Winners focus on winning and many other things

There is a quote going around that says “Winners focus on winning, losers focus on winners.” Somehow it rings false and goes against conventional wisdom. According to what I have learned, winners get to where they are by focusing both on winners and losers before they focus on themselves.

One of the best way to become successful is to study successful people and replicate their winning strategies. Learning from successful people helps people focus on the important points, learn from other people’s experience and have a role model that shows what they want to accomplish is possible.

Another way to improve the odds of winning is to look at losers and see where they went wrong. That helps avoid mistakes of others, makes people know the risks and even feel better about the sacrifices needed by knowing that others have been in the same situation.

Finally, “focusing on winning” is also an important aspect of success. In other words, one has to be willing to focus on one’s self as well, do all the efforts needed, have patience to go through all obstacles/milestones and persist until success becomes inevitable. As they say, an overnight success takes years to prepare for.

It can be argued that a lot of losers focus on themselves. A lot of self conscious arrogant people will ignore wisdom provided by others, focus on their own bubble without ever having a reality check… and though, on occasion it does let through a prodigy… in most cases, it is like playing the lottery… there are indeed winners but a lot losers think they got the right combination to success do fail as well.

The whole point to going to college, learning from “winners” or people who studied their field in depth is because in order to focus on winning, it is necessary to study winners. Otherwise, what would be the point in reading a book, talking to a mentor or even study failures to prevent them.

Finally, beyond looking at winners, losers and even one’s self, it is imperative to study the environment one is in, the rules you operate under and see how to best optimize one’s strategy on a path to success.