Three Ways to Win: The First Two Are For Losers

I am one of millions of people locked into the NBA playoffs right now. I'm a New Yorker, so I'll be honest. I'm just as interested in watching the fans go crazy as I am watching the game. But all this competition has pulled my attention away from the court and toward a much more uncomfortable question:

What are we willing to do to win — and do we even understand what winning costs us?

Not in sports. In politics. In the office. In our closest relationships.

Because in those arenas, too many of us are playing dirty. The tragedy is the harm it causes, and more importantly, that dirty play cannot win. Not in any way that lasts, grows, or means something.

There are three ways people try to win when the stakes feel personal. Only one of them actually works. The other two are abuses of power. And the abuse of power is the greatest demonstration of weakness.

I Hold You Down

This is the least visible form of the wrong way to win. It shows up as sabotage, undermining, credit-stealing, rumor-spreading, gatekeeping — any strategy whose entire logic is if I keep them down, I move up.

The fatal flaw is built into the method itself.

To hold someone down, you have to stay there to hold them.

You cannot be on the ground pinning someone in place and simultaneously be rising. The position requires your full presence, your full energy, your constant vigilance. The moment you move, they move. So you stay. And in staying, you become as stuck as the person you are trying to suppress.

Self-Oppression

Holding others down is not power. It is the abuse of power, and simultaneously self-oppression.

The person doing the holding cannot see it, but they feel it. They feel exhausted, minimized, even oppressed. And they are. But not by you. They are oppressed by the position they chose. They cannot get up without releasing you. And releasing you means they finally have to compete fairly. So they stay. And in staying, they become as trapped as the person they are trying to suppress.

If you are the one being held down, understand this: their grip on you is costing them everything. You do not need to fight it. You need only to outgrow it.

For those being targeted, the instinct to push back is natural. It is even justified. But over-exhausting yourself to match the force only increases the impact of the blow. The energy you spend on resistance becomes the abuser's greatest weapon.

I Annihilate You

Annihilation is the more sophisticated version of the abuse of power — and the more destructive one. It goes beyond suppression into erasure. The goal is to remove you from the game entirely. Professionally. Socially. Psychologically. Physically.

But annihilation doesn't have a winner. It destroys the entire game. The appetite to win is permanently insatiate.

Without a worthy opponent, there is vain victory at best and coward victory at worst. There is no excellence without the friction that demands it. The person who annihilates rather than competes does not win. They end up alone in a smaller world of their own making, with no one left to measure themselves against.

There is no winner. There is no game. There is no peace, love and joy. Fear still remains.

And yet, this is the strategy people reach for when their ego is most threatened. When they cannot conceive of a world in which you succeed and they succeed. When the only arithmetic they know is zero-sum.

This is scarcity wearing the mask of strategy.

The Wrong Ways to Win

Both abuse of power approaches share a common root; they are fueled by fear, not strength.

The person trying to hold someone down or erase others is operating from scarcity instead of abundance. They are operating from the belief that there is not enough — not enough room, not enough recognition, not enough success to go around. And in that scarcity, someone becomes their problem.

They cannot tolerate what others' success reflects back at them about their own vulnerability and the choices that created it.

The Response

When someone has made you their target, the instinct to push back is natural. It is even justified. But resistance is still a disturbance. It pulls you into their fire. It makes their agenda your agenda. And the energy you spend matching their force becomes the very thing that deepens the impact.

What you need is clarity about what is happening, groundedness in who you are, stillness that their aggression cannot reach, and the composure to remain fully yourself under pressure.

Your rise is contingent on your decision to remain rooted in your own purpose while they exhaust themselves trying to uproot you. Their fire does not become your fire. Their fear does not become your mission. You refuse to organize your life around someone else's war.

Powerful Wins: I Raise My Strength and Compete Fairly

Raising your strength and competing fairly is the only way to win that creates something meaningful, purposeful, and a legacy worth writing down in history. It is the most moral. It is the only strategy whose outcome is expansion rather than contraction.

When you raise your own strength and compete with integrity, both players get further than they were. The game continues. The standard rises. Everyone watching learns something worth knowing.

Those grounded in peace understand that their rise does not require anyone's fall.

You do not need to hold anyone down. You do not need to annihilate the competition. You need only to keep becoming more fully what you already are and to let that be enough. To let the work speak. To let the results accumulate.

The person committed to suppression and erasure will eventually run out of energy. Suppression is expensive. Erasure is exhausting. Fear, sustained over time, devours the person carrying it. They cannot win by raising their strength because they spent it all trying to lower others.

Find Your Exit

If someone has made you their obstacle, their competition, their ceiling — you have a choice about what to carry.

You can carry their fear. You can carry the weight of their aggression, their narrative about you, their need to see you diminished. You can match their resistance with yours and call it self-defense.

Or you can set it down.

If you are someone who has made an obstacle out of others, understand that the energy you spend holding people down is the energy you will never spend rising. Every person you have tried to suppress is a measure of the strength you chose to waste.

The best win is the one that creates more than it takes.

Dr. Rosenna Bakari is an empowerment strategist, psychologist, and founder of Seven Exits — a personal development framework built around the patterns that keep high achievers stuck. She works with organizations and individuals ready to align strength with inner ease.