It’s a strange paradox. The people who are most successful in life, who accomplish the most, who dominate their professions don’t care that much about winning. Certainly they talk about it less. 

How could that be? 

It’s that they are after something higher than that. They are after what Posidonius once told the great Roman general Pompey (as told in Lives of the Stoics). Their goal is to “be best.” Not the best, but best. They’re after mastery—self-mastery. They’re after maximizing their potential. 

Marcus Aurelius wasn’t measuring his accomplishments as emperor against the great conquerors of the past—although certainly, he intended to win the wars he was forced to fight. Instead, his aim was higher. He wanted to be good. To be decent. To be in command of himself. To live up to being “the man that philosophy tried to make him.” 

Winning is like being rich. It’s nice, but it’s not something in your control, day to day. What is in your control is showing up, giving maximum effort, following your training, sticking to your principles, pursuing your calling. If that translates to on the field success, great—in fact, it almost always does. If that translates into career recognition, awesome—and again, it usually does. But sometimes so does the opposite of those things. 

So that’s why we, as Stoics, hold ourselves to a higher standard. We measure ourselves by an internal scorecard. Trusting in that, we know the rest will take care of itself.