Don’t confuse being a fan watching a contest with having actually contributed in the game as a viable contestant. To accept the spoils of victory as a bystander is a sure way to feel as though you were a winner, even though you’ve done nothing to merit it.

Only those that prepare for and enter a contest with their accountable actions deserve the credit of a victory. It’s fun to be a fan watching, but don’t assume your prowess as a bystander had anything to do with the outcome.

We can watch life from the stands with no accountability for the outcomes or we can personally engage in the contests ourselves to compete in a victorious effort. To have experienced, learned and grown as an active competitor in life, we then earn the sense of having been victorious.

Better to have played and competed in life and lost, than to have only observed others to claim their victories.

“You may always be victorious if you will never enter into any contest where the issue does not wholly depend on yourself.” — Epictetus —

MITM