Success is a word that’s thrown around a lot. In some ways, it has lost its meaning. We all want it and the definition of success is different for everyone.

Some of us want a great family life. Some of us want a successful business. Some of us want lots of money so we can do cool stuff.

You may think that naming and shaming what your loser ass friends do is harsh. Unfortunately, life and success are harsh so unless you get serious and call a spade a spade, you’ll never breakthrough to become the person you want to be.

Unless the lesson is harsh, you’ll never get the wakeup call that you so desperately need. Enough is enough. It’s time to stop fantasizing and implement the tools needed to get what you want.

Whatever your definition of success is, you’ll need this list of things:

1. An “I want to help without expecting anything in return” mentality.

The understanding of mutual value is the foundation for all of business and life. The moment you treat every person you encounter as a transaction and you want to always come out on top, is the moment that you’ll continue to fall short of your goals and dreams.

Coming from a place of giving above all else is how you win at life. Expectations are ugly and we can all see them from a mile away. Expectations are filled with self-interest, self-promotion, huge egos and a general lack of wisdom and knowledge.

Your loser friends are always calculating what they can get out of every situation. You must think the opposite and concentrate on what you can give.

2. An investment in your mindset.

That brain of yours is controlling everything you do and it will be fighting against your best interests unless you program it to operate it in an effective manner. It takes time and often money to teach your brain how to think.

Your mindset is built to be negative unless you invest in some strategies and learning to add some positivity. A single pump up session is not enough; you need long lasting and proven strategies to rewire your brain to focus on success instead of just survival.

“Short-term motivation and inspiration will only help you briefly. Those positivity Instagram picture quotes will last an even shorter period of time”

Your loser ass friends have not refined their mindset but you must if you want to be successful.

3. Join a social media pod.

Okay, many of you have never heard of this. Right now, on every social media platform, there are what is referred to as ‘engagement pods.’

These are groups of people who share ideas and social media content with each other. Every time someone in the pod does something, the rest of the members show support and share their opinions.

It’s a new age version of a mastermind with content at the heart of the group – rather than one giant leader who is looked upon as the guru and giver of life itself…Haha.

Find people who share the same passion as you. Reach out to them and ask them to join a pod with you. Create guidelines around how your pod works and the mutual value that you all bring.

Then, use WhatsApp, Messenger, WeChat, Telegram or whatever your favorite group chat app is to bring people together in your pod.

Your loser ass friends are not creating content, sharing winning ideas or doing much else other than indulging in BBQs and whinge sessions about their day job. You can escape that toxic environment through starting or joining one of these pods.

4. A healthy cocktail of discomfort mixed with fear – shaken not stirred.

Everything worth doing is uncomfortable. Period.

If all you do is bask in the comfort of those activities and people that you know well, you’ll never go to new heights. Success is partly about exploring the unknown. It’s by doing the stuff that you never thought was possible that you discover yourself and ultimately achieve some incredible goals.

These goals wouldn’t feel like success unless they were uncomfortable. Doing easy stuff doesn’t feel like success and you won’t be acknowledged for it.

Fear on the other hand often looks like something that should be avoided. When you suck at public speaking, you tell yourself lies such as “I’m an introvert” or “I’m just not a natural at giving speeches.”

These are excuses that society gives you for free as a false antidote to fears that come up in your life. We all have fears and avoiding them is not the answer.

It’s uncomfortable to battle a major fear but when you do, you show courage, strength, resilience and bravery. These are the traits of someone who’s going to be successful.

Your loser ass friends are maximizing couch time, working “cushy jobs,” cheating the system to get freebies, betting or gambling and being lazy. You need to get used to the uncomfortable and to mixing it up with the very things that make you fearful.

5. An understanding of what you want.

This is so crazy: Most people don’t know what they want. They’ve never spent the time to understand what sets them on fire and makes them passionate.

It’s surprisingly harder than the self-help preachers proclaim. Knowing what you want is difficult in reality. You have to spend time experimenting and reflecting to discover what you want.

No matter how old you are, if you don’t know what you want by now, don’t be angry. Choose action over anger. Go out there and try lots of stuff. Give a speech, travel the world, start a blog, write one chapter of a book, make some art, build a shed, learn salsa dancing.

Bottomline is this: just try something new until you find something that brings a smile to your face or feels effortless. Find something you’re happy doing for free and don’t need #MotivationMonday for.

Your loser ass friends don’t know what they want. They lack clarity which gives them zero purpose for getting out of bed. You need to experiment like a five-year-old and enjoy the process.

6. You must sacrifice.

That could be staying home on Saturday to work rather than going to the burger bar. It could be missing a social event on Friday and a few drinks. It could even be time blocking out a few hours that you agree on with your significant other so you can work.

“Success will never happen without sacrifice. Sacrifice is the currency of success. Stop thinking you can do more and start thinking ‘What am I going to give up so I can be successful’ “

Oprah was wrong: you can’t have everything you want. There aren’t enough hours in the day. Your life is way too short without a sacrifice strategy in place.

Your loser ass friends think they can do it all and be it all. You must take the opposite approach and begin the process of giving up on a few things. Your to-do list needs to get shorter, not longer.

7. A freaking weapon of a mentor.

Not someone who’s never achieved anything big or anything that matters to you. I’m talking about the real dude who lives and breathes success every day for breakfast. He or she wakes up in the morning and the first thing they do is eat success for breakfast.

They’ve done cool sh*t that you could only dream of and they know how to execute above all else. This weapon of a mentor will be hard to attract in your life. You’ll need something valuable to give them in return for their wisdom and Yoda-like ability.

If all else fails, you’ll need to pull out your wallet and pay someone if you really can’t figure it out.

Your loser ass friends are being mentored by the bankrupt car mechanic down the road on how to be successful. You need to be mentored by a tycoon who has humility and can show you the human traits that will be your secret formula to win at life.

8. A life-changing event.

This event will be focused on personal development. It will be a long series of days where you’ll be immersed and away from your phone and family. There will be moments of inspiration, realizations of heartbreak, meetings with new people and lots of breaking your comfort zone.

There’s likely to be music to fuel your emotions, bright lights to change your state and others going through the exact same process as you.

These events occur all around the world. They take many forms. The one that changed my life was with Tony Robbins but there are many to choose from. Either way, you need a single moment to break your current pattern of thinking.

You need some time and space to let go of your excess baggage so that you can grow. Immersion is the only way to fast-track this process.

Your loser ass friends don’t believe in changing their life through immersive events. They think it’s all spiritual and woo-woo, and that they can just spend short periods of time thinking about what worked and what didn’t work. Many of your loser friends don’t even do that.

You must develop yourself and fast-track the process if you want to be successful. Immersion is the best way.

9. Resources other than money.

Non-financial resources are going to be required in abundance. This will be in the form of time and skills.

“Time will be harvested and stored by saying NO lots, clearing events from your diary that have no meaning, and doing less in the pursuit of pleasure and more in the pursuit of success”

Skills will take the form of a few abilities that you’ll develop further which are in a narrow area. You’ll be able to go deep in this field and you’ll be a practitioner. Skills will be one of the ways you deliver passion and you’ll focus on a few rather than many broad, unrelated abilities.

Your loser ass friends think the only resource they need is money. You must understand that resources go way beyond what money could ever do. Money is a by-product of value.

10. A chemical rebalance.

“Okay WTF are you talking about Tim, you weirdo?”

What I’m saying here is simple: Your body is nothing but a giant lump of mass full of chemicals. If those chemicals are mostly toxic and not balanced, you’re going to be pissed off, low on energy, upset, emotional and borderline psycho.

Have I convinced you yet?

You can’t be successful unless you get your body in order. That could be a health check-up with your doctor, a visit to the naturopath, some herbal supplements to help you detox or a new juicing routine to pump some vitamins into that body of yours that you’ve neglected.

Your loser ass friends are eating at McDonald’s. You need to be eating for success and pumping good chemicals into that beautiful body you were given.

11. Decision-making speed.

No matter what you do, decisions are going to be involved. You will need to be able to cut off from the many options and choose a path. How quickly you make decisions will determine the speed at which you can progress. Decisions take up so much of your energy and headspace.

Decisions are a drain on your brain which impacts negatively on your ability to produce results. Knowing what you want will help you make decisions faster too. Half the reason you take so long to make a decision is that you don’t know what you really want.

You’re making decisions without a blueprint to make the process quicker. Overthinking is the death of all good ideas and opportunities.

Your loser friends consistently fall into the trap of indecision. You must get clear on what you want, balance the uncertainty and fear, and charge towards making a decision. When you’re overcome with indecision, your default answer should be no.

12. A love for someone other than yourself.

Only focusing on yourself and your own selfish desires is not success. It’s a fast road to failure that lacks the understanding of the reason we’re all here in the first place.

The moment you realize that true success (not the Instagram photo-worthy type) is about loving something other than yourself, you’ll have crossed into a different headspace.

That love might be for your customer, your partner, your kids or another human being who needs your help.

Your loser ass friends think that love is stupid or they don’t believe in it. They think the word “love” is for pussies who are soft.

For you to be successful, you must understand love. You must know that love is what created you and love is what will live on long after you’re gone.

13. Start aiming for the long game.

Short-term results won’t make you successful. We can all find a short-term opportunity, arbitrage, hack, etc.

The key is to keep finding all of these and understand that nothing stays the same. What made you successful today will not necessarily help you long-term. Success is about clear action with goals attached.

Overnight success is a lie that Hollywood invented. Real success is full of short-term pain, disappointment and hard work. That’s how you get long-term success.

Your loser ass friends are looking for the shortcuts and they have no goals. They think that it’s all about being in the right place at the right time They place bets and focus on luck. You must have a long-term view of where you’re heading and be okay with rapidly changing direction as required.

14. You’ll need to help others.

“You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.” – Zig Ziglar

Pretty straight-forward when you think about it. Help is another word for providing value. No level of success can be achieved without some level of helping someone else get what they want first.

Your loser ass friends don’t help anyone. You must help others to be successful.

15. An infectious love for kindness and human beings.

Now I’m going to give you the right hook to the face that you didn’t expect to hear from an article like this. We’re going to transcend the loser friends label and even the word success itself.

There’s a continuous theme throughout everything you’ve just read and that is a love for human beings, and a love of kindness. This is what it takes to be human.

“Loving the very thing that you are and treating everyone as human rather than dividing us into races, genders, religious groups, political parties, sexual preferences or any form of label is how you be successful at a very high level”

Kindness brings us together and to be successful, we must embrace the gift we’ve been given of being human. We get one life, one chance and one shot to show the best of what it means to be human.

Our identity is human.

Kindness and a love for one another will trump all forms of success and anything else that you ever thought mattered.

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