Working isn’t always a simple as it ought to be. You’d think that if we have something to do, we’d sit right now and do it. Alas, this isn’t the way things always are.
Right now, writing this little article, I’m sitting in a cafe in Buenos Aires. Okay, I actually sat down two hours ago with the intention of writing this very article. A little debate on Facebook, a few pages of a book read, and before you know it I’ve eaten a meal, talked to the breeder of the pup I bought, had a beer, and then an Old Fashioned. The one thing I haven’t done is write the damn article. (Try this: Tips to Increase Focus and Productivity)
Today, I acted like a loser.
This is how most of us live our lives, thinking that being busy means being important or productive or of value. That’s false, of course, being busy is a myth. We fill our lives with useless endeavors because there’s nothing of value we’ve found, or at least that’s what we think deep down.
Sadly, most live this life, the life of the loser, where nothing of value is created and potential remains a dream and not something that’s actually reached or attained or even attempted to be attained. We live our lives blaming others for our lack of success, all-the-while failing to realize the power we hold over our thoughts and actions.
This article will lay before you the steps to becoming a loser. You’ll likely have already taken some of these steps. Identify them. Be real and honest with yourself. This is the only way you’re going to be able to turn things around, and turning things around is the only way you’re going to live a life you enjoy, you’re proud of, happy with, and a life that truly matters.
1. Accept the Reasons for Your Lack of Success.
Most reasons aren’t used to explain and then solve a problem, they’re used as excuses, nothing more. If you’re accepting the “reasons” for your lack of success and leaving it there, you’re setting yourself up for a life as a loser.
If you’re born into poverty and use that as a crutch, you’re going to stay in poverty. If you get bad grades at school and you mark it up to stupidity instead of taking as a challenge, you’re relegating yourself to a life as a stupid person. If you get overlooked in a job, even unjustly, and you take that as an excuse to slack off rather than taking it as a challenge to work harder and smarter, you’re clearing yourself a path to loserdom, enjoy.
If a human is given an out, he’ll likely take it. We’re somehow bred to take the easy route, when it’s never the best route for us, our future, or our self-development. Don’t give yourself this out. Don’t give yourself a reason to slack off or fall short of what you have it within you to become, create, and grow into.
2. Become happy, satisfied with not earning a living.
Every man deserves the right to earn a living, some, however, are fine with having someone else earn their living for them. They’re alright with taking money they haven’t earned.
This goes for two very opposing classes; the very poor, and the very rich.
If you’re born into wealth and you are given a life without having to earn a single thing, you’re a loser. If you take than wealth and grow it, use it to create something even better, you’re a winner. The choice is yours.
Are you getting by without having to earn? Ask yourself, then take a hard look in the mirror.
It’s interesting how two classes that are complete opposite ends of the spectrum can have so much in common. It doesn’t matter if you’re born into wealth or poverty, if you become satisfied with sustenance, with receiving an living rather than earning it, you’re a loser, and your lack of ambition will lead to an empty life completely devoid of value.
Though it’s much easier to be sustained by another entity, be it your father or your government, it isn’t the route of a winner, nor of a man. If you need sustenance at the moment to feed your family, take it, but don’t ever become happy or satisfied with it. Live everyday with that burning desire to climb out of your current predicament.
It’s not necessarily the taking of sustenance, it’s the becoming satisfied with it that devalues the individual and crushes their ambition. (read this article: The Beauty of Ambition)
3. Always opt for the easy route.
This can be an extension of the previous step, but the easy route can be a much broader problem that many of us fall into. The real trouble arises when the easy route is the only thing you know, where the hustle and grind that winning requires is something you’ve forgetting how to enact.
If you always show up at work when it starts and never before, if you always leave right when they allow you, if you always do the bare minimum, get used to the bare minimum in life. What’s worse is that you’re setting yourself up to be unable to rise above the challenges that life throws at us because you’re not used to doing more than simply surviving.
If you want to be a loser, always opt for the easy route, never taking responsibility for your actions or your place in this world, never doing more than what is required of you.
4. Try to become a success quickly.
Success isn’t quick, it’s not immediate. We see “overnight success stories” of people who sell their companies or take them public making billions of dollars in the process. What we selectively ignore is the years of 17 hour work days or more. We don’t see the risk of time and energy and money put in to a dream.
Success, even if it’s “overnight”, is a long, arduous process, and to think or aim to attain it otherwise is foolish, lazy, and the road to loserdom.
Learn to love the hustle, the persistent daily grind. This is where you not only become stronger and better, but this is where winners are made, where you create something long lasting.
5. Gossip.
[Tweet “Do you talk about goals and ideas, or other people?”]
Most people gossip. It’s the majority of the conversation that goes on, at least in western society. Gossip is for losers. It has no value. It does nothing for the world, nor the host. It’s a cancerous way of thinking and speaking that eats away at the individual. If you gossip, stop. Start talking about ideas, the world, goals, missions, books, whatever, just stop talking about other people or the bad haircut that pal had.
Gossip leads to envy, and envy is one of the strongest qualities of a loser. It’s envy that makes a loser remain where he is, unable to rise above or break free from the chains that bind him to mediocrity. (read this article: Fuck Mediocrity and Become a Legend)
6. Complain.
Men don’t complain.
It’s a foundation of manliness. We’re known not to complain about pain or nor having to wake up early everyday or working at a job we hate, because we know it puts food in the mouths of our kids.
So, if you complain, not only are you a loser, but you’re not a man. Don’t complain about your job, instead hustle, or get a new one. Men act, they don’t complain.
However, if you’re fine being a loser, do as the masses do and keep complaining. Complain about the weather. When you have nothing good to talk about, complain about your life and everything wrong with it.
Your words are far more powerful than you realize. As you complain with your mouth, you complain with your mind and your soul and your outlook on your life becomes dark and utterly useless.
Don’t complain. Accept your life as it is, then start making it better.
7. Genuinely believe that you “deserve” a break.
You don’t deserve a break. You may need one, a vacation may do you some good, but you don’t deserve anything you haven’t actually earned. If you have enough money for a vacation, take one. If you don’t, then don’t. But don’t be fooled into thinking that because Bobby is on a vacation, that you also deserve one. Bobby just made the most sales in his company, or maybe he’s living beyond his means.
Break’s aren’t deserved, they’re earned. Earn one, or take breaks before you do, like a loser.
Winners take breaks after the work has been done. Losers take breaks when they feel like it.
8. Think image is everything.
Facebook and social media is riddled with humans taking pictures of themselves as if other people are infatuated with their faces or haircuts or new threads. Justin Beiber, for all his success, has loser in him because the goofball takes only pictures of his dumbass face.
He’s not the only one.
Who’s taking these pictures of you? What are you leaning against and looking off into? Who are you trying to impress? What image are you trying to portray and whose approval do you need to feel as though you’re valuable?
Image is nothing, it’s a facade, a myth, it lacks all substance, and if you only care about what others think and how others perceive you, you are a loser.
[Tweet “You’re a loser because your success is dependent on the opinions of others.”]
Success and happiness have to be internal. Stop trying to dress purely to impress. Stop trying to get done up so as to change how people think about you. Stop being so self-obsessed that you feel that everywhere you are you need to take a picture of yourself.
‘Tis the route of a loser to not be in the moment, enjoying, adventuring, exploring, and instead being worried about getting a selfie for social proof that he actually is where he is.(read this article: The Missing Ingredient in Modern Men: Character)
Live. You’re not in a TV show. Life should be experienced. There are things in your life that you can hold close to the chest. There are adventures and moments that can be yours and only yours. Take solace in this. You don’t need to tell everyone about everything. You don’t need to post pictures to be relevant. You don’t need to depend on status updates to be important. You are important, but you’ll have to be fine being a loser if you’re not satisfied with some solitude.
9. Compare yourself to others.
We dig ourselves into deep dark places because we’re constantly comparing ourselves, our degree of success, what we have, the life we’ve built, to the lives of others and what they have or what they have built.
All you can do in this life is make the best of the situation you have, not the situation you’d like to have.
Right now, I’m in Argentina, soon to be in Uruguay. I’d love to get married some day, to find the right lady, settle down, and start making as many babies as possible so I can have my own crew of minions wreaking havoc on a town (I kid). This is something I’d like, but it isn’t my reality. My reality is that I’m a single fella with a business that’s still in its infancy, that still needs growth.
The good: I can work from wherever.
Thus, I’m traveling like a madman making the best of my situation.
This is the best I can figure for my situation in this moment. I’m taking the “single” aspect of my life, the entrepreneur aspect of my life, and I’m making the best of the both of them. I can’t compare myself to those in different situations, it does me no good. It does you no good either.
Make the best of your situation. If you’re married, with kids, don’t envy the single fella with “freedom”, because he’s likely looking at your life in the same light, as if your life has more meaning.
Wherever you are is wherever you’re meant to be.
Make the most of it and the best of it. If your success is in comparison to another person, you’ll never be successful. When you move past that person, you’ll move on to another. And envy is cancerous, it literally eats away at the host. It gives you no chance of success or happiness.
Compare yourself to others, by all means, if you’re happy being a loser, of course.
10. Believe that simply being born into this world means you deserve happiness and success.
This is a myth, the idea that success and happiness are a birthright. They are things to be earned, attained, and warranted. You don’t deserve to be happy, you deserve the right to figure out what that entails. You deserve to hustle to earn happiness and success, you don’t deserve it being handed to you.
If, however, you want to be a loser, believe that this happiness and success is your rite, that you should have it simply for being. That way you won’t work for your success, you won’t sacrifice for it, you won’t persist through the hardships of life because you’ll think they aren’t deserved either.
Are you a loser?
Losers are everywhere. They’re everywhere because it’s easier to be a loser, but it isn’t better. It’s better to be of some value. It’s better to get stronger and tougher and to feel pride in who you are, to discover just how much you can withstand.
Each of us have this capacity to be losers. We have the loser voice and the winners voice. The loser’s voice is often strongest because it’s so easy to fall under its grasp, its lure. The winner’s voice needs strengthening, it needs discipline and focus and action.
Practice being a winner, practice getting up earlier, focusing for longer periods on your work without getting distracted. Practice hustling and taking the right risks. Practice saving your money rather than spending it on useless shit. Practice being in the moment rather than constantly worrying about capturing yourself in the illusion of being in the moment.
Practice winning by practicing discipline, taking responsibility for your life and your thoughts and your actions. When you realize that you hold the key and wield the power in your life and over your future, you then open yourself up to take the reigns of your life and make of it whatever you want.
You are not a loser. That isn’t you. It’s a voice within you that you need to defeat, beat up, and expel. Rise up against this voice. Realize he’s there, trying to corrupt you, bring you down and keep you from living a great life. Draw a line in the sand and win this all-important battle for your life, your happiness, your success, and likely the happiness and success of those who are around you and depend on you.
Try this: Do This 1 Thing Everyday to Be Successful
Be Legendary,
Chad Howse
