Life is a game, but it isn’t. This paradox is another classic example of the Principle of Correspondence, that every truth is a half-truth.

Life is serious, your actions have consequences, and you shouldn’t treat it like a game of Uno or a game of beer pong where there’s no real harm or foul that results from losing.

No, you should treat it like a game in the sense that it’s poker with your life savings on the table. Treat it like a cage fight with your skin on the line. You should be playing the game of life to WIN.

Treating life like it’s a game means moving skillfully. Fostering the winner mindset implies being strategic by thinking and acting in ways that assist in your ultimate success. It means looking for opportunities to succeed in the face of challenge. It means being creative and persistent enough to learn the subtle art of turning a loss into a gain. It means being dedicated to the mission by living and breathing what you want to accomplish.

That doesn’t mean you have to be a soulless robot. Playing to win is about shifting your mindset from thinking like someone who is oppressed by life to the winner mindset that seizes opportunities to win at whatever situation life throws at you. Sometimes playing to win means shifting your mindset to a “play” mode just enough to stop taking things so seriously that it depresses you and inhibits purposeful action.

Life is too short and too precious to accept defeat. The fullness of life is a result of overcoming challenges.

I know many people who are really into video games. Some of which have even played video games at a professional level. They take their gaming super seriously, putting a ridiculous amount of time and effort into building their characters, leveling up skills, collecting resources, and learning how to win the game.

Unfortunately, I know very few of those gamers who transferred the skill of winning from their virtual lives into their personal lives. All that time and energy that was invested into learning how to win, and so little to show for it. Those guys already know how to win. Success at video games taught them the skills of strategizing, leveling up, and fine tuning the skills necessary for success, but they fail to realize the significance of the mental training they have done.

What would happen if those guys applied the mentality that they developed for winning by playing video games to their own lives? Well, I don’t think the majority would be losers in life but winners in the virtual world.

Don’t get me wrong, some gamers are winning at real life. They are physically fit and financially successful, and maybe it’s because they applied the art of winning to other aspects of their lives. Maybe video games are just a pastime, or maybe they’re not afraid of competing in the real world.

Competing in the real world is scary. Losing in real life can have significant consequences. You don’t have the luxury of restarting the level in real life. There’s no denying competition is an inherent part of being human, just as it is in other games.

Competition is blatantly obvious in the animal kingdom, and it would be foolish to deny that it doesn’t apply to human beings. We compete with each other all the time, consciously or unconsciously. It’s not something to be mad about. It’s just a part of life.

The reality of competition is much more serious in our personal lives, and perhaps that’s the reason why some people prefer to compete in a virtual world with less severe consequences. It’s safer, and it’s easier to make excuses for why you’re losing when you didn’t even try.

There’s an ugly truth about winning. I saw a video of Georgia Tech coach Lewis Caralla talking to his players about the reality of winning that was one of the most inspiring pep-talks I have ever heard.

I’ll share a link at the bottom of this post but I will also transcribe it here for those who cannot watch it or prefer to read it.

“Here’s what you should know about winning before you chase it.

Winning is not loyal to you. It doesn’t care about you.

Winning doesn’t care how sore you are.

Winning doesn’t care how much sleep you get.

Winning doesn’t care how much you work at times.

Sometimes a guy doesn’t outwork you and he still wins. It isn’t fair, man.

Sometimes there is no justice.

Winning requires all of you and then more and it promises you nothing.

It’s a mastermind of creating fear and doubt in your mind. It causes setback after setback.

So the question isn’t about winning.

Are you willing to sprint when the distance is unknown?

And why chase this this called “winning”?

Because the only thing that’s guaranteed in life if you don’t chase it is losing.”

Wow, what a motivational speech. Caralla’s words are so brutally realistic about the nature of winning and losing that I couldn’t help but to listen a couple of times. His athletes are blessed to have such a great coach who doesn’t beat around the bush.

Competition happens anyway. Life happens anyway, and whether you choose to play the game or not, you’re still in it. So why not play to win?

The biggest obstacle in your way is yourself. The one you will compete against the majority of the time is yourself, but competition with others is necessary too, in fact, it’s inevitable.

You don’t achieve excellence at anything by skipping the trial by fire. Top athletes, CEOs, and other highly successful people use competition with others to gauge their own performance and whether they’re competing hard enough against themselves. Their weaknesses, shortcomings, and areas that need improvement are exposed through competition. That’s how you learn to be better and win at whatever you do. You need the feedback of competition. I’m not saying you have to be world-class, but you should want to be good at things, and to be the best you can be.

At the end of the day those athletes are still competing against themselves. But competition with others is still required. Competition is still a necessary aspect of the game, and yeah, it can be frightening and yeah it sucks, but that’s what it takes to win, not only in athletic endeavors, but also in life.

How hard can you push? How far can you go? Play to win.

You’re in this game called life whether you like it or not. Competition happens whether you like it or not. You’re in the game whether you want to be or not, and you will experience the trials of competition whether it’s an internal or an external force, it will be there. Play to win.

Have that winning mentality in all you do. Whether you’re taking on something big or you’re just engaged in the small day-to-day things that you do, strive for excellence. Sometimes it can be hard to push ourselves to do the things we must, and sometimes we play the game without the intent to win. Remind yourself that you play to win, big or small, you do everything that you do to win, to be successful, to be better than you were before.

When it comes to small day-to-day things like doing chores and getting my house in order I use the winner mindset to get myself out of self-pity. Yeah, its sucks to have to spend our precious time doing chores and cleaning up, and I would gladly be doing other things, but it is what it is. I may not like it, but I have to do it anyways. I can either attack my chores with a winner mindset or I can grudgingly mope about my tasks feeling sorry for myself.

I decide to play to win. I put on music or a podcast. I set myself a timer and then I aggressively attack my chores. I compete with myself to get everything done as quickly and effectively as I can and finish everything before my timer goes off. Instead of going about my tasks with lackluster energy and constantly being distracted by thoughts of self-pity, I make it a game to be as efficient and effective as possible and my quality of work is so much better in much less time.

When it comes to taking on the big things, the winner mindset is what separates the ones who are just scraping by and the ones who are hard-chargers. I have a stressful job and sometimes it can feel overwhelming. Sometimes I feel like I’m just trying to survive, and I have to remind myself to play to win. Strangely enough, shifting my perspective to a winner’s mindset gives me renewed energy.

The winner mindset that allows me to see opportunities to get things done that I wouldn’t have otherwise seen with my overwhelmed, defeated mindset. I have to remind myself that I’m a player in this game whether I want to be or not and if that’s the case, then I might as well be a winner. Instead of acting and feeling like a victim like some of my co-workers do and only doing the bare minimum because they feel mistreated, I treat work like a game. I play to win.

Is that task I was given overly ambitious and unrealistic? Let’s see if I can do it when no one else can. Is it unfair that I have to do this thing? Yeah, but I bet I can get it done so fast I can make it look easy. Is this mission big and complicated and daunting? Yeah, but I have a warrior spirit and I will never accept defeat. I will win no matter the opposition. Is this task something that I’m unfamiliar with and unprepared for? Well then it’s an opportunity to level up another skill.

We have a tendency as human beings to go into survival mode when we are faced with things we find threatening or overwhelming. Either that or our fear wins out and we accept defeat without much of a fight. Survival mode is for losers. Defeat is only temporary if you don’t accept it as the final outcome.

By fostering the winner mindset and shifting our perspective to viewing challenges as games that can be won, the negative overtone of challenge can be transmuted into excitement for an opportunity to grow. You can see challenge as an opportunity to level up. You can see the obstacle you face as the boss at the end of a level and know that when you beat it, the next adventure opens up for you. The shift in perspective itself is a mind game, and it’s one that you can win and use to overcome the challenges in your life.

Fuck being a loser, that shit is for the birds. Be a winner. Play to win.

Here’s the link to the video: https://youtube.com/shorts/q814UDE82zw?feature=share

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