I used to be clueless about how to win at life.
My parents had raised me to be a nice guy: well-behaved, a good friend, and a good colleague.
I was much younger than my two brothers, and every time I attempted to compete with them or gain the upper hand in an argument, it didn’t end well.
Soon I learned that my best strategy was to swallow my pride, avoid conflict, and cooperate. I got pretty good at it.
Being friendly and cooperative worked very well in my teenage years. I probably wasn’t the most charismatic guy in the world, but I had many close friends, a cute girlfriend, and a motorcycle.
What else could I possibly ask for?
Even though I neglected my competitive side, I didn’t notice any negative consequences.
In high school, I did the bare minimum to pass every subject. Meanwhile, I spent most of my time hanging out, playing football, making music, and playing video games.
Life was fun, and I had zero worries about the future. Everything had been great up to that point, so why would it ever be any different?
As you can imagine, life was soon going to teach me how things really work.
Life as a Competition: My Wake-Up Call
When I was 18, I left my small Spanish town to study classical music at the Amsterdam Conservatory. It was in that environment that the competitive nature of life became really apparent to me.
Back in my hometown, I had a network of friends and family who were really forgiving of my mistakes. They seemed to like me simply for who I was.
In Amsterdam, there was no such thing: most first-year students like myself didn’t have any family or friends in the city. Therefore, we were judged exclusively by what we showed through our actions and behaviors.
It was a fresh start for all of us. Some people would become popular and successful, but most would not attract as much attention.
I saw how the most charismatic guys became really popular while the best musicians commanded the most respect and got the best professional opportunities.
In that environment, I soon realized that my non-competitive mindset had become a serious liability. I didn’t know how to win at life, and I was starting to pay for it.
I was catching the first glimpses of an idea that, over time, would take full shape in my brain: the idea that life is the ultimate competition, a game we all play from our first breath to the last—whether we are aware of it or not.
Winning, a Matter of Life or Death
Competition is an essential part of life. It has always been for every living being on Earth, ever.
For most of human history, everything was scarce, including the most essential things like food, water, and safe places to live. There simply weren’t enough resources to sustain all humans, so we competed and even killed each other for them.
Every modern human has an ancestor who got hungry, beat some other guy, and took his food.
Modernity has brought an era of economic prosperity, at least in the most developed countries where food and water are affordable and widely available. Our modern comfort can mislead us into believing that we no longer have to compete with each other for anything.
Growing up is realizing that’s a bunch of nonsense.
In life, for most of the things you want, there will be a bunch of other people you will have to compete with.
What Are You Competing For?
Generally speaking, life is a competition for status, love, and resources (which are often represented by money).
A few specific examples:
- Siblings compete for their parents’ attention
- Men and women compete with their peers for sexual attention
- Athletes compete for a spot on the team
- Artists compete for the love of the audience
- Businesses compete for customers
- Work colleagues compete for promotions
Sexual selection is the ultimate way in which the competitive aspects of life manifest themselves with the greatest consequences. We all descend from individuals who figured out how to win at life.
As you can see, competition is inescapable. You can choose to ignore this fact, but then you’ll just be like that kid who doesn’t really care about the game and always ends up losing.
Perhaps he pretends not to care, or perhaps he really doesn’t care. But he loses nevertheless.
And in life, status, love, and resources gravitate toward winners. Make of that what you want.
Winning at Life: The Different Paths to Victory
Luckily, there are many different ways to play the game of life.
You can reject the paths you don’t want to take and follow the ones you really like. But you should take those choices very seriously and make them in a truly deliberate way.
If you don’t, two things are going to happen:
- Others will choose for you. Social conformity is a powerful force. If you don’t know what you want and you lack the courage to explore different options by yourself, others will decide for you.
- You’ll probably end up being mediocre at whatever you do. Your lack of commitment will put you at a massive disadvantage with more driven competitors, who will be much more motivated to work hard consistently.
Countless people take their life paths based on inertia or familial pressure. Many end up hating their jobs and their lives. Don’t let it happen to you.
How Good Can You Get, Compared to Your Competition?
You can make better life choices by considering your odds against the competition. Of course, nobody can predict exactly how successful you will become at any given thing. You can only estimate it, but doing it can be useful nevertheless.
Now, most people do this unconsciously. Since I was little, I thought I could become a musician or some sort of writer (journalist, author, whatever).
I never thought of becoming a theoretical physicist or an Olympic runner.
Your brain narrows your spectrum of choices more or less automatically based on a combination of what you’re naturally interested in and what you think you’re good at.
How Many “Winning Spots” Does Your Game Have?
This is a very important question because it can make the difference between a life of fulfillment and happiness or one of scarcity and suffering.
I mentioned before that, at a meta-level, life is a competition for status, love, and resources/money. Those are the prices of life; they give you freedom, a roof over your head, food in your mouth, and the possibility of forming a family and leaving a legacy.
A winning spot is a position that allows you to access those prices.
For instance, the game of becoming a doctor has many winning spots. There are over one million employed medical doctors in the US alone, and most of them make a decent living at the very least. You obviously don’t need to be among the top 1000 doctors in the world to be able to afford a house and feed your family.
On the other hand, the NBA has only around 550 players each season1. If you want to be a professional basketball player and don’t want to sleep under a bridge, you’ll probably need to reach a world-class level.
The greater the number of winning spots, the higher your chances of winning at life. Consider that when choosing your life path.
You can still take risks and follow your dreams
This doesn’t mean you should settle for the safest life path, even if it bores you to death.
We only live once, and we’re here to make it count.
There is a way to maximize the odds of fulfilling your most basic needs (water, food, a roof over your head, friendship, and love) while chasing your highest aspirations (freedom, abundance, respect, recognition, and self-actualization).
It’s what Nassim Taleb calls The Barbell Strategy: combining a low-risk, limited-reward strategy with a high-risk, high-reward one.
For instance, you could work a safe and boring government job that pays the bills while you build your writing career, your influencer brand, or your business empire.
It’s a great way to expose yourself to the huge potential benefits of a risky career (freedom, abundance, self-actualization) while protecting yourself from its risks (inability to make ends meet).
What Does It Take to Win at Life?
Victory requires a combination of talent, hard work, and a good strategy.
At the lowest levels of competition, you can succeed despite lacking some of those three components.
But at the highest levels, your competition always consists of talented people who work hard and have a decent strategy. Everybody else has already been filtered out.
Luck also plays a role, but it tends to favor those who are better prepared. And the best way to prepare is to ensure you have the three variables in check: talent, hard work, and a winning strategy.
There’s No Happiness Without Competition
The things that will make you happier in life will be hard to obtain. Happiness necessitates the struggle of competition.
For example, many men will be after the woman you love. Will you compete?
Most men have been raised—like I was—to be good kids and nice guys, to be good at cooperating instead of competing. Many feel like their lives lack meaning. Depression rates are ramping up.
If the most valuable experiences in life require harsh competition, could the nihilism epidemic be a result of people’s inability to compete?
Are you using your good character, your “nice guy” identity, as an excuse not to fight for the things you want? As a way to avoid the discomfort of doing what it takes to satisfy your needs?
Every Choice Counts
The choices you make every day can have a much greater impact on your life than you imagine.
Endure a 2-hour workout to feel great for a couple of days, or choose comfort and feel so-so at best.
Work every day to create a career for yourself, or chill until the bills need to be paid and you are forced to take whatever crappy job comes your way.
Talk to girls and risk rejection so that you can hone your skills, gain experience, and possibly meet someone great, or choose the safety of your current life and stay single.
Every time you make the wrong choice, someone else makes the right one.
Every day you don’t excercise, someone does.
Every time you don’t work on your dream project, someone else works on theirs.
And every time you don’t talk to that cute girl, someone else does.
If you don’t want the six-pack, the business, or the girl, don’t worry. Somebody else will get it.
The universe doesn’t need you unless you force it to.
You Can Still Have Fun
When I talk about the struggle of competition that happiness requires, I don’t mean “imagining Sisyphus happy” or anything like that.
That’s doomer shit. No one needs to live like an underfed, overwhipped slave building the pyramids for 15 hours a day under the scorching sun to appreciate the good moments of life.
Life is brief, and youth is even more so. I’d rather enjoy the trip. Chill, play, and have as much fun as you can.
But you also need to thicken your skin and increase your capacity to withstand stress to become a real competitor, someone who can aspire to the best things life has to offer.
If you want to know how to win at life, there’s your answer.
PS: Remember to play to your strengths, too.
- https://www.sportsboom.com/nba/how-many-players-are-in-the-nba/ ↩︎
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