rewarded for it.
So while teachers hand out participation awards and while schools protect their students from opposing views, it’s become even more important and more valuable to think like and be a winner.
You’re now incredibly valuable. You’re willing to work, to hustle, to open your mind and to think outside the box.
Winning isn’t just nice, it’s a necessity if you want to live a flourishing life. You can’t just ‘be happy’, you need purpose and accomplishment to feel fulfilled. And accomplishment is something that not only benefits you, but society on the whole.
You need to win to feel like you’re here for a purpose. You need to win to feel as though you’re of value.
What are some of the views that will stand in your way?
You’re here because you want to improve, well, make sure you tackle each of these mental road blocks on your way to victory.
1. Being good isn’t good enough.
Winning doesn’t happen in comparison to others, that’s a loser’s mentality. If you’re constantly comparing yourself to others you’re forever going to finish second.
Winning happens within a field. You are your competition. Your craft is your obstacle. And being good just doesn’t cut it. You have to want to be great.
Most of us ease through life. We may hustle and grind and work our butts off. We may even persist and break through obstacles. Few, however, even think about being great within whatever field they’re in.
In writing this article I had to stop, open my journal, and try and figure out what the hell ‘being great’ is, or what being the best is within my line of work. It can’t simply mean earning the most or selling the most, being great transcends the boundaries within a profession.
You have to go beyond what’s ‘the best’, you have to think outside of the boundaries within your profession. You also have to be true to yourself.
This can’t be someone else’s dream, someone else’s ambition. Being great can mean crafting a lifestyle for yourself that, every morning, you have to wake up and pinch yourself because it’s such a wonderful existence and it’s so true to who you are.
But don’t settle for being good. Within your craft, be the best. Be the greatest. If you’re not aspiring for something greater than what you now know, someone else will take that thrown away from you and you’ll be left knowing that you didn’t quite do all you could do with the time you have while you’re here.
2. You can’t see yourself as a victim.
Along with safe-spaces and participation trophies, groups of people are also being told they’re victims while other groups of people are being told they’re oppressors.(Read This: A Man Cannot be a Victim)
Neither is true.
The end game is to divide, to feel morally superior by creating an enemy and a victim out of thin air. It’s nonsense.
Being born poor doesn’t make you a victim, it makes you poor. Die rich. Being born black or brown or white or yellow cannot define your status nor your opportunity within a free society, no matter how often protesters or lefty’s tell you that you should feel sorry for yourself, don’t.
You cannot ever see yourself as a victim in any way because that then gives you ‘the right’ to lose. When you see your victory or defeat as things that are out of your control, things that happen to you, you relinquish control over your life and relegate yourself to victimhood, a status that cannot win, not because it’s real, but because you think it’s real.
If men can ‘win’ while being tortured in the slave camps of Vietnam, you can win in whatever situation you’re in (read: Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot). If men can ‘win’ in the Concentration Camps of the Second World War, then you have no excuse to lose in your life (read: Man’s Search for Meaning). If men can win in the torture camps in Japan during the Second World War, then you cannot in any way see yourself as a victim today (read: Unbroken).
You’re not a victim. Seeing yourself as such is self-pity, and you’re a little bitch who needs to wake up before you waste your entire life sobbing about a distorted reality that you welcomed into your life.
3. You can’t feel entitled to anything.
In other words, you have to work for a very, very long time. Earning typically happens in your late 40’s or 50’s. The internet has made it easier to earn younger, but throughout the history of capitalism, winning is something that happens a little later in life.
Before that you’re learning and working.
For some reason young folks today think that earning should happen immediately. 40% of millennial’s think they deserve a promotion after two years regardless of performance.
Entitlement halts hard work. When you feel entitled you prevent yourself from actually earning what you want.
It doesn’t matter how many years you’ve spent in school, when you enter the work force you enter at the bottom. What may be worse is that while you were in school, someone your age put in 4-5 hard years of work into getting ahead. They may be ahead of you, debt free, and with 4-5 years of practice, real-world experience under their belts.
Earn it. Don’t whine like a little bitch.
4. Don’t follow.
Not just people, but paths.
When you can think outside the box you increase your chances of being a winner simply because you enter an arena of less competition. When you walk your own path you’re on your own. The road may be more difficult but the rewards are far greater, and not just monetarily, in the pride and value of what you end up creating.
The greatest among us didn’t fall in line. They didn’t ease into an existence that was set out for them by the expectations of their parents or peers or society. (Read This: Don’t Follow The Rest of Society)
They dared to pave a new path. They thought beyond their position, career, and craft.
Don’t get stuck thinking in terms of what’s been done or what everyone else is doing. Dig deeper. Think bigger. Spend time thinking about what’s beyond your world, things that have yet to be conjured or conquered, and, if you’re smitten with this alternate route, have the balls to take a different path, one where your steps are the only ones found.
5. You can’t be afraid to fail.
Failure is the excuse most people give to play the safe route.
It’s the end of this article, I probably should have made this point earlier, but go to the end of your days. Think about your regrets. Think about the people with you on your death bed.
Imagine the pain of knowing death is coming soon and you’re not going to be able to even attempt most of the things you’d deem daring or ambitious. You’re going to die with the excruciating ache of never having attempted your dreams.
Go there, to that place of sorrow and hurt.
That should be a fear greater than failure. That should be a dread, a deep trepidation that gets you off your ass and aimed at the daring, lion-hearted ambitions of your dreams.
The fear of failure should pale in comparison to having not attempted what you deem as living.
About The Author
Chad Howse: Chad’s mission is to get you in the arena, ‘marred by the dust and sweat and blood’, to help you set and achieve audacious goals in the face of fear, and not only build your ideal body, but the life you were meant to live.
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