Monday, February 06, 2006

Being A Winner Instead Of A Loser

Here's the truth: Super Bowl XL was about the Seahawks. It was about their blunders, their bad breaks, their inability to win a game that should have belonged to them but instead will go down as Pittsburgh 21, Seattle 10.

"[The Steelers] played well," Seattle receiver Bobby Engram said. "You have to give them credit. But I don't think we played up to our full potential."

What an awful admission to have to make. On the biggest stage American sports can offer, a moment the city of Seattle had waited 30 years to embrace, they didn't do their best.

If you look at the game itself, that was the story.


I no longer take sides with losers. I don’t know why we are raised to sympathize with losers. It is one thing to be a winner, even if no one else yet recognizes it, and to prove it against all odds. That is siding with a winner. It is another thing, however, to be a loser or to side with a loser. A Loser Mentality can destroy your life.

Thus, if you want a successful life: you don’t buy stock from a company that is a loser. You don’t model your life after a person who is a loser. You don’t live in a town, state or country that is a loser. You don’t hang around a bunch of losers as friends and advisors. You don’t follow a political philosophy that is a loser, such as communism or fascism. And you don’t pick people to teach you or your kids who are losers. Losers only know how to lose, and life is just too short to allow yourself to become a loser, too.

Winners know how to win and they want to win; and they have the determination and vision to succeed. They do things well on purpose, they take the effort to make wise decisions, they take their setbacks and make a plan to overcome them by ingenuity and by force, associate with good people, don’t spend money foolishly, and they like to hang around winners.

I often see this Loser Mentality when people pick a dog as a pet. They pick the most fearful and pitiful puppy from a litter, buy from the worst “breeder” they can find, or adopt the most dysfunctional dog from a shelter. In other words, they bring trouble into their homes and into their lives. I’ve even seen this with dog rescue volunteers and animal rescue shelters, who bring dangerous dogs into their rescue organization, and adopt them out to unsuspecting novice dog lovers. They bring trouble to other people’s lives trying to save every dog. Not every dog can be saved. Some are vicious and should not be sold or adopted as pets.

Start being a winner. I made that choice nearly a decade ago, and it made a big difference in my life.

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