Winners and Losers

Mountains of Arizona
Sunny 90 Degrees
11:24 a.m.

I spent a lot of years focused on winners. I read about them, I followed them, I studied them, I modeled them, I copied them, I aspired to be them.

Our culture is obsessed with “winners.” It makes movies about them, writes books about them, puts them on magazine covers, features them on talk shows, invites them up on stage, even hangs up pictures and erects statues of them.

Doesn’t everyone want to be a winner?

Earlier in my life, I would have taken the bait on a question like that and said, “of course.” But these days, I’m far more curious about answering other questions.

Here are two questions I’m curious about…

Why are so many parts of our culture focused on directing the awareness of the masses on to “winners?” And what happens to a world where so many people are focused on winners, what it’s like to be them, what it’s like to live as them, what they think or eat or say or do?

I could answer this, but there’s a quote by some anonymous wise individual that sums it up in far fewer words than I might use:

Winners focus on winning, losers focus on winners.

If you spend your whole life focused on winners, guess what you’re NOT spending your whole life on? You’re not spending it on winning yourself, whatever that means for you.

You get to choose whether or not you allow the lives of others to occupy the majority of the lens through which you view the world.

They system already has its answer picked out for you. But my recommendation would be to ignore everyone on a regular basis, clear your lenses of everything obstructing a direct line of sight to what you want.