We have gone over this point again and again but we feel that it’s worth repeating one more time: If you want to be successful in life then you need to surround yourself with a good band of competent and reliable people as part of your circle of close friends. By this we don’t mean “friendzzz” in the American context in which people feel comfortable calling a stranger their friend after just 10-minutes of brief positive chit-chat. No. By our standards, someone can only be your friend after they have proven themselves to be reliable. It’s easy for people to sing your praises when things are on the up and up for you, but how many of those same people are still there the moment your life hits a downturn? Probably a very small percentage. Yes, those who remain are worthy of being called friends.
So since there are so many mediocre and untrustworthy people out there, we feel it will be useful for you to learn how to recognize and distinguish the different types of unsavory characters you will want to avoid, so here goes a list of the most common losers you will encounter:
1) “I’m a victim. It’s all someone else’s fault.”: As a general rule of thumb, you should always seek out advice from people who’ve had it much harder than you in their lives. This is especially true if they are ten or more years your senior. Peoples’ lives have changed drastically over the past century and the wisdom you can derive speaking from someone who fought in or lived through World War II is invaluable to say the least. There is, however, a fine line between sharing how tough one’s life is vs. presenting oneself as a victim of unfair circumstances. In most cases you can quickly distinguish between the two because the first type of individual will typically only share relevant details with you when you ask, while the second will unload all of his resentment towards society without you asking. Yeah, this loser totally had it harder than everyone else growing up in the rough and rundown town of Greenwich, Connecticut. And no matter what, he always seems to have a justification for other peoples’ successes. If only he were 6’2” instead of 5’10”, then he would have the most attractive girls in his circle. If only his math teacher didn’t hate him then he’d have gotten into Brown. If only his dad gave him $1MM then he’d have turned that into $50MM by now. When dealing with these people, remember to publicly express sorrow for their “unfortunate predicament”, but once you are home free, block the guy’s number and avoid him like the plague.
2) Immediate Results & Short Attention Span: This loser is constantly seeking for short cuts, quick fixes, and life hacks that don’t exist. He is always the first to fall for those online scams – the day-trading program that guarantees immediate profits, the exercise course that teaches you how to go from overweight to six-pack abs in four weeks, the job posting from the shady website offering $400K base pay with no education requirement, and so on. Rather than putting in the time and effort to improve his life bit by bit through repetition and failure, he looks for instant results and gratification like a drug addict. The sad thing is that this type of loser is so convinced in the reliability of his approach that he will spend the rest of his life looking for shortcuts and falling for get-rich-quick schemes. Then one day twenty to thirty years down the road he will finally come to the realization that he has accomplished nothing with his life and will grow bitter and turn to alcoholism.
3) Your “Friend” That Can’t Keep a Secret: Remember those days in grade school when people made fun of you for being the snitch who told the teachers everything? No problem, you were young at the time and lacked the necessary life experience. But chances are you are probably still surrounded by a bunch of adult-children who are watching your every move like a hawk and waiting to out you the very instant you make a minor error of judgment. Then there’s also the people who you think are your friends because they are enjoyable to be around. The reality, however, is that they secretly resent you because you are more successful than they are, and won’t hesitate to sabotage your life if you share with them the wrong secret.
4) The Guy That Always Wins and Never Loses: You can be sure with 110% certainty that anyone who ever makes this claim is lying and has severe ego issues. As mentioned in our prior post, it neither makes practical sense nor benefits your development to win every single battle. You only need to win the ones that matter, and use the ones that don’t to build and enhance your skillset. Anyone who has not lost before has never challenged themselves and will therefore lack the skillset to succeed in bigger things.
5) The Realist: This dude seems to always be able to provide a precise probability on how each and every scenario will unfold. Somehow he knows that there is a 94.5% chance that the new business idea you want to implement will not succeed. Of course, he conveniently ignores the fact that the payoff if he is wrong is north of $50MM because every single calculated risk that is worth taking has a low probability outcome. He will claim that he’s not pessimistic at all, although somehow he is an expert in every single topic you bring up and never seems to give any positive approval to a single one of your ideas. The thing is, this guy has not achieved any form of meaningful success and has a hard time disguising his hatred for every single famous person who made it. According to him, Jack Ma did not come from an ordinary family and Alibaba only became successful because his family had strong connections within the Chinese government. He has no explanation, however, for why Jack would apply to work a cashier job at KFC back in his twenties if he came from such a “well-connected” background.
6) “I don’t have time.”: On the surface, this comes across as the most legitimate excuse of them all. Who can realistically argue against someone who claims to not have time without actually observing them 24/7. The other problem is this also happens to be the excuse that most people can agree with because they also can’t seem to drop any pounds or find a high-paying job because they are so busy doing important things like going out on weekends, watching TV, etc. Yes, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, the vast majority of people are losers who fall into this category.
7) “Everyone is stupid”: There is actually a lot of truth to this statement. The only problem is that it is also an incredibly stupid idea for anyone to voice this out publicly. It takes a combination of both a high IQ and EQ to be truly intelligent; there are plenty of guys with oversized logical brains who severely lack the social intelligence necessary to succeed. Most of these guys don’t get very far in life because they end up alienating every single person along the way who could have been a potential ally. Nonetheless, some of these guys do manage to make it into high-paying elite technical positions where good social skills are not emphasized, but due to their risk averse nature they tend to be horrible at investing and struggle to make any headway with women. Unsurprisingly, like every other type of loser on this list they are also extremely unhappy with the direction their life is heading, but won’t make any meaningful efforts to change it.
8) The Good Samaritan: Every time you talk to this guy he is always talking about how good of a person he is and all the great deeds he did this past week. A lot of these guys also happen to be the super religious type. Just remember, the more someone claims to be a “good person”, the more you can reliably conclude that he is far from one. He will be the first to lie, steal, cheat and backstab whenever the opportunity presents itself. He will also deny such actions to your face, even if you personally witnessed it. As soon as you sniff out one of these Good Samaritans, run like hell.
9) The Aspiring Actor/Actress: This type of person will always blow things out of proportion and make even the smallest problem appear extremely complicated and stressful. Sound familiar? Yes, chances are one of your close family members or relatives falls under this category of loser. If he/she is extremely present in your life, find a way to cut them off. Do not bother attempting to change them as it will be futile: out of all the different types of loser behavior, this is without a doubt the most difficult kind to change. The reason is because a substantial proportion of this behavior has a biological basis. A particular chunk of people are just wired for more intense emotions and are naturally more inclined to being impacted by perceived difficult circumstances than others. NEVER date anyone who fits this bill: She will drain away all of your energy and make your life extremely miserable. If you are reporting to someone at work who has these tendencies, find a way to transfer to a different team. If that fails, look for a new job and then quit. Whatever benefits you derive from the job is not worth the unnecessary mental fatigue you will accumulate.
10) Have You Looked In The Mirror Today? What did you see? YOU. Yes, that’s right. The final type of loser is YOU, because no matter how much success you have enjoyed in your life there is always room for further improvement. Just ran eight miles in one hour? Good, but why not hit the treadmill again tomorrow and work towards a new goal of hitting nine miles? Just got a 20% raise at work? Good, why not revisit your spending habits and see if you can cut back further, then spend all your savings on building a new income stream greater than your paycheck from work? No matter how successful you are, there are always things you can do to further improve yourself. The moment you stop improving is the moment you will begin to feel unhappy and resentful.
Undoubtedly, a few of you probably have the following stupid question in your head right now: What if I don’t know what my weaknesses are? In that case, stop everything you are doing, grab a piece of paper and write down the top five things you want the most in your life at this very moment. Next to each want, write down why you haven’t been able to secure it yet. There you go, you just found out your weaknesses. Now get to work on transforming these weaknesses into your strengths.
Excluding No. 10, we sincerely hope you didn’t make this list. Did you?