Stop Being a Loser

From the introduction: Talk about false advertising – most of the books in the self-help section should be labeled, “false hope.” They have littered the bookshelves and the conversation for years, helping few but the authors and publishers that are selling the idea that all you have to do is change your attitude, mutter a few incantations and you will be miraculously transformed from a loser into a winner. It doesn’t work like that and you know it. You also know that most people are losers – meaning they do not have what they really want, allow themselves to be told what to think and what to accept, and generally, are no better off than peasants in some murky History Channel reenactment. But, hey, today’s peasants have cable, and iPhones and so on, so their penury doesn’t feel as awful. Nonsense to all of it. Making a good life is far more difficult than any 30-second commercial can ever portray and there are no magic beans in the world, no shortcuts to social mobility. And the facts are in – it has become more difficult than ever to lift yourself out of poverty and maintain a true middle class existence. The premise of this title is that most people need to stop engaging in dozens of self-defeating behaviors – to literally stop being a loser – before they can even show up at the starting line to compete for the win. In other words, if you really want to start being a winner you have to stop being a loser.