Paul Brian
Are you a loser?
Let me help you stop being a loser.
Don’t be offended, it won’t help.
What will help? To stop being a loser!
Let’s go!
1) Starting working out
If you’re wondering how to stop being a loser, here’s a simple and very effective place to start:
I strongly encourage you to start working out physically.
Even if you just start by doing a morning jog or doing 50 situps a night, you’ll be surprised at how big an impact this can make.
Motivational speakers like Tony Robbins often start seminars by getting people to jump up and down a bit.
That’s because physical activity is deeply linked to mental and emotional empowerment.
Get out of your head and your feelings and get into your body.
Express yourself through your body whether it’s dance, running, lifting weights or doing breathwork.
There’s no formula that you have to follow.
Just do your best to be physically active in some way, even if it’s a morning swim in the lake near your home or situps on the floor.
Stop thinking and start moving. Losers sit. Winners move.
2) Dedicate yourself to your work
Your accomplishments in life do matter.
Dedicating yourself to your work and job is a piece of advice that might not land well with everyone.
But it’s true.
Even if you work at a fast food restaurant, you have the potential to work hard and win management’s respect.
You also have the ability to build relationships and foster connections that will serve you for the rest of your life.
Don’t judge your work by the labels.
Some of the best opportunities I got in life weren’t from “big names” or prominent places, they were from the changes that happened inside me during jobs I did that were hard and taxing.
When you change, your situation will eventually change.
Even if you hate the shit out of your job right now, let it toughen you.
If it’s the worst thing you’ve ever done, let it be the motivation that causes you to take a chance and try something new even if it’s one in a million.
Do something new! Work hard! Stop being a victim of a terrible life.
3) Stop being passive
Losers all do one thing: they wait around for things to change.
The result is that no matter how much things change, things never change.
That’s because a lump of manure sitting in a field remains a lump of manure even if the field fills with wildflowers.
Stop being passive.
Life might have kicked you in the face and given you a very unfair hand.
But people who’ve been born without hands and legs have gone on to do things that have inspired millions.
So stop making excuses and start doing anything you can to improve your life and the lives of others.
It’s really that simple.
As the great YouTuber FarFromAverage says, he only stopped being a loser once he realized that his behavior around women and in general had been missing a huge key ingredient in life.
As he said, what “broke him out of his shell” was that he stopped holding back on what he wanted to say.
He stopped censoring himself and holding back on how he felt and what he was experiencing.
He stopped caring what other people thought of him or whether they liked him or not.
He simply started talking to people with no expectation of a response and no interest in whether they approved of him or not.
This was a huge breakthrough and led to him having romantic, career and life success.
4) Ditch victimhood
The cheap wine of tragedy can give you a pretty good buzz. I’ve drank it a time or two myself.
But let me tell you about that hangover…
It can last for weeks or even months. Hell, I still have bad memories of it now and it hasn’t completely faded.
Sometimes I could swear to God I’m the biggest victim on the planet.
Then I turn on the nightly news and I shut the hell up.
That’s because I’m no longer a loser.
Getting drunk on the cheap wine of tragedy is something we all can do.
For years I’ve suffered from a serious panic disorder that the vast majority of people can’t understand at all, because they haven’t experienced it.
I come from a broken family and a difficult childhood.
I haven’t had all the relationships and validation that so many others have had.
But I also have a roof over my head and food in my belly, good friends who care about me and a heart and mind that still function.
That’s why whenever I find myself getting ready to throw a pity party I take all the decorations and stuff them as far down in the trash as they can go.
Because nobody wins when you get drunk on the cheap wine of tragedy.
5) Start eating healthier
You are what you eat, and for many of us that’s not a good thing!
I’m not a stickler for dieting and healthy foods, but the older that I get the more I realize how important it is.
Losers tend to eat junk food and whatever happens to be available.
This isn’t just an unhealthy decision, it also shows a lack of respect for yourself.
Eating whatever and not giving a damn is a reckless attitude that tends to radiate out to every other area of your life.
Start caring what you eat and paying attention.
Eat smaller portions more often, combine it with an active lifestyle and look after yourself.
As you upgrade your food, you upgrade yourself.
Give it a try.
6) Reduce the drinking and drugs
Whether you’re into drinking, drugs or reckless sex, extreme pornography or fighting with strangers online, try to curb it down.
Bad habits and being lazy are enough to make anyone into a loser.
The issue is that many folks try to stop all their bad habits at once, creating a black or white scenario where the forbidden fruit keeps looming just in the distance.
Forget about stopping cold turkey. Just cut down your use of harmful substances or actions and try focusing on other things.
Whenever you slip up back into them, don’t focus on it or beat yourself up.
Get right back off the ground and once again refocus your energy on other things.
You’re not trying to bat a perfect record here, you’re just trying to improve and reorient your energy toward other things which won’t make you a loser.
7) Get your impulsive behavior under control
Impulsive behavior in general creates a weakened and less respected person.
This can come down to something as simple as controlling your impulse to buy everything you see while out shopping…
Or to click on every Tinder profile you see while scrolling.
Holding yourself back in any way can feel like an unnecessary restriction, but your own self-respect will increase as you do so.
So will the nice feeling that you’re not letting yourself down and are living up to some higher standards.
The key here is to start small.
Don’t immediately try to turn your apartment or home into a pristine space of tranquility if you have a problem with chucking your clothes around and being messy.
Start by just folding your clothes and cleaning up loose garbage around your bedroom and living room.
Slowly you will build on improvement week by week until your living space becomes cleaner than you ever though possible.
8) Travel, explore, take a chance
If there’s one thing losers all have in common it’s that they always want to stay in their comfort zone.
However the place where we grow, learn and get stronger is our discomfort zone.
Not everyone has the option to travel and explore the world: it can be expensive and many have jobs that keep them rooted in one place apart from short vacations.
But there’s still always the chance to explore your local area or even just try out a new park.
Taking a chance also doesn’t have to be a wild and dramatic thing.
It can be something like asking out the cute girl at your local coffee shop…
Taking a course you always found fascinating at your community college…
Or deciding to learn a new sport, instrument or language.
It doesn’t have to be a huge thing, it can just be something proactive which you dedicate your time and energy to.
All of these efforts and endeavors take you out of loser territory and into the winner’s circle.
9) Let go of the baggage
Losers aren’t necessarily “weak” or broken in some way. Often, they just hang on to the wrong things.
As Lachlan Brown writes, many of us become miserable because we get too attached to outcomes and material things.
When you start hoping that life will supply you with your heart’s desires, it’s easy to get let down in a thousand ways.
If you can’t learn to let go of the things out of your control then you’ll be fighting an uphill battle your entire time on this rock.
There’s nothing wrong with caring about what happens in life, wanting to be close to your loved ones and seeking material success.
The problem comes in the form of strong emotional attachment where you become miserable and furious when life doesn’t go how you want.
When we find a way to let go and accept the present moment as it is, we become much more empowered.
Learning to fully accept what is can be the dividing line between a loser and a winner.
It doesn’t mean you say that substandard things are fine, it simply means you acknowledge the current reality and its challenges instead of running and hiding from it.
10) Learn new skills
There’s one thing about losers that everyone notices: nothing.
They tend to fall between the cracks and be unnoticeable because they tend to not do very much.
If you hold down a job that’s honestly a great start, but when you have no other interests or ambitions it can quickly become a sand trap that sinks your life.
New skills aren’t about making an impression on others; they’re about making an impression on yourself.
Many self-help gurus talk about positive mantras and self-talk, but the truth is that changing your “mood” or “attitude” is of limited value.
What you want to do is change what you actually do on a daily basis.
Different habits, actions and skills will start to turn you into a different person…
A less passive person!
Whether it’s a musical instrument, a new sport, a language, a history book or a craft, learning new skills will make you feel good.
It will increase your confidence to start tackling all the areas of your life where you feel a possibility of improvement.
11) Stop letting the judgments of others run your life
One of the saddest things to see is people who let others define them.
There are many potential winners who became losers because they let the negativity and noise of other people’s words drown out their own dreams.
There’s only one of you and there are billions of others.
If you let everyone else have the say so on your value and character, you’re going to run yourself into the ground trying to live up to everyone else’s expectations and judgments.
It’s ultimately a numbers issue.
Do you want to play a lifelong game of pin the tail on the donkey and waste your time, or do you want to drill down and focus on what’s in your control?
Namely, you.
If you’re someone who also wants to help others, it’s the only way you’re going to truly be able to do that as well.
You need a strong foundation before you can reach out and help those around you.
12) Know your own value
One of the biggest problems that losers have is that they don’t know their own value.
If a diamond went around thinking it was a lump of coal then eventually people might start to believe it.
When you don’t know your own value, you start to doubt everything you do and respond to the world from the bottom of the pile.
Self-confidence isn’t just about feeling nice or thinking you’re great.
It’s about being sure of your abilities and knowing you’re great.
There’s a whole world of difference.
One is a fleeting feeling of wellbeing; the other is an anchor which keeps you stable and empowered through the storms of life.
“If there’s only one thing you do to improve yourself, make it this.
“When people genuinely value and respect themselves, it’s obvious to everyone around them.”
13) Get competent
This is related to the last point but it’s important to emphasize.
Being confident and winning at life isn’t about good luck. It’s about being competent.
Confidence without competence looks foolish and ridiculous.
If I went around talking about how I’m the best chef in the world and then produced an overcooked plate of Mr. Noodles everyone would laugh at me.
That’s how it is with overconfidence and bragging.
Only losers are overconfident and go on and on about how great they are.
If you want to stop being a loser, watch your ratio of words vs. actions.
Are you talking a lot but not backing it up with action? Loser.
Are you feeling great about yourself but having no real actions you’re doing that let you express your interests and talents? Loser.
Many people focus on a change in attitude or behavior to stop being a loser.
That’s not nearly as important as actually improving who you are and what you can do.
Learn to become an overall competent person. You’d be surprised how incredibly attractive this is to potential mates and how much it raises your own self-confidence.
14) Get off your damn computer
This advice is for myself as much as anyone else.
People spend way too much time online and become passive losers.
For me it’s my job, so I have an excuse for still being a bit of a loser (less than 37% loser content, guaranteed!)
But unless you work online too, you have no excuse!
Get off your computer, dude.
These days so much of our lives are online and also in those handy little devices we carry around with us or hook up to our headsets.
So let me just say at the same time:
Keeping your phone close at hand or working on your phone is fine, but try to manage your addiction.
Even if you need to be around it, at least look up when you cross the street.
If nothing else, that could save your life: and it’s very hard to succeed at life when you’re not alive.
15) Accept the bad times
One of the most important ways for how to stop being a loser is to stop taking bad times personally.
You can be in deep depression, angry or out of work without taking it personally.
It’s perfectly fair to consider your current life to be not nearly good enough and do your best to change it.
But don’t bother with telling yourself the victim story in which you are the one person in the whole world who got dealt a bad hand.
It’s just not true.
And even though there undoubtedly are challenges you’ve had to deal with that others have not, the same goes on the other hand as well.
16) Throw the loser mindset in the trash
As much as I’ve focused on actions here, I don’t want to rule out the importance of mindset as well.
What you think does matter, and our thoughts do greatly influence what we perceive and prioritize.
A loser mindset is a real thing.
It expects the world to change, but refuses to put in the work to change itself.
A loser mindset sees problems instead of opportunities.
A loser mindset sees victimhood instead of tests of strength and chances to work for a better future.
A winner’s mindset sees future potential even in a shitty situation.
A winner’s mindset compares the person of yesterday to the person of today and doesn’t focus on the slings and arrows of life.
We are the champions, my friend…
Being a loser isn’t about your “score” in life.
It’s not about the zeroes in your bank account.
And it’s not about what others think of you.
Being a winner is about what’s inside.
It’s about how many times you get up after life punches you down.
It’s about knowing your worth regardless of what others say.
And it’s about contributing to the world around you from a place of stability, generosity and strength.
Welcome to the champion’s club!
