By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Are you a loser? Do you feel like one?

Here are 13 ways to avoid success and guarantee you will be a loser.

1. Do not try.

You won’t accomplish anything if you never try. Failures are good at doing nothing. If you try enough things some of them have to work. Failures count their losses and then do nothing to avoid more errors. Winners keep improving their game.

2. Tell yourself it is impossible.

Great accomplishments look impossible until someone does them first. Dismissing things as impossible may seem like it will protect you from doing foolish, time-wasting things. What it does protect you from is successes. Not trying wastes your life.

3. Say repeatedly “Nothing good ever happens for me.”

Tell yourself that you have bad luck, that nothing good can ever happen for you and you create that bad luck. The most troublesome jinx is the one you put on yourself. What you tell yourself often enough comes true. Your brain is preprogrammed to deliver the things you keep telling it to look for. Tell your brain you want a good life and it will help you create one.

Predicting bad outcomes become self-fulfilling predictions.

4. Think you can’t ask for help.

Do not ever ask for help. Try to do everything yourself and then when it fails to revert back to making dire predictions of how nothing good happens to you and there is no use in trying. Help comes in lots of shapes and sizes. If you want help, seek out a good teacher or mentor, read self-help books. Find someone who has been there to tell you what lies ahead in life. I counselor or therapist can help you understand the normal life cycle experiences you can expect to have happen.

5. Say I’ll never be as good as —

Compare yourself to the best and then tell yourself there is no possibility of you beating that record. Compare the every-day-you to the person all dressed up in their best clothes. Making comparisons is not helpful. You cannot and should not be someone else. Be the best possible you or you will end up the worst possible you.

Even the greats had competition. You will never know how far you can go until you try.

6. Insist you shouldn’t have to do that.

Great things are not done by those whose first priority is to avoid work. Seek out opportunities to expand your area of competency. People do not accomplish great things by doing only what they “have to do.” You become better at things by doing all you possibly can do.

People do not offer others opportunities because they do the minimum to get by. The person who does more than the minimum is a valued employee and gets picked for many a team.

7. Don’t follow directions if you want to fail.

A sure way to fail at anything is to not read the directions. Many a school failure is the result of not doing what the assignment was. Check the job specs carefully and do what the job was, not what you thought you should do until you found out otherwise.

If you are not willing to put in the time to read, listen to, and follow directions you are telling others you do not value this activity.

8. Leaving out steps prevents success.

A common method of creating failure is to do the minimum to get by. Leave out steps, do only the things that are blatantly obvious, and neglect all the preparation and the in-between steps. Losers look for shortcuts to avoid work. Winners look to master a task and then they can find more efficient ways to do it.

Leaving out needed steps can result in having to do the whole thing over again.

9. Show up unprepared.

Losers show up without the right tools and equipment. Professionals use the skills they have been preparing for a lifetime. Fail to perfect your tools and you will always be unprepared and at high risk of creating failure.

A little bit of preparation can set the stage for a positive experience. Not being prepared leaves you to do shoddy work.

10. Insist you are always right.

Ever see that sign? Rule # 1, I am right. Rule #2 If I am not right go back to rule 1. Insisting you are right does not make you the winner. Be open to evaluating everything you do and finding ways to improve your game.

The successful in life are not always right. They are able to recognize where they have room for improvement and they learn from their mistakes.

12. Disregard others ideas.

Losers say that if it is not their idea, they want nothing to do with it. Winners know that the more ideas they have the more they can accomplish. Encourage others to contribute and see how the team can win.

Better to be a member of a winning team than a losing solo player.

13. Complain about everything to avoid accomplishing anything.

Losers chronically complain about everything. They make everyone and everything wrong. This effort to deflect attention away from their errors and put the blame on others guarantees they are never the winning team. If their team was to win they would still look for ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Do you live your life as one who wants to be a winner or are you doing all the things losers do?

More on Success and Self-improvement  

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

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