Winners think differently than losers.

It’s a paradox of sorts.
While to win you need to beat the competition, winners don’t focus on competitors.

This article explains how winners think about the competition.
Adopt these mindsets, and you too can crush the competition.

1. It’s Always About The Game, Never The Players

Here’s the principle:

⚖️ Losers don’t compete. Average men focus on beating individuals. Winners focus on dominating the game

The “game” is any ecosystem of endeavor where we pursue goals and self-advancement.

At TPM we’re interested in the “games” representing the most important life domains:

• Game of dating (example below)
• Game of career/business
• Game of power

But ultimately, it always comes down to the game of life.
Single domains are just pieces of the life puzzle.

The winners focus on the game, rather than on individuals.

1.2. Take your revenge on the game

A corollary of “it’s always about the game” is:

⚖️ Average men dream revenge, while winners’s revenge is full-game conquest

And in a more detailed format:

• Bottom 40% passively acquiesce
• Middle 40% dream revenge
• Top 19% men seek revenge
• Top 1% men get revenge on the game

The game is the ultimate boss.
And it’s also your competitors’ boss.
Beat their boss, and you automatically beat them all.

I know, I know, I can already hear the complains.
“But what if I want revenge against some a**holes?”

The good news is that your success is your revenge through their envy.

If you want to rub it in further for extra measure, just parade that success in their faces.
Make sure they see it, and that they hear about you.

But for winners, revenge against individual players is a consequence of winning the game.

2. See THROUGH The Competition

General principle:

⚖️ Losers are scared by competitors. Average men focus on beating the competition. Winners don’t even see the competition

Why?
Because this is a corollary of mindset #1: winners focus on the game.

Yes, winning often entails competing.

HOWEVER…

Even from a rational point of view, focusing on competitors is often a distraction more than an advantage.

Most games have many available prizes, many winning combinations, many winners… And relatively few top contenders.

As an example, take dating.
Or business.
Or even a “vainer” goal such as becoming popular.

In all these endeavors competition only exists relative to your skills, value, and effort.
So you advance faster with solo effort and focus -or, sometimes, cooperating, rather than competing-.

That’s why winners focus on goals, and game dominance.

Even when competition stands in the way, it’s never personal.
Other competitors are like any other -inanimate- obstacle.
But until they’re clear obstacles -or potential allies-… They really just don’t exist.

What’s that standing between me and her? A random richer/taller/bigger guy? I don’t see him

Competition-focus 👎🏼

Two ways it makes you ineffective:

1. Lowers your confidence

So many men have low confidence.

And I get it.

If you look around and, as many men do, you focus on who “has it better than you”… You will ALWAYS find someone better.

If you focus on what they have better, anyone has something better.

The alternatives are:

1. Believe you’re better at everything
2. Ignore the competition with total target-focus

Both are better than negative comparisons.

However, #1 is simply untrue.
Gifted men may hold that frame with more limited reality distortions.
But the farther away you move from “total perfection”, the more you distort reality.

With #2 instead, you have no need for lies.

And bonus point: you never worry about cockblockers because ghosts don’t cockblock.

2. Competition-focus sidetracks you into indirect and less effective approaches

I see this all over the manosphere when it comes to dating.

Men want to get more women, but instead of meeting more women, they focus on:

I was never all that much from the left column.
But I still smashed my dating goals doing more of the latter. (And if I could go back in time, I may even learn dancing).

Also read:

• Alpha male game is costing you
• Strategy beats power 📽️

Goal-focus 👍🏼

So if you don’t see the competition, what do you see then?

It means that, in order, you focus:

• Target, tactical level
• Goal, strategic level
• Self, and self-growth
• Victory, at the game level

Dating example

Let’s take the example of dating.

This is how the killers approach dating:

• Women-focus, ignore men
• Intimacy, girlfriend, rotation-focus (or whatever the tactical end goal)
• Skills-focus to get an attractive girlfriend or a rotation whenever he pleases

Victory can be a long-lasting relationship, a family, or a life as a player.
Or dating on one’s terms, or even collecting enough notches until you’re satisfied.
Finally, it may also be to exit the game of dating altogether.

🔎 Shortest Guy Picks Up The “Club Queen”

“A guy I know” once picked up the hottest girl in a club.

It was a big club, too.
Right in the historical center of Prague, a place that doesn’t lack attractive women.

She was one of those girls you look at and think “Wow”.

That guy was one of the shortest guys in that club.
If not the shortest.

With a competition-focus he wouldn’t have even made a move.

But… He didn’t see the competition.
He only saw an attractive woman.

3. Battle Scars Pave The Road to Victory

Principle:

⚖️ Losses diminish losers’ self-esteem. Winners see losses as battles cars that build character on the way to greater tomorrows

Battle scars are the only undeniable badges of honor.

Badges and medals bestowed by others include politics. And always entail external opinions.
Battle scars are between you, and the game.
They are pure, and they never lie.

And if your competition scarred you, even better.
All extra motivation you can pour into dominating the game.

This mindset rests on well-known self-help principles such as:

1. Focus on learning
2. Stick through the losses
   • Use losses as motivation

Naive self-help sometimes forgets the ultimate goal though.
The goal is never to stay in the apprenticeship.
Or to keep losing and struggling just to “prove you can”.

Winners never forget the end goal:

• Learn early on BUT with a focus on winning the game
• Learn while seeking mastery
• Losses turn into badges of honor once you win the war

And some relevant articles:

• Develop growth mindset
  • Don’t be duped by naive growth mindset
• Pain as fuel

4. Effort Over Time Wins the Game

Winning the game requires dedication over time.

A long-term predisposition is helpful.
And continuous and relentless action is mandatory.

Here’s a good mindset:

🧠 Every day I keep going, and while a weaker competitor drops out, I grow stronger

Just repeat that.

Day after day.
Loss after loss.
Learned lesson after learned lesson.
Win after win.

Until you string so many in a row, that one day you turn around and realize:

“Holy cow, I’m on the summit.
I made it”

The Mindsets, In One Real-Life Story