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18 Examples of Winning

John Spacey, April 20, 2023

Winning, duh.
~ Charlie Sheen

Winning is the process of producing superior results in some activity, situation or life in general. This has several common interpretations and flavors:

Competition

Nature is inherently competitive whereby there are often constrained resources demanded by many. Humans appear to be competitive by nature and will create competition just for the joy of it in games and sport.

Individualism

Modern people commonly interpret winning at the individual level whereby it relates to your personal results in life.

Collectivism

It is also possible to view winning at the level of a group whereby being an accepted member of the winning group is the goal.

Bandwagoning

Bandwagoning is the practice of choosing the group that's winning and joining it. For example, choosing a strong sports team to become a fan such that you can often enjoy being on the winning side.

Luck

Winning often has an element of luck and can be pure luck in games of chance. This is surrounding in a number of attitudes and philosophies such as superstition whereby certain things ostensibly increase or decrease your luck.

Fatalism

Fatalism is the belief that the future is predetermined as destiny such that you can't influence how much you can win.

Locus of Control

Locus of control is the degree to which people believe they have power and agency in determining their own outcomes. Some people will attribute all failure to external factors such as society, luck or other people who have kept them down.

Winning Mentality

Winning is associated with a large number of character traits such as work ethic, resilience, persistence, ambition, diligence and fearlessness. People commonly try to cultivate these traits in order to improve results in life.

Strategy & Tactics

Winning often involves long term and short term planning known as strategy and tactics.

Failure As Strength

What does not kill me makes me stronger.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 1888

There is much romance surrounding failure and the idea that it is the basis for learning, resilience and the ultimate success of things. If you tell a story about how often you win, people will tend to find this completely unlikable. However, if you tell a story of all the challenges you faced and how things looked hopeless but eventually worked out -- this tends to make for a great story.

Social Status

People tend to be socially competitive and count winning in the social domain with a concept known as social status that is an estimation of your valued social traits such as popularity, wealth, authority and power.

One-upmanship

One-upmanship is the tendency to try to do slightly better than another person as opposed to winning in general. For example, neighbors in a condominium who feel that they have won in life because they are one floor above some other neighbor. This can occur even if you're on the 5th floor of an 80 storey building, simply because you're above those on the 4th floor.

Ascribed Status

Ascribed status is the social status that a person gets without doing anything. For example, physical appearance or youth is a type of social status that requires no effort. Likewise some people will be born into a situation where they have much status related to things such as wealth and family.

Achieved Status

Achieved status is social status that you have earned such as a brilliant musician who earns wealth, coolness, respect, popularity and fame with their work.

Self-Fulfillment

Self-fulfillment is the idea that winning isn't a social competition but rather the process of trying to become the best you that you can be.

Setting the Bar

As self-fulfillment isn't a competitive thing, you can set the bar for being satisfied with your results in life. You could set this bar very low and simply be satisfied with whatever happens or set it high and work to constantly improve yourself.