Finally, for all my non-Serbian followers, I've translated to English text that I wrote in my native language about a week ago.

When I was a kid, as a good student, I was often under the pressure to maintain good grades at the school and many times I was in temptation to maybe skip some exams if I wasn't sure that I learned everything perfectly. My mum would always stubbornly insist, saying Go to the damn school, no matter if you get an F! or something like that, just to not avoid my responsibilities and I would always go, without any thinking about deeper meaning of her words. I never got an F, but years later I realized why was her insisting to not quit so important.

I believe that you often had situation, when you are going home from work or from school, that your mind start wandering and you think about many things, not only what's happening right now around you, but you keep walking like on autopilot, even if you are in your thoughts on some other place and suddenly bam! - You realize that you arrived right at the door of your home. Matter of fact, I'm quite sure that you are going to home every day by the same route. Why? Well, trick is in something what is called neural pathway.

What's that and how it works?

Neural pathway is basically sequence of connected neurons in our brains and it allows signal to go from one part of a brain to another part. Principle of how it works is quite simple - if a signal is frequently going through one neural pathway, that pathway will get stronger by the time and otherwise it will get weaker.

Why is that so important?

Well, this is tight linked to an old saying practice makes perfect. A fresh neural pathway is created whenever you do some task for the first time in your life. In the beginning, you probably won't be perfect in your task, but as the time goes by, your neural pathways will be stronger and stronger while you're practicing, so at the end you'll know how to do that task without any mistakes. While you are walking, you won't think how to spread your leg and how to keep your balance and so on, because you know how to walk almost since the beginning of your life. A little baby is in a period of extremely learning, so every day is a new experience and one of things that baby can learn in early age is how to walk. A baby doesn't know a thing about walking, but after numerous times of falling down, its neural pathways are getting stronger until one day it can make its first walk - so, years later, grown man doesn't need to think how to walk while walking, because it has become a routine for him.

After you do something over and over, after you stop thinking about that consciously while doing it, we can say that is developed something called a habit.

So, how to become a loser?

Habits are two-edged sword - some habits can help you to become a better person, but also there are some habits that will take us all the way down. Analog to what I've said about practicing, there's same thing going on for quitting - it's possible to 'train quitting' until it becomes your habit! So, when you for the first time give up from something, new neural pathways are created in your brain. Although the mother nature is handling that by releasing chemicals in your brain that will activate your guilty conscience in order to not repeat that again in your life, persistent giving up from things in your life will cause your certain neural pathways to get stronger and it will cause in the future giving up from things before you even start doing them.Other words, you will lose your self-confidence and quitting will become your habit.

I remember when I first time decided to not show up on exam, during my studies on the college - I had that feeling like my whole world is collapsing and that I let down myself and all people who believed in me, while guilty conscience were biting me from time to time just as a reminder that I started to slipping. When I repeated not going to exams a couple of more times, next time was much easier for me just to say SO WHAT and to turn over on the other side of the bed and continue sleeping, while my exam was suppose to begin in just a few minutes. I was "trained to give up" and that reflected also on the other things in my life until I realized on my own that I have to make some change. Today, I have my old mindset and I'm trying my best to not repeat same mistakes again. If I was giving up since the young age, which would probably start with avoiding my school responsibilities as a kid, I would never be here, wherever it is now. Thanks mum.

Neural pathways can also help developing certain addictions on the same way. For example, if you sometimes take a glass of some alcohol drink it won't be a big deal, but if you are drunk every single night, after a year your brain will register that as a normal condition and congratulations - you become an alcoholic.

A good news is that we can work on our neural pathways and "rewire our brain" in order to eliminate our addictions or simply to improve our life, just by working on our character and our habits. There are cases when after car accident someone's hand was paralyzed, but after persistent exercising that person developed new pathways in its brain so the signal which is moving hand was traveling now by different route so the hand can be moved again. Now, take that as a metaphor because this principle can be applied in almost every scenario in your life.

Obviously, mother nature is on our side, so there is no need to not start immediately changing your life if you want to.

You want to quit smoking? Start now.

You want to give up from college? There's no giving up, sit down and learn to pass that fucking exam!

If you are athlete, there's no need to tell you how much is important that last push up. On the first place you are building your character by that and just after that you're building triceps.

Sometimes I find some authors here on Steemit that want to give up, because they are demotivated by the number of upvotes or by the payout - Hey! Don't be losers, you can't give up now :)

Nikola