I am provoking you with this title, I want to get your attention!
In this world, we are forced to use words to share our ideas with others, but we all know how misleading these can be sometimes, especially when the individuals trying to communicate with each other come from different cultures, with different ways of understanding the same words… which could possibly be our case here! 😉 First of all, before talking about a “winner”, I want to turn things around a bit and define what I mean by a “loser”:
In my opinion, a “loser” is someone who has given up on discovering who he or she is, given up on growing and evolving, who has stopped serving others, and who has decided not to pursue a dream in life, either because they don´t believe that they are capable of achieving results, or because they are too concerned about other people´s opinions.
- The first way…
When I was still in Italy, despite the fact that I wasn’t giving up, that I wanted to serve others and that I was eager to evolve and improve myself, I certainly wasn’t feeling like a “winner”. Actually, it was quite the opposite… Why? Because I had no direction: I was allowing pressures from the society around me and from my family to weaken my self-image, and so I was feeling like a “loser” because I became convinced that I couldn´t succeed.
If you are like I was, you probably feel that something is missing in your life, that something needs to happen so that the word “loser” won´t apply to you. Right now, that word really bothers you, it makes you emotionally uncomfortable.
Unfortunately, I only know what worked for me, and this is the only thing I can share. But fortunately, on the other hand, I have noticed that the same thing has worked for many others, people who have a specific experience in common with us: that of being an Immigrant!
Prior to making the decision to immigrate, as I have shared in previous articles, my life was basically aimless: I was always trying new things, new jobs, looking to find something that I was good at and that I enjoyed doing. This is really pretty normal, especially when you are in your twenties, but instead of accepting my need to try different paths, every day I became more and more convinced that I was a “loser”! I still had no direction… and I was 27 years old!
I would look around, and when I noticed people who seemed to be going somewhere, to have a good job, a career or a business, I would mentally label them as “winners”, just because they were doing something and going somewhere. I wouldn’t even evaluate whether or not they were happy: the fact that they were going somewhere made them look very successful to me…
At other times, I would look around and notice others like me who were not doing anything interesting, aimlessly trying a few things here and there… and mentally, I would label them (and hence myself too) as “losers”!
I felt this need to prove that I was going somewhere important, to get away from this unpleasant feeling: I needed to show the world around me (and myself) that I too was part of the group of “winners” – I just didn’t know how!
One day when I lost my job as a door-to-door salesman, I firmly decided that I was going to immigrate. I had had enough, so it became a firm decision and I announced it to the world around me!
Mentally, that decision made me become one of the “winners”, and I suddenly felt very good…
I wish I could explain how charged I felt: my energy level was boosted significantly, my mood was always amazing and I start to share that enthusiasm for life with others.
Can you imagine? I hadn’t even started working on the immigration application, but my life had changed already, all because of a single decision.
I have claimed in other articles that I became an Immigrant that day, the day I decided to immigrate, long before I arrived in North America… My attitude towards life changed radically, and even if it took three and a half long years before I actually got the Green Card, I was more satisfied and at peace during those three and a half years than I had ever been before.
- The second way…
There was nothing wrong with the fact that I was still exploring life at 27 and that I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to do: I was moving, I was exploring, I wasn’t just standing still!
But despite everything, the more I experimented, the more I felt inadequate and so unhappy with myself.
Something really strange happened when I arrived in Canada. I felt compelled to keep my options open, and while I was working washing cars at my uncle’s auto body shop, I started to wonder and explore ideas, and I magically felt no pressure to make a decision, to find a path…
Isn’t that strange? I was older, I needed to support my family and I needed to justify my “big move” with tangible results: but despite all that, I was more motivated to look around than ever before!
Why? Nobody around me really knew me, nobody had a strong opinion about who I was and I subconsciously felt this, I could feel the lightness in the air. I was no longer in any preconceived mold.
I had a few jobs that gave me the possibility of supporting my family and preparing for the next chapter of my life, but my dreams started approaching me easily, and many ideas and possibilities came to me without effort: there was no cultural blocking, the stream of possibilities was open, and the rest is history.
I will be forever grateful to the Act of Immigrating for putting me into that “winner mode” in two ways:
- The first way at the moment I decided to immigrate, pulling me out of a psychological sludge and giving me a direction to aim towards;
- The second way when I realized that immigrating helped me to eliminate cultural blocks, allowing such infinite streams of ideas and possibilities to come to me so easily and abundantly.
If you can’t find your way out from your own psychological sludge; if you feel suffocated in your surroundings; if you feel that, no matter in which direction you want to run, the muscles in your legs cramp up and don’t respond to your command; it could be a clear sign that you are one of us!
I am convinced that when you discover that life where you are won´t let you advance, it is “a wakeup call”: don’t ignore it, it can cost you a lifetime of regrets…
Make that decision to immigrate and give yourself the life you deserve – the world needs you at your best!
I wish you the best…
Stay awake!
Frank.