RULE 34

Winners have a philosophy of life. So do losers.

Denis Waitley notes: “The winners in life think constantly in terms of I can, I will, and I am. Losers, on the other hand, concentrate their waking thoughts on what they should have or would have done, or what they can’t do.”132

The difference in the philosophies is not hard to spot, as in the following pairs of quotes:

Green Bay Packer legend Vince Lombardi: “Life’s battles don’t always go to the stronger or faster man. But sooner or later the man who wins is the man who thinks he can.”133

Anticompetition education guru Alfie Kohn: “Competition teaches children to envy winners, dismiss losers and mistrust everyone.”134

“A man can be as great as he wants to be,” said Lombardi. “If you believe in yourself and have the courage, the determination, the dedication, the competitive drive and if you are willing to sacrifice the little things in life and pay the price for the things that are worthwhile, it can be done.”135

“I learned my first game at a birthday party,” says Kohn. “The game was musical chairs. You remember it, X players scramble for X-minus one chairs until the music stops. In every round a child is eliminated until at the end, only one child is left triumphantly seated while everyone else is left standing on the sidelines, excluded from play, unhappy … losers.”136

Lombardi won three NFL titles.

Kohn was traumatized by … musical chairs.

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Losers usually hate competition because they hate to lose. They avoid being tested because they are more concerned about feeling bad than about building a skill or achieving a goal. Losers make excuses, blame others, confuse their intentions with performance—they are always meaning to do something, but never actually do it. They easily become discouraged, often magnifying the problems and obstacles they face, so they develop the habit of quitting.

Of course, nobody wants to be a loser, so they rationalize—and along the way embrace the philosophy of losing, a doctrine that comes complete with its own gurus, dogmas, traditions, and even political parties. Losers embrace the convenient and self-validating idea that their lack of success is somebody else’s fault—society’s or The Man’s or the System’s, or else they blame other popular targets of Slacker Nation. After all, what else could explain the world’s failure to recognize the center-of-the universe specialness represented by all those gold stars and trophies?

Often losers develop a finely honed sense of their place and fight hard against letting others try to climb out of it. They find a way to smugly dismiss the values that contribute to winning: Every burnout can tell you how uncool it is for other kids to study hard, practice hard, or work hard. In the central city, academic achievement is sometimes derided as “acting white”; success becomes an act of racial betrayal. (Does that mean that dysfunction and failure are expressions of racial solidarity?) Rednecks are just as adamant in turning on anyone who dares to think he is better than guys in dirty T-shirts hanging around the trailer park. You can always spot the losers: Instead of admiring the success of others, they’re likely to think it’s the result of favoritism, luck, or some other sort of unfair advantage. They are as unwilling to admit that somebody else deserves a promotion as they are to admit that they don’t.

Losers also convince themselves that they don’t really want to be winners. “I don’t really want to be a great artist,” a coworker once told me. “I just want to be an average artist.” (You can substitute engineer, accountant, actor, lawyer, or baseball player.)

In other words, they settle. They settle for “good enough”—the types who watch the clock until the second hand reaches five, who gravitate to jobs where they don’t have to accomplish anything, overcome challenges, or meet difficult goals, but instead put in their eight hours, keep the machine running, and wait to collect their pensions. (This, by the way, exactly describes most public-education bureaucrats.)

A particular sort of loser confuses short-term pleasure with long-term satisfication. He has high self-esteem but low self-control. Consider Olympic loser Bode Miller.

“I just want to go out and rock, and, man, I rocked here,” Miller told the Associated Press after the 2006 Torino Olympics. “I’m comfortable with what I accomplished. I came in here to race as hard as I could. I got to party and socialize at the Olympic level.”137

His record on the slopes?

Combined: Disqualified

Super-G: Did Not Finish

Giant Slalom: Sixth

Slalom: Did Not Finish

Downhill: Fifth

“At least I don’t have to go down to Torino for the medal ceremony,” he said after being disqualified in the combined.138

But Bode thought he rocked. And he got to party, at great length and, if the reports are to be believed, far into the night when other competitors were resting up for the competition. Undeniably, he is a gifted athlete who may have a lot of success later in life. But, dude, the guy left the Olympics as a loser—not because he lacked the skills or ability, but because he had the attitude of a loser. Instead of recognizing the opportunity and seizing the moment, Bode hit the bars. That shot glass should look good over the mantelpiece twenty years from now.

*   *   *

In contrast, winners are not afraid to be tested and don’t shy away from competition. What they bring that losers don’t is focus, preparation, and perseverance. Even among people who actually have some sort of ambition, not everyone is prepared to pay the price in terms of effort, sacrifice, and sweat. Winners are; they know how to shut off the white noise of distraction and negativity and to ignore the roommate who tells them to skip practice because a friend of a friend knows some hot twins who’ll be partying at the bars tonight.

Losers buy lottery tickets because they think success is a matter of luck. Winners know that it never hurts to be lucky, but they also know that their success is up to them, and they are willing to take responsibility for it.

My experience is that winners usually are trusted by the people with whom they work, and often liked as well because they can be relied upon in a crisis. Winners attract the support and loyalty of people who want to be close to success and the values it represents. Losers tend to attract fellow whiners.

While winners will often take responsibility for cleaning up other people’s messes, you can usually spot the losers in any class, team, or organization: they are the complainers, the experts in spotting the flaws in other people’s plans, and they can always be counted on to point out all of the things that could ever possibly go wrong. They draw their inspiration from the editorial writers who come down from the hills after the battle to shoot the wounded.

Winners, on the other hand, draw their inspiration from Teddy Roosevelt.

It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly … who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.139

… and who probably end up with jobs as guidance counselors in your high school.