4.7

"Thus, his battle victory is without error. Being without error, his execution will succeed, having already won against the defeated [enemy]."
- Sun Tzu

We spoke in the last passage how the general wins where winning is easy. By this, Sun Tzu doesn't simply mean that anyone can choose easy victories. The ability to win an easy victory requires obtaining a position that sets the army up to take advantage of these "easy" opportunities. Obtaining such a position requires an incredible amount of insight and calculation into the enemy's position.

Thus, while the victory may have been easy to achieve, the process of entering a position that allows one to win so easily is incredibly difficult. It requires keeping one's position concealed, assessing the enemy's position, and removing any difficulties that may prevent one from achieving victory. So while the victory itself may not look "brilliant" or "brave," the process of achieving it certainly was.

This is the approach you must take in your own life. Don't leave success to chance. Planning should trump execution. Great planning leads to effortless execution; poor planning leads to exhausting execution with huge uncertainty as to whether it will succeed. 

It is in the planning process where you "already win." This means foreseeing potential issues and coming up with ways to avoid them. It means focusing on gaining and leveraging advantages to improve your position and not focusing on that impressive or valiant win.