Winners Versus Losers

By David Levering Lewis

Winners Versus Losers serves as a personal road map to help you re-discover your dreams or create the reality that you have been dreaming of for years. By reading this book, David Lewis hopes that you will view this as a treasure map of sorts leading to the vision you have intended for your life. Reaching your destination will be determined by your personal will, strengths and commitment. You may not even know what your dream in life is or you may have left it somewhere along the path viewing it as a foolish idea that would never come to pass, but if you have dreams, then why not have the desire and goal to achieve them. Your future is up to you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Levering Lewis
• Release date: Sep 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311255082

David Levering Lewis

Dr David Lewis read for a doctorate at the Department of Experimental Psychology, at the University of Sussex. After qualifying as a clinical psychologist and psychopathologist, that is someone who studies mental illness, he founded a registered UK charity to help people with stress and anxiety problems. More recently he set up a not-for-profit website, from which he provides free guidance and answer questions sent in by visitors. Over the past years, he has published more than 30 books on psychological topics, most of which can be purchased from Amazon or Amazon resellers. He has also appeared in numerous television and radio programmes on psychological and medical topics, including Secret Eaters and Embarrassing Bodies (Channel 4). He lives near Brighton on the south coast of England and is chairman of Mindlab International, an independent research laboratory based at the University of Sussex.

Book preview

Introduction

Hello, I’m David Lewis and I am so excited that you have decided to join me on this journey. I am going to be your guide as we travel through the land seeking hidden knowledge that will illuminate your path and ultimately help you find the treasures you are looking for. Together we are going to unlock one of the most challenging questions of the human experience: What is it that separates Winners from Losers? What causes some people to experience great success, while others languish in mediocrity or outright failure?

The book you are holding in your hands is a roadmap. It is a personal roadmap that was written just for you. The destination it leads to is up to you and will be different for each person who follows it. In reality, this is a treasure map leading to the dream you have for your life. You may not even know what your dream in life is, or you may have left it somewhere along the path thinking that it was just a foolish idea and never would to come to pass, but don’t let that worry you. As we follow along on your journey, you will rediscover your dream or create a new one that is even better than what you had imagined before.

Like all roadmaps, there are signs you must follow and secret passages you must enter in order to obtain the treasure that awaits you at the end of the journey. Inside each of these secret passages, you will find hidden nuggets of wisdom which other travelers have left behind to share what they learned on their own journey. They have been left in order to nourish us along the way and to encourage and strengthen us for the journey ahead. As you uncover these nuggets, it is well worth your time to stop for a short break and think about them, to decide if you want to gain the hidden wisdom that lies beneath the surface of each one.

Many books have been written about the process of winning and Hollywood movies tell the stories of those who achieved tremendous success in life. Some of them did so against great odds, pressing forward when most would have given up and settled for an easier path. Others seemed born to experience greatness, possessing talents and gifts that were almost certain to propel them into victory, only to suffer failure and defeat in the end.

Is it just a matter of luck or fate that makes one person achieve success over others? Or, are there absolute principles that determine the outcome for those who discover them and apply them to their lives? Is it just a matter of intelligence, talent or personality that will determine whether you will achieve the life you desire? Or, can you tip the balance in your favor by the things you do and the beliefs you have in yourself?

As we study the concepts of Winning and Losing, we will find the answer to these questions and discover principles and actions that can determine the result of someone’s life when they are consistently followed and practiced. If the 20th Century taught us anything, it is that the only limitations to great achievement and success are those we place upon ourselves or allow others to place on us. A close look at the American experience will show us that if we can dream it, we can achieve it. It is a matter of faith, determination and a refusal to not give up in the face of challenge and potential failure that often makes the difference between Winners and Losers.

Along the journey, we will glimpse the thinking processes and habits of those who made their mark in life and see what we can gain from their experience. These can empower you onward into your own goals and dreams if you let them. We will also look at those who tried and failed, so we can glean valuable information from the ashes of their defeat.

Both triumphs and failures have a message that can aid us in our journey of discovery on the road less travelled. Some will reveal treasures of wisdom on the path to victory, while others warn us of the perils of taking life for granted and failing to develop the disciplines and practices that make for great achievement.

Many of these hidden nuggets that you will discover will not be new to some of you, as most of them have been around for centuries. By analyzing them, we can better understand what they have to teach us. Like all precious gems, they have many facets which appear different from other angles. Part of my guidance will be to expand on these, filling in the missing thoughts that can help make the difference more understandable.

Join me as we embark on our study of Winners and Losers and discover how to make your life the great adventure of success and achievement you desire it to be.

Chapter 1

WINNERS SAY: If it is to Be, It is Up to Me

LOSERS SAY: It is What it Is

The first person we will meet on our journey is someone many of you will recognize if you have been searching for ideas and secrets to help you attain success. Napoleon Hill came from a small town in the mountains of Southwest Virginia where he was born in a one room cabin. He lost his mother at the young age of nine, and later became a reporter and writer for small mountain town newspapers. Hill eventually used his earnings to enter law school, but soon dropped out due to a lack of finances.

During one of his assignments, Hill was invited to interview Andrew Carnegie, the great industrialist, philanthropist and founder of US Steel Corporation. This was to be the turning point in his life, after which Carnegie introduced him to some of the most successful business people in the world. As a result, he was able to learn their secrets to success and offer them to the world through his writing.

Few have understood and defined the principles of success more forcefully than Napoleon Hill. His book Think and Grow Rich is the most widely read book on personal prosperity ever written. Hill penned the words that have guided some of the most successful men and women in our time to great achievement by saying, You are the master of your destiny. You can influence, direct and control your own environment. You can make your life what you want it to be. By the time of his death, in 1970, the book had sold over 20 million copies. It continues to sell to this day and Napoleon Hill is considered one of the great pioneers in the philosophy of achievement and success.

As we begin this journey on the road to success, it is important to realize this one great truth: No one can influence you more in your quest for success than you. It is you who will determine whether you achieve the goals and aspirations you have for your life or whether you will fall short of your dreams and settle for less than you desire. You must come to realize one important truth about success; If it is to be, it is up to me.

While on his own journey toward success, Napoleon Hill became a pioneer of a new way of thinking. He recognized that throughout history certain men and women have stood out from the rest of society by how much they believed in themselves and in their dreams, and what they were willing to do to achieve them. He learned and eventually taught that our minds have the power to shape our destiny if we will determine what we want and practice a consistent method of thinking and acting, being guided by our goals and dreams to achieve.

First, it is important to settle something in your heart. Success is good and it is what you are meant to have in this life. You were not created to fail, but neither were you granted the right to a success that you did not earn. Whatever your beliefs are about life, it is certain that the outcome you experience will be determined by how you act on what you believe. And be certain of this one thing: you will act on what you believe. If you truly believe in something you will act on it. This is the evidence that you believe in it.

Winners believe that the outcome of life is determined by how much they put into it and how much they believe in their ability to achieve their goals and aspirations. Losers say that whatever will be is already determined and if they were meant to succeed they will; if they were meant to fail nothing they can do will make a difference when all is said and done.

If you believe your life is predetermined for mediocrity, and failure and you have no intention of giving up on this belief, this book will do you no good and you may as well quit now and not waste your time. But if you believe you can succeed and are determined to do so, stay with me and I will show you how your life can be shaped by the things you choose to believe.

There is no better time than now to start believing in you. We are on this journey of discovery together and let me say right from the start that I believe in you. But what I believe doesn’t matter if you don’t believe in yourself. This is a surefire way to hinder your ability to change and grow and create the defeatist attitude of it is what it is.

What Napoleon Hill learned from his experience of meeting Carnegie and other great business leaders, was that whatever your mind can conceive, you can achieve if you truly want to. This first lesson on the road to success will become invaluable as we continue on in search of your goals and dreams.

And always remember, there is no greater force on earth for achieving your goals in life than the power of YOU.

Chapter 2

WINNERS: Translate Dreams into Reality

LOSERS: Translate Reality into Dreams

As I have already mentioned, fate does not determine your destiny, but faith does. I’m not talking about your religious beliefs, although they are certainly important. I am talking about the system of beliefs that you hold in your mind. Though you may never have taken the time to assess your beliefs, I assure you everyone has their own belief system, whether they know it or not. It may have been constructed by strong ideas and concepts passed to you from others, but if you act on them they will eventually become your belief system.

Your beliefs are created by the thoughts, ideas and actions you have been exposed to in this life. The things that you see, hear and experience form the basic belief system that you operate from, and that is true for every one of us. This process starts at a very young age, which is when you are most susceptible to what you saw, heard and experienced in life. These are called the formative years because it is during this time that you begin to develop your own opinions and beliefs about life.

Tragically, some people grow up in an environment hostile to positive thinking and belief. If that happens to have been your own experience don’t despair. Anything that is learned can eventually be unlearned by a determined commitment to change and growth. Your mind is like a computer or recording system, and the programs can be erased and replaced by better ones if you are willing to do what it takes to make that happen. Basically, you have to have faith in yourself and believe that you can have a better life than the one you have now or the one that you experienced as a young person.

Someone once defined faith as, Seeing those things that are not as though they were. That is a great description of what it means to believe in your dreams. When you can see things that are not already here as though they were here, you can make those things become reality. You have the power to translate your dreams into reality by the things that you believe and act on. This is