An exploration of human pride, self-deception, and the psychological refuge of imaginary victories.
In November 2026, in a business district of Tokyo, a young entrepreneur named Takahashi Kenta, 39, sat alone in a nearly empty conference room, staring at the results displayed on a large screen.
His company, NexBridge Technologies, had just lost a major government contract worth approximately ¥800 million. For the previous eighteen months, Kenta had personally led the project, convinced that his company’s artificial intelligence platform would revolutionize the management of public infrastructure.
The competition had been fierce. Three companies had submitted proposals, and NexBridge had initially been considered a strong contender. However, the final evaluation had exposed several weaknesses in its proposal: insufficient implementation experience, an unrealistic deployment schedule, and inadequate provisions for cybersecurity and long-term maintenance.
The contract went to a larger competitor.
For Kenta, the defeat was more than a commercial setback. He had personally persuaded the board to approve substantial development expenditures, recruited additional engineers, and repeatedly assured investors that the project would become a turning point in the company’s history.
Now, the board wanted answers.
At the emergency meeting the following morning, the chairman, an experienced businessman named Morita, asked him a straightforward question.
“Looking back, what do you believe was the principal reason we lost?”
Kenta adjusted his glasses and folded his arms.
“Honestly, the evaluation process was not entirely fair,” he replied. “If the government had placed greater emphasis on technological innovation rather than the number of previous installations, our proposal would have been much stronger.”
Morita remained silent.
Kenta continued.
“If our competitor hadn’t received advance information about the evaluation criteria, we might have won. And if the review committee had understood the long-term potential of our technology, the outcome could have been completely different.”
“But do we have evidence that our competitor received advance information?” Morita asked.
“No direct evidence. But considering the circumstances, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to suspect something.”
“And what about the implementation schedule?”
Kenta hesitated briefly.
“That was based on the assumption that we could secure additional engineering resources. If the recruitment process had gone as originally planned, we could have delivered everything on time.”
Morita looked down at the evaluation report.
“The recruitment process was delayed because you rejected the additional budget requested by the engineering department.”
Kenta’s expression tightened.
“That decision was made under financial constraints imposed by the board.”
The room fell silent.
What was happening was not simply an attempt to explain a failed project. Kenta was gradually constructing an alternative version of reality in which every unfavorable outcome could be attributed to circumstances beyond his control.
In his imagined version, the government had misunderstood the technology, competitors had enjoyed unfair advantages, the board had restricted his resources, and the engineering department had failed to deliver.
The one person who remained consistently blameless was Kenta himself.
Psychologists have described similar behavior through concepts such as self-serving bias and self-handicapping. People tend to attribute success to their own abilities while explaining failure through external circumstances. By doing so, they protect their self-esteem from the psychological discomfort of accepting personal responsibility.
Another related concept is cognitive dissonance: the mental discomfort that arises when reality conflicts with deeply held beliefs about oneself.
Kenta believed he was an exceptional strategist. Accepting that his judgment had been wrong would require him to reconsider not only the project but also his own image as a capable leader.
It was easier to imagine that he would have succeeded under different circumstances.
Over the following weeks, Kenta repeatedly discussed hypothetical scenarios with colleagues.
“If we had been given another three months, we would have won.”
“If the evaluation committee had included more technology specialists, we would have won.”
“If the board had trusted my original judgment, we would have won.”
Each statement sounded plausible in isolation. Yet none could be verified.
There was no way to recreate the competition with a different evaluation committee, additional funding, or a longer schedule. The hypothetical victory existed only in Kenta’s imagination.
Meanwhile, the actual consequences continued to accumulate. The company had spent nearly ¥200 million on development, several employees had worked extended hours, and the anticipated revenue had disappeared.
One afternoon, an engineer named Fujimoto, who had worked on the project from its beginning, approached Kenta.
“There’s something I want to ask you,” he said.
“What is it?”
“If we had actually won the contract, would you still have considered the project successful, even though we couldn’t meet the original implementation schedule?”
Kenta looked at him without answering.
Fujimoto continued quietly.
“We knew the schedule was unrealistic. We raised concerns several times, but you said that questioning the schedule meant questioning your leadership. Now that we’ve lost, you’re saying the problem was the evaluation committee.”
Kenta felt his face grow hot.
For a moment, he wanted to dismiss Fujimoto’s remarks as disloyalty. But he remembered the internal reports he had ignored, the warnings he had postponed addressing, and the budget requests he had rejected.
The evidence was not complicated.
He had made decisions. Those decisions had produced consequences. And those consequences could not be erased by inventing a different set of circumstances.
Nevertheless, acknowledging this would mean accepting a painful truth: he had not been defeated by an imaginary conspiracy or an unfortunate coincidence. He had lost because his own judgment had been inadequate.
Several months later, Kenta attended another board meeting.
This time, when asked to explain the failure, he did not mention the competitor, the evaluation committee, or the hypothetical advantages he believed he should have received.
“I overestimated our capabilities,” he said. “I dismissed warnings from the engineering team, underestimated implementation risks, and committed resources without establishing realistic conditions for success. The responsibility for those decisions was mine.”
It was not an easy admission. Nor did it immediately restore the company’s financial position or his reputation.
But it marked the beginning of something more valuable than an imaginary victory: the ability to distinguish between what had actually happened and what he wished had happened.
Human beings often find defeat difficult to accept, particularly when it threatens their pride, identity, or social standing. When reality becomes unbearable, the mind can construct an alternative world populated by hypothetical opportunities, imaginary obstacles, and victories that were supposedly within reach.
In that world, failure is never truly one’s own.
The paradox, however, is that the more energy people devote to defending an unprovable version of events, the less opportunity they have to learn from the facts.
Like the fable of the fox that dismisses unreachable grapes as sour, they convince themselves that what they failed to obtain was never worth having in the first place.
An imaginary victory may temporarily protect one’s self-esteem, but it cannot change the historical record, compensate for actual losses, or restore the trust of those who bear the consequences.
Ultimately, the most difficult defeat to overcome is not necessarily the one imposed by an opponent. It is the defeat one refuses to acknowledge, because doing so would require confronting the person responsible for it: oneself.
All names of people and organizations appearing in this story are pseudonyms
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