Álvaro H. Beckerig

Have you ever wondered why the clever schemers, cheaters, and smooth operators always seem to come out on top, while the good guys lag behind, waiting for a reward that never comes? Yeah, you’re not alone. I ask myself the same thing every day.

I was in therapy the other day, genuinely suffering from what I’d call “nice guy syndrome” — complaining about how I always end up on the losing end of things by putting other people first. I left the session unsettled and decided to fall back on my obsessive reading habit. With my head in the clouds, I thought: we live in a Machiavellian world — so I’d have to go straight to the source. I needed to reread something by Machiavelli and make sense of this whole mess.

I came to a few conclusions (clearly half-baked). Here they are:

The real world is not a fairy tale. It hits — and it hits hard.

Niccolò Machiavelli was one of the greatest realists (and here I was thinking I was pragmatic) in history. He wasn’t interested in fairy tales — he was interested in how things actually work. In “The Prince,” he basically said that anyone who wants to get ahead in life can’t be held back by outdated notions of “right” and “wrong” — what matters is effectiveness.

According to him, those who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty have a natural advantage over those too worried about morality and good manners. And history only reinforces this theory: manipulative schemers have an almost superhuman ability to climb the ladder without a guilty conscience.

Yes. The ends justify the means.

Machiavelli wasn’t saying you need to be a telenovela villain — kidnapping Maria Del Bairro and cackling maniacally — to win at life. But he warned that, in the pursuit of power and success, those who don’t hesitate to play dirty have a significant edge.

Think about it: while you’re agonizing over whether or not to throw your colleague under the bus, the guy at the next desk has already done it and gotten promoted.

People with fewer ethical-moral constraints make faster, more decisive moves. Meanwhile the rule-followers are still calculating consequences — which leads to that creeping anxiety about hypothetical future scenarios that never actually happen, because the nice guy never puts his plans into action.

Leading like a lion and a fox at the same time

Everyone leads something, even if it’s just their own life. Uncle Machiavelli argued that an ideal leader needs to be a mix of lion and fox. The lion is strong and commands respect; the fox is cunning and knows how to dodge traps. Whoever masters that duality plays the game better than those who are merely loyal, submissive (bolded because I’ll have a whole post about that), and hopeful that justice will distribute the prizes fairly.

“Good” people tend to be too focused on following rules and maintaining integrity, while the pragmatists simply find a way to bend the system in their favor. Result? The clever ones move forward while the naive ones stand still, waiting for a cosmic justice that rarely shows up. A truly limiting belief that — interestingly enough — affects even those who have no beliefs at all.

Are you telling me to be bad?

Yes and no. Actually, yes. Not telling you — maybe telling myself? Who knows?

But if success were simply about stepping on everyone and sprinting to the top, history wouldn’t be full of spectacular falls. The problem with conquering everything without scruples is that you end up living with a little thing called absolute paranoia — your entire life becomes a 4D chess game.

You can’t trust anyone. Your inner circle is full of flatterers, not real friends. And in the end, you might have a castle — but it’s a house of cards ready to collapse.

Seek balance, padawan.

I sound like my own therapist typing this, but: everything in life is about balance, and you’re the only one responsible for which way the scale tips.

The moral of the story (look at me handing out life lessons) is that maybe the best path isn’t being entirely “nice” or entirely “ruthless.” The secret might lie somewhere in between: having principles without being naive; being strategic without being a psychopath (wish I could tag some people here); knowing when to be the lion and when to be the fox.

If Machiavelli were here today, he’d probably tell us that success isn’t just about money or power — it’s about maintaining control without being hated by everyone. After all, no one stays on top alone forever. The power game is complex, and whoever wants to win needs to know the rules.

So, what if you stopped being a pushover and started playing with a bit more cunning? But, obviously, without selling your soul in the process. Or at least, not all of it.

(I’ll pretend I didn’t write this article for myself)

I wrote all this nonsense because I read:

The Prince, by Machiavelli: https://amzn.to/3EZEkkS

(っ´ω`c)♡ All images in this post were generated with Google Gemini .