Losers Take All Book Quotes

The nine in our list are based on a longer list in Robert Leahy, Stephen Holland, and Lata McGinn’s book, Treatment Plans and Interventions for Depression and Anxiety Disorders. For more on CBT—how it works, and how to practice it—please see Appendix 1.) EMOTIONAL REASONING: Letting your feelings guide your interpretation of reality. “I feel depressed; therefore, my marriage is not working out.” CATASTROPHIZING: Focusing on the worst possible outcome and seeing it as most likely. “It would be terrible if I failed.” OVERGENERALIZING: Perceiving a global pattern of negatives on the basis of a single incident. “This generally happens to me. I seem to fail at a lot of things.” DICHOTOMOUS THINKING (also known variously as “black-and-white thinking,” “all-or-nothing thinking,” and “binary thinking”): Viewing events or people in all-or-nothing terms. “I get rejected by everyone,” or “It was a complete waste of time.” MIND READING: Assuming that you know what people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts. “He thinks I’m a loser.” LABELING: Assigning global negative traits to yourself or others (often in the service of dichotomous thinking). “I’m undesirable,” or “He’s a rotten person.” NEGATIVE FILTERING: You focus almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notice the positives. “Look at all of the people who don’t like me.” DISCOUNTING POSITIVES: Claiming that the positive things you or others do are trivial, so that you can maintain a negative judgment. “That’s what wives are supposed to do—so it doesn’t count when she’s nice to me,” or “Those successes were easy, so they don’t matter.” BLAMING: Focusing on the other person as the source of your negative feelings; you refuse to take responsibility for changing yourself. “She’s to blame for the way I feel now,” or “My parents caused all my problems.”11

This seat taken?" My eyes grazing over the only other occupant, a guy with long glossy dark hair with his head bent over a book. "It's all yours," he says. And when he lifts his head and smiles,my heart just about leaps from my chest. It's the boy from my dreams. The boy from the Rabbit Hole,the gas station,and the cave-sitting before me with those same amazing,icy-blue eues, those same alluring lips I've kissed multiple times-but only in slumber, never in waking life. I scold my heart to settle,but it doesn't obey. I admonish myself to sit,to act normal, casual-and I just barely succeed. Stealing a series of surreptitious looks as I search through my backpack, taking in his square chin,wide generous lips,strong brow,defined cheekbones, and smooth brown skin-the exact same features as Cade. "You're the new girl,right?" He abandons his book,tilting his head in a way that causes his hair to stream over his shoulder,so glossy and inviting it takes all of my will not to lean across the table and touch it. I nod in reply,or at least I think I do.I can't be too sure.I'm too stricken by his gaze-the way it mirrors mine-trying to determine if he knows me, recognizes me,if he's surprised to find me here.Wishing Paloma had better prepared me-focused more on him and less on his brother. I force my gaze from his.Bang my knee hard against the table as I swivel in my seat.Feeling so odd and unsettled,I wish I'd picked another place to sit, though it's pretty clear no other table would have me. He buries his smile and returns to the book.Allowing a few minutes to pass,not nearly enough time for me to get a grip on myself,when he looks up and says, "Are you staring at me because you've seen my doppelganer roaming the halls,playing king of the cafeteria? Or because you need to borrow a pencil and you're too shy to ask?" I clear the lump from my throat, push the words past my lips when I say, "No one's ever accused me of being shy." A statement that,while steeped in truth, stands at direct odds with the way I feel now,sitting so close to him. "So I guess it's your twin-or doppelganer,as you say." I keep my voice light, as though I'm not at all affected by his presence,but the trill note at the end gives me away.Every part of me now vibrating with the most intense surge of energy-like I've been plugged into the wall and switched on-and it's all I can do to keep from grabbing hold of his shirt, demanding to know if he dreamed the dreams too. He nods,allowing an easy,cool smile to widen his lips. "We're identical," he says. "As I'm sure you've guessed. Though it's easy enough to tell us apart. For one thing,he keeps his hair short.For another-" "The eyes-" I blurt,regretting the words the instant they're out.From the look on his face,he has no idea what I'm talking about. "Yours are...kinder." My cheeks burn so hot I force myself to look away,as words of reproach stampede my brain. Why am I acting like such an inept loser? Why do I insist on embarrassing myself-in front of him-of all people? I have to pull it together.I have to remember who I am-what I am-and what I was born to do.Which is basically to crush him and his kind-or,at the very least,to temper the damage they do.

It is so easy to slip into “right thinking” mode—that we have arrived at full faith. We know what church God goes to, what Bible translation God prefers, how God votes, what movies God watches, and what books God reads. We know the kinds of people God approves of. God has winners and loser, and we are the winners, the true insiders. God likes all the things we like. We speak for God and think nothing of it. All Christians I’ve ever met who take their faith seriously sooner or later get caught up in thinking that God really is what we think God is, that there is little more worth learning about the Creator of the cosmos. God becomes the face in the mirror. By his mercy, God doesn’t leave us there.

Which philosophers would Alain suggest for practical living? Alain’s list overlaps nearly 100% with my own: Epicurus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Plato, Michel de Montaigne, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Bertrand Russell. * Most-gifted or recommended books? The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, Essays of Michel de Montaigne. * Favorite documentary The Up series: This ongoing series is filmed in the UK, and revisits the same group of people every 7 years. It started with their 7th birthdays (Seven Up!) and continues up to present day, when they are in their 50s. Subjects were picked from a wide variety of social backgrounds. Alain calls these very undramatic and quietly powerful films “probably the best documentary that exists.” TF: This is also the favorite of Stephen Dubner on page 574. Stephen says, “If you are at all interested in any kind of science or sociology, or human decision-making, or nurture versus nature, it is the best thing ever.” * Advice to your 30-year-old self? “I would have said, ‘Appreciate what’s good about this moment. Don’t always think that you’re on a permanent journey. Stop and enjoy the view.’ . . . I always had this assumption that if you appreciate the moment, you’re weakening your resolve to improve your circumstances. That’s not true, but I think when you’re young, it’s sort of associated with that. . . . I had people around me who’d say things like, ‘Oh, a flower, nice.’ A little part of me was thinking, ‘You absolute loser. You’ve taken time to appreciate a flower? Do you not have bigger plans? I mean, this the limit of your ambition?’ and when life’s knocked you around a bit and when you’ve seen a few things, and time has happened and you’ve got some years under your belt, you start to think more highly of modest things like flowers and a pretty sky, or just a morning where nothing’s wrong and everyone’s been pretty nice to everyone else. . . . Fortune can do anything with us. We are very fragile creatures. You only need to tap us or hit us in slightly the wrong place. . . . You only have to push us a little bit, and we crack very easily, whether that’s the pressure of disgrace or physical illness, financial pressure, etc. It doesn’t take very much. So, we do have to appreciate every day that goes by without a major disaster.

beyond them. The Six Diseases If we want to look at how we practice all forms of rivalry, there are six diseases my father wrote about, all of which stem from the desire we have to win at all costs. These diseases rely on being in competition, which is typically where we go in a relationship the moment any discord pops up. When we relate to others in these ways, we are disconnecting from them and disconnecting from our true selves in order to access some form of outside validation. In other words, there is no relationship, no collaboration, no cocreation. There is only the victor and the loser. The Six Diseases are: The desire for victory I have to be the winner. If I don’t win, I’m a loser. If I win, everyone else is a loser. The desire to resort to technical cunning I rely on the power of my wits to show you how great I am. Who cares about people or their feelings as long as everyone can see how clever I am? The desire to display all that has been learned Check me out. I know lots of things. I can speak at length about anything. It doesn’t matter what anyone else has to say (especially if it’s dumb). The desire to awe the enemy I am a force to be reckoned with. Look out! I will wow you to get your approval even if I have to do something shocking and wild to get your attention. The desire to play the passive role I am so easy to get along with. Who wouldn’t like me? I am so unobtrusive and sweet. I will put anything that’s important to me aside to make sure that you see how likeable and wonderful I am. How could you not like me when I sacrifice everything just for you? The desire to rid oneself of whatever disease one is affected by I am not okay as I am. I will perform constant self-work and read as many books as I can and take so many classes to make myself good that you will see that I am always trying to be a good person even if I continue to do lots of shitty things. I know I’m not okay as I am. And I know you know that I know I’m not okay as I am, which makes it okay not to get truly better as long as it looks like I’m trying.

[...]Many of those friends were self-declared socialists - Wester socialists, that is. They spoke about Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, Salvador Allende or Ernesto 'Che' Guevara as secular saints. It occurred to me that they were like my father in this aspect: the only revolutionaries they considered worthy of admiration had been murdered.[...]ut they did not think that my stories from the eighties were in any way significant to their political beliefs. Sometimes, my appropriating the label of socialist to describe both my experiences and their commitments was considered a dangerous provocation. [...] 'What you had was not really socialism.' they would say, barely concealing their irritation. My stories about socialism in Albania and references to all the other socialist countries against which our socialism had measured itself were, at best, tolerated as the embarrassing remarks of a foreigner still learning to integrate. The Soviet Union, China, the German Democratic Republic, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Cuba; there was nothing socialist about them either. They were seen as the deserving losers of a historical battle that the real, authentic bearers of that title had yet to join. My friends' socialism was clear, bright and in the future. Mine was messy, bloody and of the past. And yet, the future that they sought, and that which socialist states had once embodied, found inspiration in the same books, the same critiques of society, the same historical characters. But to my surprise, they treated this as an unfortunate coincidence. Everything that went wrong on my side of the world could be explained by the cruelty of our leaders, or the uniquely backward nature of our institutions. They believed there was little for them to learn. There was no risk of repeating the same mistakes, no reason to ponder what had been achieved, and why it had been destroyed. Their socialism was characterized by the triumph of freedom and justice; mine by their failure. Their socialism would be brought about by the right people, with the right motives, under the right circumstances, with the right combination of theory and practice. There was only one thing to do about mine: forget it. [...]But if there was one lesson to take away from he history of my family, and of my country, it was that people never make history under circumstances they choose. It is easy to say, 'What you had was not the real thing', applying that to socialism or liberalism, to any complex hybrid of ideas and reality. It releases us from the burden of responsability. We are no longer complicit in moral tragedies create din the name of great ideas, and we don't have to reflect, apologize and learn.

I prefer to remain a skeptic. People frequently misinterpret my opinion. I never said that every rich man is an idiot and every unsuccessful person unlucky, only that in absence of much additional information it is preferable to reserve one’s judgment. It is safer. Ten • LOSER TAKES ALL—ON THE NONLINEARITIES OF LIFE The nonlinear viciousness of life.

got all my stuff together and waddled downstairs, and found my Mom preparing my lunchbox. “Mom, what’s that?!!” “It’s the lunchbox you wanted, right?” “No, you were supposed to get the Pokémon lunchbox with Pikachu!” “This one has Pikachu, doesn’t it? The lady at the store said it was the most popular one.” “That’s Pichu, not Pikachu. Waaaaahhhhh!!!!” Now I’ve got to walk around school with a pink Pichu lunchbox. I might as well accept that my life is over. I should just take a marker and write the word “Loser” on my shirt with a big arrow pointing to my smooth face. Except nobody will be able to read it because my shirt is so small! “Waaaaahhhh!!!!

He’s changed?” “Yes. He’s started hanging out with a different crowd, a richer crowd. The men are all so arrogant. They don’t doubt themselves for a minute. They go to work and people agree with them all day long. And then they come home and their wives agree with them too. It’s a rarefied group, but—if you hang around with them long enough—it starts to feel like that’s how things should be. Regular working families, families where wives are equals, begin to seem like losers. You know the husband would start bossing the wife around if he made enough money, if he was man enough.” Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Man enough?” “Yes. It’s surreal. You’ve got all these nerdy-looking, chubby men who built their fortunes behind desks. And as soon as they get rich, they start using all this macho language, as if they’re gangsters or something. The other day, I heard one of Andrew’s partners talking about a competitor starting a price war. He said, ‘If those bastards screw with us, we’ll take ’em to the mattresses.’” Sarah caught the Godfather reference and smiled. “Yes. I’ve heard that kind of talk before. Bank account becomes a proxy for dick size.” “Exactly!

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman The Four Pillars of Investing by William Bernstein The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John Bogle The Little Book of Behavioral Investing by James Montier Stocks for the Long Run by Jeremy Siegel The Warren Buffett Portfolio by Robert Hagstrom Damn Right: Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger by Janet Lowe Investing: The Last Liberal Art by Robert Hagstrom Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports, and Investing by Michael Mauboussin Devil Take the Hindmost by Edward Chancellor The Most Important Thing by Howard Marks All About Asset Allocation by Rick Ferri Winning the Loser's Game by Charles Ellis

We have trained ourselves to be fearful and anxious when presented with problems. If we choose, we can retrain ourselves to be calm and to allow God to express God’s self in us once again. As I discussed in chapter one, problems begin, unequivocally, in our minds. We may have to remind ourselves that our mind is where the problem exists, nowhere else. Thus the “illusion” which I mentioned earlier. Correct the error, and the illusion disappears. Our conditioning has led us to the error of thinking of ourselves in terms of finite beings. James Carse, in his book Finite and Infinite Games, describes a world of finite games in which winners and losers, rules, boundaries, and time are all extremely important. In the world of finite games, titles, acquisitions, and prestige are of paramount significance. Planning, strategy, and secrecy are all crucial. To become a master player in the world of finite games you have an audience who knows the rules and who will grant you a reputation. Being identified with losers in the finite game is frightening and dangerous. The finite game values bodies, things, and reputations. The ultimate loss is death. In his book, Carse explains that the final result of the finite game is self-annihilation because the machines that we invent to assist us in this finite game of winners and losers will destroy those who rely upon them. Technology, marketing, productivity are all terms to encourage players to buy more machines and one’s worth is dependent on how many machines players have and how well they operate them. There is also the infinite game, which you can begin to play if you so choose. In this game there are no boundaries; the forces are infinite that allow the flowers to grow and those forces cannot be tamed or controlled. The purpose of the infinite game is to get more people to play, to laugh, love, dance and sing. Life itself is infinitely non-understandable. These forces were here before we were and will continue beyond the boundaries of death and time. While the finite player must debate and learn the language/rules to operate all the machines, the infinite player speaks from the heart and knows that answers are beyond words and explanations. This is not to imply that players of the infinite game cannot also play finite games, it’s just that they don’t know how to take the finite games seriously. This is a choice.

I never wavered from the mission: getting the best possible number and price on every game. And no matter the obstacles, via trial and error, I became the best in the world at finding that number and concealing the source. The business of sports betting might seem like quantum physics to the general public. At the highest level, it is closer to psychological warfare between bettor and bookmaker—cat and mouse, hunter and prey. The posted line is just a way to trigger the game. Some cynics assume that my goal was to put every bookie out of business—but nothing could be further from the truth. Bookmakers strive for balance. They never want to tilt too far on one side of the action. Bookies breathe easiest in the middle, taking equal money and profiting off the 10 percent juice. If a bookie was destroyed, it meant he either closed his shop or reduced his limits. Neither scenario did me any good. My goal was to keep the bookmakers in business and expand their limits. This served to increase the size of the market, which meant more potential profit for me. The smartest bookies had solved this riddle and wanted to do business with me directly. They wanted to know straight from the horse’s mouth what games I liked. If they were smart, they took my information and profited by shading their line and forcing customers to the other side, extending limits. A smart bookmaker knows there will be winners and losers. They also understand that there is no business if there are no winners. Translated: the smartest bookmakers are open to all comers—just like baccarat, blackjack, and craps. The brightest bookmakers know they can use smart money for their own benefit. Early in my career, the major-league bookmakers were Bob Martin, Johnny Quinn, Gene Maday, and Scotty Schettler. Following in their footsteps are Nick Bogdanovich, Jimmy Vaccaro, Richie Baccellieri, Matt Metcalf, and Chris Andrews. They are grand masters of the art. They know how to book. How smart are they? Well, Nick ran the William Hill U.S. sportsbook operation and then oversaw Caesars Sports trading for nearly a decade before being hired as sportsbook manager at Circa. Jimmy is the senior linemaker at the sports-betting network VSiN and vice president of sports marketing at the South Point Hotel, Casino & Spa. Richie B., who ran the counter at the MGM, Caesars, and the Palms, now works as the director of product development at Circa alongside Nick. Chris Andrews, legendary oddsmaker Jack “Pittsburgh Jack” Franzi’s nephew, is the sportsbook director and Jimmy’s sidekick at the South Point, owned and operated by Michael Gaughan, another Las Vegas legend. In 1992, Jack Binion was Nick Bogdanovich’s boss at the Horseshoe. I could bet $25,000 on a game of college football at eight o’clock Monday morning, and $50,000 on a pro football game.