How to be a loser
by James Somers, February 28, 2009
If you think of losing as “not winning,” then when you try to work out why you’ve lost, or (God forbid) why you’re a loser, you’ll tend to focus on the things you didn’t do and the qualities you don’t have. So it goes with any “negative” concept, one that is defined by what it isn’t (think of how “background” = “everything but the foreground” or how valleys are made by the mountains around them).
I think it’s worthwhile to occasionally invert the picture, to see “being a winner” as “not being a loser.” That way you attend to those habits of mind that are hurting you, instead of the ones that might be helping.
In any case, here are what I take to be the three key features of a loser:
A loser wants to lose. It seems unlikely that anyone would try to fail, until you realize that high expectations are emotionally and mentally expensive. By that I mean that there is a lot more pressure, angst, self-doubt, and in general, reflexive cognitive corrosion (the kind of stuff going on inside a “head case’s” head) when there’s a good chance you’ll win, compared to when you think you’re likely to lose. Which is precisely the reason that mental self-discipline of the Tiger-Obama variety is so valuable.
As an example, competitive cross country races in eighth grade terrified me, whereas in high school I thought of them more like physically-challenging-but-basically-fun diversions. The difference is that I went from being the best on the team in eighth grade to out of contention in ninth, and I found this latter state of affairs a lot more comfortable.
Now the problem with that is that there is nothing more kryptonitic to a person’s Fighting Spirit, and to winning, than comfort. Nobody ever got anything done by being comfortable. If you are not working hard, you are not learning; if you never get past that point when a new project becomes actually difficult, where the marginal returns flatten out, then you will never be a master. Everything worthwhile is going to hurt, and if you avoid pain, you will fail. Etc.
Which is to say that by expecting not to win — likely because it’s easy to think of yourself as basically-out-of-the-running and out-there-just-have-a-good-time; because it’s easier to try to try than to do — you’ve basically condemned yourself to lose.
The best explicit illustration of this phenomenon I’ve seen was in The Hustler (1961), a film where Paul Newman stars as “Fast” Eddie Felson, a troubled pool shark. In the scene I’m referring to, Fast Eddie very nearly defeats the best in the biz — one Minnesota Fats — before going down in a self-destructive spiral. It’s a great moment. Here’s the aftermath (Bert Gordon, who’s been in this business a long time, ends up being a manager of sorts for Eddie):
Bert Gordon: Eddie, is it all right if I get personal?
Fast Eddie: Whaddaya been so far?
Bert Gordon: Eddie, you’re a born loser.
Fast Eddie: What’s that supposed to mean?
Bert Gordon: First time in ten years I ever saw Minnesota Fats hooked… really hooked. But you let him off.
Fast Eddie: I told you I got drunk.
Bert Gordon: Sure you got drunk. You have the best excuse in the world for losing; no trouble losing when you got a good excuse. Winning… that can be heavy on your back, too, like a monkey. You’ll drop that load too when you got an excuse. All you gotta do is learn to feel sorry for yourself. One of the best indoor sports, feeling sorry for yourself. A sport enjoyed by all, especially the born losers.
Fast Eddie: Thanks for the drink.
A loser projects to the probable endgame. One hears (roughly) this line of reasoning all the time: “I want to be a writer, but odds are that I won’t be a world-class writer or even an exceptional one — at best I’ll probably end up spitting out five hundred horribly mundane words a week covering local politics in Minneapolis, for God’s sake — and do I really want to put in all the hours, do I really want to grind — for that? I think I’ll take my chances elsewhere…”
Of course it’s important to be able to nip dead-end prospects in the bud, for otherwise you’d be wasting all kinds of time and energy. But losers do this all the time. Why?
The answer, I think, is because it feels prudent to stand back from people who have effectively committed their lives to hapless mediocrity. Why not wait instead; why not take one’s chances elsewhere?
The idea has a lot of appeal. It’s difficult to commit oneself to something, a career for instance, if all you see is the most likely unexceptional scenario ten years down the road. Why bother? Why not wait until you’re so excited about something, so passionate, that not devoting your life to it would hardly even occur to you?
Well, the fact is that the world turns, and if your internal timepiece doesn’t get wise to that idea, you’ll never be able to catch up to the people whose has.
It reminds me of the nameplate my dad always had on his desk. On one side (facing the visitor) was his name, naturally, but facing him was the phrase, “Have a sense of urgency.” I thought that was a strangely uninspiring thing to have to look at all day. But it turns out to be very good advice: every act of ingenuity has at its core some demanding constraints, and if you don’t have any handy, you might as well cook one up.
A loser rests on his laurels. I once asked a winner — a smart, healthy, happy guy worth more than twenty million dollars — to name his greatest accomplishment, and he said “I haven’t done anything yet.” A bit of rhetorical flare there, but the point is that a loser has the opposite attitude: he is constantly recalling his latest accomplishment, either publicly (usually wrapped in modesty or nonchalance) or to himself.
It’s a common misconception, I think, to assume that losers are unhappy, or that they invariably have a low self-esteem. Quite the contrary: losers keep their egos fat with constant snacks. And they’re all the more satiable as they age.
Thoreau said that most men lead lives of quiet desperation. It seems that that’s true, but with the following proviso: some men do eke out contentment, and they get there by gradually ratcheting down their expectations. Their appetites fade. They compromise, and rationalize, and eventually settle.
That’s the loser’s consolation prize.
Though it’s not his best, I’ll let Robert Pinsky’s “Work Song” respond for me. I just stumbled upon it in the recently purchased “Gulf Music” collection [note: “art” in the second line of the first stanza, and “it has to be hard to be good” in the first of the fifth, should be italicized but I couldn’t figure that out for this comment box]. Hope you enjoy ;) Caroline.
And rends spontaneous joy out of his heart – with art,
Art not “dolts” or “management of men” the difficulty
Craved and admired more than pleasure, more
Than accomplishment, certainly more than Eden.
Heroic fascination of an overwhelming difficulty:
Joan of Arc tortured to death by clergymen
And failure incidental as for Jackie Robinson engaging
At one and the same time two worthy difficulties.
Other athletes succeed and get rich and in attained
Leisure even in Eden or Gomorrah they seek the green
Fields of the idiocy Golf because it is reliably difficult.
Old joke it has to be hard to be good. Manipulable
Light of the Xbox for all its eviscerations or hoops
Like chess a grid of exploits adequately difficult.
Music is difficult poetry is difficult Odysseus most
Interesting of the Greeks fails to get his companions home
But he does engage many an interesting difficulty.
Love also is difficult as in “Adam’s Curse”: at the end
Like the Odyssey’s outset failure failure as it emerges
Like the hollow moon the couple is having Difficulties.
Even the infant sated by the breast turns eagerly
Irritable to its measureless impossible chore like Beowulf
Down to the darkness with his old comrade the monster.
That’s nuts! (Also, I fixed your formatting — you’re allowed to put HTML into comments and if you’d like I can give you a brief tutorial, there’s not much to it.)
I appreciate the offer, but I think any tutorial would be longer than you think, seeing as I’m not even sure what HTML is. Otherwise I’d be totally prepared to take up that hacking thing you recommend.
“Everything worthwhile is going to hurt, and if you avoid pain, you will fail.”
Exactly right. Every night as I go to bed I douse myself with gasoline and strike a match. Works every time. I’ve trained myself now to get a full night’s rest in 500 milliseconds, and I get a huge discount on bandages because I buy so much.
Likewise, no meal is worth eating if it doesn’t leave you vomiting for hours afterward. I’m now down to one meal a month (time constraints and all), and my digestive system is tough and fast as a crockery funnel.
I nominate this for ‘dumbest comment of 2010′, I’m sure there will be many more worthy contenders over the next 10 months — But I think this should definitely be in the running.
This mug sums it up:
http://usmc.pftcalculator.com/products/fitnessmug/index.html
You’ve conveniently avoided a lot of discussion of process and learning. But then I approached your post from the viewpoint of a teacher.
I agree that it sometimes helps to invert the thinking process. Which is why one of my first lessons to nervously eager, aspiring young artists is: “Embracing Your Suckiness” I patiently explain that they will not create a master work with their first effort. Assuming they make one work a month, it is highly likely they will not create a master work within 5 years. And the look on their faces when I reveal that I painted for 10 years before I made a painting I was happy with is always…well, to call it humorous might make me sound a bit cold.
I tell them that they should approach these lessons with the idea that they will suck badly for a while and gradually, if they keep at it, they will suck less. And eventually, they might even get good. And then in a few more years they might make something they consider good.
At first they sit there, shell shocked. Then they chuckle nervously. And by the time I have convinced them that being a “sucky” artist is acceptable, at least at first, they seem to realize the incredible burden of the expectations they had been carrying into the class.
Blunt honesty, dosed with a bit of humor can be a good thing. The people who are determined to learn will beat themselves up a little less fervently and the people who arrived with a preconceived notion that if other people do it well, it can’t be that hard (a piece of cloudy thinking that consistently pops up with art students).
It is okay to be a loser. It is okay to suck. It is okay to acknowledge that you are bad at things. A conscious acknowledgement that you have nowhere to go but up can be an empowering thing.
Karen’s comment reminds me of learning the crow in yoga. It’s a balancing position where you get down on all fours, then balance your knees on your elbows. (Try it — on soft carpet).
The first time you try it, you will fall on your head (unless you have great balance already).
The next 19 times you try it, you’ll fall on your head.
Then the 20th time, you’ll stay up for a split-second before you fall.
Then the 25th time, you’ll stay up for a couple seconds.
Eventually, you’ll stay up for as long as your wrists can support you. Then people will look at you balancing and say, “I couldn’t do that.” You’ll say, “Neither could I, the first 25 times I tried it.”
Jeremy,
Alway nice to know there are other yoga practitioners out there.
Crow was easy for me because I’ve always been a kinesthetic learner. Even then I fell on my face at least twice before I figured out how to make it work.
But the idea still holds: getting good at something means learning to get good at it. The learning process is a process, which in and of itself suggest that it takes time.
Nice essay! I think it’s excellent. May I translate it to spanish and post it in my blog?
A scene from “Scarface” comes to my mind, when the girl of Al Pacino starts yelling “We are a bunch of loosers!” in the restaurant, after realizing that they’ve been doing nothing and snorting since they became rich, they were absolutely unhappy, they were loosers, resting on their laurels.
Glad you liked it! Of course you can translate. Just be sure to send me the link when it’s ready :).
Not sure if I agree with the comment of losers having to boost their own egos…oh and the snacking thing, hilarious. Some I find truthful, but others I find to be quite mean hearted.
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gahh… I don’t like this. I was working on a project, but the essay made me realize its a stupid one, now I don’t want to work on it. Please write another article “How to be a winner”.
[…] To become a master of a skill, you have to go way past the point of diminishing returns: Now the problem with that is that there is nothing more kryptonitic to a person’s Fighting Spirit, and to winning, than comfort. Nobody ever got anything done by being comfortable. If you are not working hard, you are not learning; if you never get past that point when a new project becomes actually difficult, where the marginal returns flatten out, then you will never be a master. Everything worthwhile is going to hurt, and if you avoid pain, you will fail. Etc. […]
[…] By Daniel Miessler on February 15th, 2010: Tagged as Philosophy If you think of losing as “not winning,” then when you try to work out why you’ve lost, or (God forbid) why you’re a loser, you’ll tend to focus on the things you didn’t do and the qualities you don’t have. via jsomers.net […]
how to be a playing game
[…] note: James puts a lot of care into writing his essays. They’re very well written. Some will motivate you, and some will make you chuckle and scratch your head. All of them are fascinating. Click here to […]
Jsomers, thank you for writing this little gem. I have been a loser for a long time now and often wonder why. I had another one of these times today and googled a bit on enjoying being a loser.
You hit the nail on the head. I wonder if I am a naturally born loser. In that case, there’s nothing I can do about it, right? (spoken like a true loser)
I wish there were more smart people like you on the internet to help me figure myself out.
I come from a family of losers. My dad is really good at self-defeating and being a loser. While growing up with him, he has taught me all the little tricks about being a loser. Over the years I have grown quite comfortable with it.
You’re right, winning is hard and stressful. Even being on top of the hill, after the battle is over brings a lot of responsibility. You then have to continue to fight to stay on top and continue being a winner. And then in the end, is it really worth it? You have to work so hard and what is it that you get? A hard life? No thanks. I will just continue being a loser because it’s the best return for the effort. Plus, I am always right about predicting the future. I always lose! It feels good to be right.
Thanks again, buddy. I hope you don’t pity me, it’s a personal choice. I also hope you don’t despise me or look down on me. And that goes for everyone who reads this. You could have been a loser too!
Paul, you dont have a head to hit the nail on! get the head straight first. You said:
“You hit the nail on the head. I wonder if I am a naturally born loser. In that case, there’s nothing I can do about it, right? (spoken like a true loser)”
i think what jsomers is saying is the fact that you are a naturally born loser is precisely why you CAN do something about it. if, on the other hand, you were a naturally born winner, there would be nothing you could do about it.
and by the way, i hate to break it to you, but if losing is your winning, youre already a winner. congratulations!