The Psychology of a Winner

The Psychology of a Winner PAUL ROBINSON

The Psychology of a

WINNER

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Winning Strategies for Peak Performance

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Paul Robinson

If you want a thing bad enough To go out and fight for it, Work day and night for it, Give up your time and your peace and your sleep for it If only desire of it Makes you quite mad enough Never to tire of it, Makes you hold all other things tawdry and cheap for it If life seems all empty and useless without it And all that you scheme and you dream is about it, If gladly you'll sweat for it, Fret for it, Plan for it, Lose all your terror of God or man for it, If you'll simply go after that thing that you want.

With all your capacity, Strength and sagacity, Faith, hope and confidence, stern pertinacity, If neither cold poverty, famished and gaunt, Nor sickness nor pain Of body or brain Can turn you away from the thing that you want, If dogged and grim you besiege and beset it, You'll get it!

- Les Brown Motivational Speaker

CONTENTS Introduction to winning

PAGE

:1

Chapter 1

The art of dreaming again

:5

Chapter 2

The growth mindset

:11

Chapter 3

Overcoming limiting beliefs

:16

Chapter 4

More failure means more success

:25

Chapter 5

Transforming pressure into pleasure

:35

Chapter 6

From comfort zone to growth zone

:45

Chapter 7

Peak vision

:50

Chapter 8

The thin slight edge

:55

Chapter 9

The power of creative visualization

:61

Chapter 10

Mantra

:66

Chapter 11

Tantra

:72

Chapter 12

Yantra

:81

Chapter 13

The philosophy of self discipline

:88

Chapter 14

The power of decisions

:96

Chapter 15

Take massive actions

:103

Also by the author THE LAW OF ATTRACTION MONEY MAGNETISM A DATE WITH YOUR DESTINY MASTERY IN NEGOTIATION TACTICS HIGH PERFORMANCE LEADERSHIP MAKE YOUR BRAND ROAR SELL LIKE A PRO MANAGERS TO LEADERS THE INNER GAME OF SUCCESS

Introduction to

WINNING WINNERS ARE A distinguished minority of people where the majority of people admire, worship and emulate.

They are so influencing that they make us do crazy things like imitating them, dressing up like them or putting their pictures on our walls as role models.

Imagine a life without these winners. Empty walls!

Imagine the world of complete mediocrity: No champions, no role models and no inspiration to live for. I presume you got the picture! It will be rather disappointing. Isn't it?

If you are a keen observant to the success around you, you can witness the achievements of few exceptional individuals and teams accomplishing the seemingly impossible-not just once but again and again, in changing circumstances and under rising pressures. They are hitting higher than expected targets and making it look easy, doing it with more ingenuity and fewer resources, more speed and less stress, more trust and less time-while still managing to have success and fulfillment in their lives.

These top performers have learnt that just going along is stifling, settling for less than their dreams is mediocrity, and swimming against the current is rare and ambiguous.

They know that if they act and behave like everyone else, they will end up just like everyone else. They surpass their expectations. I call them the real winners.

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Through out many generations winners and achievers have not only coveted our hearts, but also they have significantly shifted the human potential to new levels of peak experiences. Many people wanted to know about their success stories. How did they do it? Is there any secret to peak performance? Are there any principles to winning?

What make some people extraordinary? If they can do it, can I also do it? Curiosity seems endless!

There is an unending loop of questions about human potential growth. As the saying goes, 'All roads leads to Rome'; all the answers take to one specific direction, the right psychology of winning. What makes winners is their extra ordinary psychology that gives them the uniquenessthe X factor, which separates them from the rest of the pack.

What makes people extra ordinary is that extra in them.

This book is about that unique psychology that is responsible for creating extra ordinary winners in our culture.

Before I go in detail explaining to you about the psychology of a winner, I want to make it a point to first define a winner.

A winner is a high achiever who performs at an extra ordinary level by pushing one's own potential to the maximum. A winner exerts his or her abilities for peak performances to feel the bliss of achievement, adventure, humility and gratitude. A winner is also a contributor and a pace setter, who set an all new high standard. They top in their performance and become leaders and role models for many people. A winner is charged with purpose, even though they face problems like any other mortals on this planet, they have the courage to breakthrough their fears and limitations. A winner is not a person who wins all the time. He/she is someone who never cease to take action, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 2

even after they fail. They do have disappointments. They do have challenges; but the way and manner in which they handle their disappointments and frustrations makes them ultimate winners. Nothing on earth can derail winners from their dreams, aspirations and commitments. They are rock solid, determined people, tough champions in all sense!

Now let's learn from them and let us become them.

That's what this book is all about 'The psychology of a winner'. In this book you will learn how winners manage their emotions and state of mind in areas where most people fail. Being a winner for life is an identity. It is an approach to life. It is a basic philosophy to achieve and accomplish something outstanding. It is driven by the human need for significance and contribution, to impact the society by becoming a part of a legacy.

You can develop the psychological identity of being a winner. One close identity many people will have in their minds is an identity of a winner or a mediocre (an average performer). Mediocrity contradicts achievement. We may not be aware of this identity, as this operates in the deepest level of our psyche.

One of the major symptoms of this mediocre identity is when you say 'I can't.' When you say or believe ‘I can't’ or ‘I am not good enough' or 'I am not capable of it,' remember you are demonstrating the psychology of a mediocre person. On the other hand when you say 'I can', 'it is possible by me' or 'let us do it' you are demonstrating the psychology of a winner. A winner is a YES MAN, who always says YES to OPPORTUNITIES. Remember this, every great opportunity is wrapped up with a problem. Moreover all of us behave in consistency with what we believe who we are. The identity of who we think we are matters a lot, as this paves the way for what we THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 3

believe who we are. The identity of who we think we are matters a lot, as this paves the way for what we want from our lives. Who we think we are, is a self concept supported by our beliefs. Every day with everything we say, behave and do, we are telling the world who we are. If you want to experience a new level of achievement, all we need to do is to establish a new standard, a new belief or conviction, or a new set of information, knowledge and skill that can enhance the quality of life.

We are all born to be winners. We do not need to settle for mediocrity. We can awaken and train our mind to think, believe and behave like a winner. We can create the image of a winner within us and we can design a world around us, where winning really matters.

Be your higher self.

Paul Robinson

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Chapter One:

The art of

DREAMING again "The art of dreaming is the capacity to utilize one's dreams and transform them into controlled awareness by virtue of a specialized form of attention called the dreaming attention."- Don Juan ONCE UPON A TIME we all wanted to be winners.

When we were young we did our part of dreaming, becoming successful and having it all! As kids, we believed that we can be anybody we want to be, anything from movie stars to astronauts. We believed that anything is possible. We were born dreamers, but as we grew older, the time we used to spend for dreaming of unlimited possibilities became time for worrying, complaining and blaming our circumstances. In fact we got so good at being negative and self defeating that we became our own worst enemies. All too soon, we were agonizing over our past losses and glory and began pondering on thoughts on many that we would have, should have and could have done in the past. We stopped dreaming and we were told that dreams don't often come true.

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Perhaps after a while we got disappointed. After some failures and frustrations we all began to ponder over our losses than our gains. We got fearful and became too calculative and even if we wanted to pursue, there were people around us to kill our dreams. They told us to lower our expectations and become realistic - and the minute we did that we have lost our life. Life became a job. It became something that you have to go out and do every day. It got monotonous and boring and you became obligated than privileged, 'have to do it' instead you get to do it. Life became a bundle of compromises than choices.

Most of us are caught up in the doldrums of life. We are entangled in the so called ‘inevitable situations' of life.

We don't even try to detach ourselves from the tentacles extended by our limiting beliefs, because we feel frustrated that life often does not respond to our terms. The dreams become shrouded and dissipated. There is no sense of certainty or belonging. We become strangers in our own lives. We feel that we are controlled by external forces and we cease to experience our personal power to be in charge of our own destiny. We stopped dreaming, the logic took over, and the magic withered away.

I would like to share some insightful and thought provoking words by the renowned philosopher, KAHLIL GIBRAN. This is what he says about REASON and PASSION: “Your soul is often times a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite.

Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul.

If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 6

toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in the mid – seas.

For reason, ruling alone is a force confining; and passion, unattended is a flame that burns to its own destruction.

Therefore let your souls exalt your reason to the height of passion that it might sing; And let it direct your passion with reason that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.”

Could we ever think of a better metaphor for our wants and desires!!!! It stimulates our thoughts and questions our beliefs. If we allow the reasoning or logical capacity to override our thoughts, then we pull the reins of our imagination. That would be the end of all new creations….

So would Microsoft stop thinking about upgrading its versions? But if we are only passionate and day dreaming, as Kahlil Gibran points out, 'passion unattended is a flame that burns to its own destruction.' Or I would rather say that our dreams will remain as dreams alone and never becomes the reality.

The truth is that we were born to dream, but somewhere along the way, our dreams died. Maybe you tried to follow a dream once, and you never quite achieved it, so you gave up. Perhaps you tried and failed, possibly more than once, so you decided not to put yourself through that pain again.

May be you think you are too old, too late or too young and inexperienced. Maybe someone gave you a wrong message that you are not good enough. Or may be you have fallen into a comfort zone in which you are paying the bills and getting by, and you don't want to rock the boat. You can be stuck forever and probably get along, but if you have forgotten how to dream, if you are not doing something you enjoy and pursue a goal, you may find it difficult to be THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 7

motivated and excited about your life now or even in the future.

The beautiful thing is that we are all capable of achieving a satisfying, fulfilling life. We can all get to wherever it is we want to go. We just need clarity, motivation and really good directions.

As you read along this book, it takes you on a journey of self discovery, personal mastery and innate realizations.

It will put you on the driver's seat, the place where you rightfully belong because you are the director of your life, you are the architect of your destiny, you are the captain of the ship, and you decide the set of the sail. In fact you are in charge of your life.

The truth is that it's hard to be happy or successful when you have no sense of direction. There is no passion in what you do when you lack the sense of purpose. There is no drive to go forward or pursue something that you can't define. Therefore, it is time to make some positive changes in your life.

We have heard many people who say 'hey I need to make more money and be financially independent, I need to change my life, I need to spend more time with kids, I should lose weight, I need to be physically fit, I must get a great job, I must quit this lousy job'; but how many people actually go and do something about it.

Most of the people have great wishes and so called desires. They sit and hope all their life that someday something will happen, may be magical, may be a lottery –who knows!

So they just sit and hope. They have no plan, no strategy what so ever. They are always waiting for something to happen. They won't move an inch towards their destination. They lazily sit around and hope that their THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 8

dreamy destination will come to them.

The real winners in life are those who make things happen. If all it took was to sit and desire for something, all of our desires would have been fulfilled. The truth is that we do not get what we desire, we get what we deserve.

Hope will not get us what we want. If that's all it took, we all would be rich, we all would be slim, we would have the greatest relationships, and everything would be just perfect. Hope is like going for fishing without bait. People who get results in life do more than just hoping. They take action. It is those who take action get results.

We may not be able to control our life completely but we can direct it. What we need is direction and by getting clear on our direction, we can eventually discipline ourselves and begin to influence and control our life. You see, in life we can make a choice to choose the upward spiral or let the downward spiral suck us in to the bottom of the pit. Bottom line, our choices determine the direction of our life.

I have experienced that life can be transformed by an idea, an awareness, and a change in perception. One of the major finding in metaphysics is the law of subjective reality. It says ‘when you change the way you look at something, what you look at changes'.

We all have different perceptions about everything.

Like the famous saying goes, 'two prisoners looked out through their prison window, one saw mud and the other saw stars'.

The truth of the matter is that, it is our perceptions that determine our experience. Two people can go through one similar event in life and they can have two different experiences and opinions about it.

Therefore, the good news is that by altering most of THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 9

our perceptions we can literally turn around our lives for the better. If you can change the way you look at health, your health and fitness level will change. If you change the way you look at money your finances will change. In a similar manner we can change the quality of our relationships, our career or business for the better.

And all it takes is to dream again.

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Chapter Two:

The growth

MINDSET "It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop." -Confucius THE BASICS OF SUCCESS are beautifully defined as continuous sustainable growth. We do not have to be better than anybody else, but ourselves. If all of us can constantly improve ourselves, all of us will eventually succeed in fulfilling our dreams. We don't achieve our dreams, but rather we grow up to the dreams we aspire. The joy is in growing and expanding ourselves.

In her book ‘Mindset: The New Psychology of Success', Carol Dweck, Ph.D, a professor at Stanford University and a social psychologist explains that there are two different kinds of mindsets: a 'fixed mindset' and a ‘growth mindset'.

The fixed mindset tends to leave people in a stagnant state in terms of growth and development as a person.

People with fixed mindset believe that their talents and intelligence are a given and fixed. They believe that if you have it then you are set, and if you don't, then you are unfortunate. They do not see that those who are presently less talented than they can actually surpass them if they worked on it. So instead of trying to better their given talents, they spend time making sure the talents and intelligence they already possess do not go away. As a result, they always seem like they have something to prove.

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Growth mindset, on the other hand, does not care about how much talent or intelligence you are born with. It focuses, rather, on what you can do with these talents and intelligence. They see their qualities as things that can be developed because they understand and know that the people in history who've been considered the greatest, smartest, and best, actually all got there through hard work, dedication, consistent focus and a passion for growth and for being better than they currently are. People with a growth mindset are never stagnant; they are always moving and changing for the better.

The difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mind set is a striking contrast. For a fixed mind person, external feedback is very important, validating or invalidating the person. For a growth mind person, the feeling on one's effort is all that matters. The result is less important than the effort.

Fixed minded people look for things that make them feel secure, powerful, superior and, unbeatable. Growth minded people look for things where they are not safe, secure, where they feel uncertain about the outcome and the risk of failing, because of the learning it provides them.

They welcome questioning, criticism, suggestions and they are willing to constantly revise and improve their skills for the improvement of their talents and skills.

People with a fixed mindset believe that their talents, intelligence, and personality are fixed while people with a growth mindset believe that these same characteristics are there to be built upon. We used to think that the brain received its maximum growth by the time we completed our teens. But, now we know that the brain keeps on growing connections and it is like a muscle that gets stronger through use.

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In fact, this new discovery is making waves in the scientific community and causing scientists, doctors and researchers to rethink what they thought they knew about the mind and body. It's called ‘neuroplasticity', and the implications of this are already revolutionizing the fields of medicine, psychology and countless others.

Neuroplasticity is also called brain plasticity, cortical plasticity or cortical re-mapping. In its most basic term, it is the brain's ability to reorganize itself by forming brand new neural connections. It has been suggested that even by simply changing your thoughts, you can cause your brain to begin to make new connections and re-map itself.

The ability of your brain to rewire itself is the most exciting discovery of the 21st century. What it means is that your brain can learn anything new and you are biologically programmed with a growth mindset. There is nothing fixed and everything is changeable and our brain possess the inherent capacity to expand and grow from time to time.

Most people believe that in order to be good at something then you must have a ‘talent' for that very thing they aspire. However, scientists have demonstrated that being ‘talented' has very little to do with the ability to be successful. Instead, learning and success have everything to do with your brains ability to change and adapt through the very plastic nature of the brain to be able to mould itself.

Our brain is a constant learning machine and the process of rewiring is something that will stay with you for as long as you live. The brain never shuts off and it never ceases to learn anything new. That is even more amazing about neuroplasticity. This means that it is never too late to learn a new skill or to try something new!

New neural connections can be established by mere repetition alone. If you practice a new skill, the area of the THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 13

brain responsible to make it happen will eventually change its landscape or known as the neuro-net. For practice to make perfect, the brain actually alters its physical structure itself. Even into old age, learning a new skill changes the structure and function of the brain.

People with growth mindset optimize their brain's neuroplastcity. Imagine: every time you learn or experience something new, your brain is being rewired and rearranging its neuro- structures. New connections are forming and old ones are withering away. What fires together wires together. Recent connections are strengthening and ones you no longer use are disappearing.

This is a great boon to humanity. This very moment, you have the capacity to reinvent yourself. We are not, as was long believed, prisoners of our DNA, genetics, or childhood conditioning. While it will take some discipline and it will occur over time, it's exciting to know you have a choice!

You can literally change your brain and sculpt your experience of reality. You can change your mind now to change your brain and you can change your life itself.

With a growth mindset you can make any changes you desire. If we want things to be different all you have to do is to be open for change. Growth in life is all about making changes. It is built on what we say to ourselves (self talk) and what kind of action we take.

The fixed mind-set is where you decide you cannot learn anything new in an area, no matter how much you try, your ability is fixed. Those people with a fixed mind set have huge resistance to change. A fixed mind set will reject a new idea, because they have no place for anything new.

Those people will never change. Their cup is already full. A fixed mind set is the core reason why people put limitation THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 14

on themselves. A fixed mindset does not admit and correct their deficiencies. They are the slaves of their own massive ego. Ego pretends to know almost everything. Ego had already slaughtered the inner child who had all the curiosity to know more and learn more. My sympathies go out for those people but I am more excited about the growth mind set people.

The growth mindset, in contrast receives information, knowledge, skill whereby you feel you can learn anything and be anyone with enough energy, focus, time, and commitment.

Here is the truth, in life people with a growth mindset always win. Some of the qualities of a growth mind set are that they are open to suggestions, feed back, ideas and learning. Growth mind set equips you to take new information and ideas and prepares you for inspired action.

They also persevere, while a fixed mind set give up saying: ‘this is not my cup of tea'.

I want you to embrace a growth mind set, because you can grow as an individual only if you have a growth mind set. This mindset helps you to revise life for the better. What we all need is flexibility to grow as a better person.

Therefore I want to conclude this chapter urging you to contemplate on the pebbles of wisdom by the great Tao in Te Ching. He writes: ‘Men are born soft and supple; Dead, they are stiff and hard.

Plants are born tender and pliant; Dead, they are brittle and dry.

Thus, whoever is stiff and inflexible, Is a disciple of death, Whoever is soft and yielding Is a disciple of life.'

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Chapter Three: Overcoming limiting

BELIEFS

“Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you'll see the way to fly.”

- Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach Can your mind change your brain? The answer is absolutely yes!

First, it is vital to identify your belief structures to overcome your limitations. Our Belief structures or belief systems reveal our ‘truth about the world.' Our beliefs give meaning to things and interpret them as our truth and reality. But our truth is not necessarily the truth about the world.

This is what beliefs do to you. Your beliefs about yourself create your outer reality. That's something to consider because it's really powerful. This means, if you believe something about yourself or about the world around you, it's going to be true.

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Beliefs in and of themselves are not bad things; beliefs can be very supportive, however they can also be very limiting. It's the limiting ones we need to identify so we can begin releasing them, and ourselves, into far more expansive and fulfilling experiences. Once we know what limits us, we know what controls us, and ones we know what controls us, we can liberate ourselves from those that control us. We win our true freedom when, what is within us no longer limits us.

Limiting beliefs are gained ideologies and beliefs that are commonly gained from our early childhood and growing up life experiences. All of your life experiences and beliefs manifest who you have become today.

Achieving success by reprogramming your mind by overcoming its limiting beliefs should seem quite logical.

After all, you think nothing of programming a computer to do your bidding. And the thing is if you don't learn how to take responsibility for reprogramming your mind you'll simply live your life unconsciously dancing to someone else's tune, executing other people's programs and living out other people's limiting beliefs instead of achieving the success you deserve.

We are all programmed by beliefs and these beliefs are like the running software for our mind. We respond to every action, situation, people, event, opportunity or threat according to the beliefs we have about them in our innermost self. In fact we operate much like a computer using the preprogrammed files in our mind as a reference.

When you buy a new personal computer (PC) the chances are you will delete some of the programs that were pre-installed that you don't need and add additional programs. You will also configure various elements of the computer in order to further personalize it. As time goes by THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 17

you'll probably continue to add specialized programs and you'll certainly store various documents and contents on your PC. And you do all these things to make it more effective and efficient for the tasks that you want your computer to perform.

Your brain can be likened to a computer but it's far more powerful. Its development can also, in many respects, be compared to how you set up your PC. When you were born, you had certain programs pre-installed. These programs help to ensure your survival. However, throughout your childhood you're like a sponge literally soaking up information that you access you through your five senses sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. We absorb all the data that is indoctrinated to us by the elders in the family and the social systems at large. These data, when they are reinforced over a period of time, becomes our beliefs system. It becomes our interpretation of reality and the reality itself.

Only later on, as your consciousness develops, are you able to categorize this data which results in you developing ‘programs' by which you operate or live your life. These personal programs are better known as beliefs. But the irony is that you're often not even aware of these beliefs embedded deep in your sub-conscious mind until you see their effects in the results you achieve in your life. As you explore further in your belief system, you will notice that you have a combination of empowering beliefs and limiting beliefs.

So, as you mature if you have lots of limiting beliefs then you'll find that you are not achieving success at the level or rate you desire even though this is something you want and strive for. This is where you can be likened to a computer.

You see, until you install new programs or beliefs you THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 18

will keep performing the same actions and you'll keep achieving the same results.

If you want a different outcome, you have to reprogram your mind. This is called neural reconditioning and there are many ways to achieve this outcome. First of all you must know what is limiting you and then delete all beliefs that are not serving you well and replace them with more empowering beliefs.

Your success in life and your ability to realize your dreams depend upon your ability to conquer your self limiting beliefs. Self-limiting beliefs are things we believe about ourselves, that are holding us back. They place mental and physical limitations on our abilities. These beliefs may be conscious or unconscious to us and our mental barriers will evolve into a physical barrier over time.

It is not actually the reality; it stems from what we told our mind about ourselves. What we project outward and achieve in our physical goals becomes an interpretation of those beliefs. The bad news is that we will be less manifesting our goals, because we have those self limiting beliefs that are actually sabotaging our plans.

Self-limiting beliefs sabotage our progress. Hanging on to them paralyzes people, from moving ahead in life. Selflimiting beliefs becomes ingrained in their mind, to the extent that it start to feel like, that is who they are. It is like taking up an identity. Example of this is when people repeatedly say: ‘I can't do that' and that turns into a belief ‘I'm not good enough'. Sooner or later limiting beliefs become a part of their self image and self esteem. They range from believing that everyone is better me or smarter than me, to feeling I am not good enough or not lovable, to believing that the world is very scary place, and many more.

When you say ‘I can't' you are making a choice about what THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 19

you are not capable of. You are choosing to limit yourself. If you feel stuck, progressing inconsistently and having difficulty to reach your goals, then you must examine your beliefs first. Limiting beliefs often form the biggest obstacles to your success. Always watch out for those beliefs that limit your options. Our limiting beliefs block all the possibility of finding or creating new ways around an obstacle.

Remember, self-limiting beliefs can make us doubt our own abilities.

One way to overcome self-limiting beliefs is to develop self awareness and see how we make choices around our challenges. Once we identify them, we have to doubt our doubts. For example, we could ask ourselves the following: ‘How do I know that I can't do it?' 'Have I done this before?' or ‘Just because I failed before or never done it before, doesn't mean that I will fail again or I can't do!?.'

To change our lives, we have to change our thinking and challenge our existing assumptions. Our assumptions blind us from the possibilities that we are capable of discovering. Prior to that fateful day, on May 6th, 1954, everyone in the sports world believed it was impossible to run a mile in under four minutes. And because everyone believed it, it became true for all. It was also a commonly accepted fact and truth about life. But there was one athlete who didn't believe in it. Roger Bannister believed that he could break the 4 minute mile. And, when he changed the way he looked at that barrier, the barrier changed. Even more amazing is that after Bannister crossed the one mile finish line in three minutes fifty nine seconds, nearly every professional runner had broken the four minute mile within the following year. Why? Because they believed it was possible once Bannister proved it to them.

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The question is: do you need someone like a Roger Bannister to overcome your own self-limiting beliefs?. Do you need a social proof to change your limitations?. The answer is: you don't. All you need to do is believe in yourself and believe that the goals can be accomplished.

Believe it or not, it's as simple as turning an ‘I can't' into an ‘I can' and act as if you are achieving it. If you want something, start acting as if you already have it. This programs your subconscious to go about the task of making whatever it is to actually come true. The best way to accomplish this is through the use of affirmations and creative visualizations.

Affirmations are positive statements that you speak out loud when you need encouragement. They are always formatted to accentuate the positive, as if the desired results have already been achieved. Creative visualization is another mind programming technique that you can learn and more about this will be discussed in a different chapter.

The key to success is being able to move beyond the obstacles that your limiting beliefs create. This typically involves getting rid of the beliefs that block you so that you can move forward and let yourself shine.

Subconscious limiting beliefs often work like a computer virus to undermine your success. Getting rid of these limiting beliefs is like releasing the brakes and letting you accelerate at a higher pace to achieve your goals.

Our subconscious mind is the seat of all beliefs. The sad part is that most of the beliefs we have, are culturally conditioned self limiting beliefs. Think of all the superstitions in every culture. We have been conditioned to believe in superstitions, mostly to prevent us from doing many things. We blindly believe in them and we never question them. Even though the intention of all these THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 21

beliefs were to protect us, most of them turn out to be over protective to stop us from making mistakes.

What happens when you stop an individual completely from making mistakes? He or she will rather do nothing.

They cease to take action. That is what self limiting beliefs do to us, they stop us from taking action. It takes away the drive to even try once again..

Self limiting beliefs are also the building blocks of shaping a negative state of mind. Our minds want to live up to its full potential. That is the innate drive of the human mind. When you limit our minds with strong limiting believes like – ‘I can't' or ‘it is not possible', the mind learns to limit itself and begin dwelling in negative thoughts of helplessness. It dwells in negative thoughts because it has been violated to do what it is capable of doing. Mind will learn sooner that many things are impossible.

To achieve anything in life one must truly believe that it is possible. When our minds feel deserving and expecting an outcome it tend to achieve that outcome.

Humorist Josh Billings once said, “It's not true what a man knows that hurts him; it is what he knows that isn't true” Many people have fixed ideas and they are unwilling to revise them. Our human growth is about constant revisions of beliefs and improvements. If you have no room for changes, you are extinct!

We need to let go of many limitations and cultural superstitions. People who hold on to their fixed ideas or beliefs that are completely untrue cut off their chances to be winners in life.

Here is the key: To achieve anything marvelous, first the unthinkable must be thought.

To achieve something you have never achieved before, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 22

you will have to think in ways that you have never thought before. To achieve something you have never achieved before, you will have to believe in ways you have never believed before. To achieve something you have never achieved before, you will have to do something different from what you have never done before.

You need to break all the myths, superstitions, current unchallenged beliefs to become an unreasonable person.

Unreasonable people make history and reasonable people read about them. Remember this: whatever that was said impossible in the past is possible today. Think of year 1968 when people spoke of a possibility of a man walking on the moon, majority of the people said impossible until in 1969 Neil Armstrong walked on moon. Think of a time when Alexander Graham Bell invented telephone and someone told the crowd that you can have a wireless telephone, at that time they would have said it is impossible or called the person who suggested the idea - crazy!

Remember this; whatever that was said impossible in the past is possible today, which in turn also means whatever is said impossible today will be possible tomorrow.

A man is only limited by his dreams. Remember winners release their brakes of limitation thinking. They know that ‘i-m-possible' means ‘I am possible'. They evaluate and discover more about what they can do rather than dwelling on problems of how it can't be done.

The biggest empowering belief for a winner is to believe in one's own potential. Having faith in one's own potential is the inner power and taking action on one's own strength is the real power. Power is the ability to act on one's potential. When an elephant really knows that it is an elephant it will behave like an elephant.

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There is something anecdotal about the Beetles, one of the greatest winning rock bands of all time. Beetles knew that they were the best band in the world even before they became famous. They said to themselves that ‘they are the best band in the world; the world is going to catch up to it'.

The key is this: In order to be a winner, you must know clearly that you are a winner right now. You must know that fact first and foremost. Later the world will catch on to the fact that you are a true winner. It all begins on the inside.

Trust in the power of your mind. You have the ability to transform your life and get the things that you want right now. See the unlimited opportunities that are set before you and grab life by the horns. Do not let your fears limit you.

Focus on your goals and work towards achieving them. Life is too short to spend it on feeling sorry for yourself and regret about the things you have forgotten to do.

Do not let your past stop you from having the future that you deserve. Success is just within your reach. You need not overwhelm yourself with the expectations that other people have of you. You decide the future that you want and move in the direction of your goals.

Believe in yourself and your potentials. The road to success need not be laden with pain, suffering and stress.

You would be surprised to discover that achieving your life's goals is not as difficult as you thought. The secret simply lies within you. Go ahead and be the best that you can ever be. Let go of your negative thoughts and limiting beliefs. The future is laid down upon your feet. Take charge and draw out the map that you envision your life would be.

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Chapter Four:

More Failure means more

SUCCESS

“Don't be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, in as much as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid." ~ John Keats DR. MARTIN SELIGMAN in his book ‘Learned Optimism' talks about a psychological phenomenon called ‘the learned helplessness’. According to Dr. Seligman, learned helplessness is a mental block that makes 90% human population to some degree as an impediment to achieve anything in their life. People who accept failure become losers and losers believe that they are helpless.

They accept helplessness as a condition than a situational powerless-ness. As a result they learn to be helpless over a period of time.

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People who have experienced severe criticism, rejections, failures and traumas in their early life develop a belief system that nothing is in their control. This set of people would decline an opportunity even before it is presented to them. Their logic outweighs the negative effects and hence ignores positive outputs. They have utmost fear towards failure and they suspect that anything they may attempt can only repeat their failures. This, they develop a sense of predictability with everything they attempt to do and cease to do things because they are afraid of the fact they will fail again.

We don't need to be clinically certified as a victim of learned helplessness to have the fear for failure or to have a fear of rejection. We all have the mildest, most subtle fear towards the fear of failures.

Every time we looks for security in all forms, be it financial or emotional without risking anything, we are showing the mildest softened version of our fear of failure.

Winners seek opportunity while mediocre people seek security in life. What most of us fail to realize is that opportunity is a package, when you unfold it, you find security in it.

Metaphorically speaking, we find financial security when we earn, we earn when we work and thus the chain goes backwards until we come to the conclusion that it all begins when you make the decision to work. But the irony is that, we always come to conclusion even before we plunge into it; just like the fox, we decide that the grapes are sour without tasting it, that's only because we did not know how to get it. Instead, we incline on luck and blame the fate for not meeting our needs. It's very vital that we realize and accept that we are avoiding this simple and natural process because either we are avoiding the toiling part of the THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 26

process due to our laid back attitude or we are scared that we may fail. This is how we create our own softener version of the learned helplessness.

Winners do not look for security, they look for opportunity: Let me ask you this question: What is bigger sense of purpose to you, security or opportunity?

When you seek opportunities is life, you are bound to fail more times than seeking security in life.

Majority of people in our culture seek security, because they do not want to take the bitter pill called failure. They are so afraid of failure; even the mere thought of it makes them to retreat to their comfort zone burying their long cherished dreams.

If you want to become a winner for life, you need to overcome your fear of failure.

Fear and ignorance keeps you mentally paralyzed from attempting anything new. From time immemorial, most of us fear we have towards is for the unknown. The less you know about something the more you tend to fear it. But as winning possibility, we can educate our fears and surpass them. The more we know about our fears and knowing how baseless they are, we can not only face the fear boldly but also overcome these fears as well.

It's like the person who fell off the cliff in the night and was hanging onto a branch; he prayed to God asking for help. God told him to let go off the branch and he would be safe. In spite of repeatedly assuring the man that he would be safe if he lets go off the branch, the man blamed God for not coming down to save him. His fear was over riding his faith and blinded his logical powers also. The more the fear gripped, the tighter he held onto the branch, until dawn.

When he saw that he was only a few feet above the ground, he laughed at his foolishness and the pain he had THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 27

experienced all through the night. If only he could remove the fear that was blinding his mind to think in any other possible ways!

Trust in your higher power. Overcome your fears with information. The more you know about something, the less fearful you become. That's why learning more about an idea or a concept makes you more confident about the same. The truth of the matter is that, in life we can't wish for fewer problems, but we can have more skills and knowledge to overcome our problems.

Failure, setbacks and rejections are part and parcel of life just the way success, progress and acceptance is in life.

We have heard this before; ‘failure is a stepping stone to successes'. Even though we intellectually know the metaphor, none of us really comprehend its meaning when we experience a sense of failure in our lives. This is because, failure is an emotional experience for most people but for winners, failure is an intellectual experience. I have a formula that I have been following for many years. Take failure to the head and success to your heart and never attempt it vice versa.

We did not learn to walk in one attempt. We fell down, we all do. It was not failure; it was a learning experience, an intellectual experience. We knew we would eventually walk, so we never gave up or quit trying. Winners know that they will succeed eventually, even if there are thousands of setbacks, rejections and failures prior to a big break.

Each failure is another step towards success. This means more failure leads to massive successes. In order to achieve success you need to know how to see the full potential of failure.

Sometimes when you make a mistake you change the direction, you make different choices than you did before.

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This may lead you down a path you normally would not take. Suddenly you realize a whole new direction in your life leads to success. The seeming failure just leads you to a different path- a path of unimaginable success and fulfillment of your dreams.

A whole new range of intelligent possibilities can open up when we experience failures. Winners see that possibility and they fail intelligently. For them failure is a resting ground and not the nesting ground. Failure is an important part of learning process. It's all about trial and error method: Learn from every mistake and try not to make the same mistake twice and use every failure as a form of feedback. The information that you receive is not negative or positive. It is just data. It is a feedback that you can use in order to improve your results by simply retooling your approach based upon your feedback.

With every failure that you experience you can actually grow if you use it in this particular manner. You can improve upon your previous results by examining the feedback that you receive from those attempts. In order to do this, you must own your failures (otherwise, it will own you) and its intelligent feed backs. Mediocre people do not own their failures. They blame other people for their failures and setbacks. Remember this: when you own your failures you also owning the intellectual copy rights of the lessons you are about to learn from those failures (just like how Edison did it with his bulb experiments).

Michael Jordan once said “I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed.

I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.�

Winners possess a strong sense of personal responsibility THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 29

for their shortcomings. One hallmark of a champion is that they believe they have a great deal of control over their destiny. They have a sense of destiny. Even if many things will go against their plan and often they will, amidst all chaos and uncertainty, winners recall their sense of destiny.

The noted psychologist, Albert Bandura, called this ‘selfefficacy'. According to Albert Bandura, self-efficacy is “the belief in one's capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations” High achievers hold themselves accountable for problems encountered and believe workable solutions reside within both their abilities and sphere of influence.

They believe they can make a difference, and they act on that belief and make a difference.

Winners and top performers cannot be mollified in their failure. They are results driven and success oriented.

Success orientation is solution orientation. Instead of dwelling on their misfortunes, winners think about a way out of their troubles and problems. Because they believe it is largely within their skills, abilities and responsibility; so they work tirelessly to build up from failure to success.

Winners know that there is nothing called failure; it is only the feedback or lesser expected results. Avoiding failures is like avoiding the imperative lessons in our life. Remember we are what we are today through the series of intelligent failures. We need to adopt the psychology of winning that is, increase your failure rate to increase your success rate.

We experience frequent failures, not only by less expected results but also by a series of rejections. Just like failures, rejection is a universal phenomenon and it is a natural part of life. Even though we intellectually know that, none of us are proud in a moment when we experience THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 30

rejection. Emotionally we go through more pain than anyting else when we feel rejected.

As a matter of fact; all of us grew up through several rejections in our life. The first rejection we might have faced was when our parents or elders said a big ‘NO' to us when we were kids and even though we cried a lot to persuade them, it never helped us to get a ‘YES' from them.

Later you felt rejected when you are not picked for a school team, when you lost a role in a play, rejected an application into a college, rejected for a job you wanted, denied of a promotion you deserved, rejected of a loan application, rejected by a date, rejected when people said NO to your idea and offers. Rejections after rejections!

It is a fact that when you are on the pursuit of achieving something there will be many situations and people that may reject you. It is part of life but most of us do not accept that fact. Instead we get fearful about the idea of rejection.

Fear of rejection can become a major reason for many life's failures. Those who fear rejection ultimately do nothing. Winners know that the key to success in life is getting maximum rejection. This means the more you are rejected the more you will be successful. This may sound like a contradictory statement; but this is a fact. The key to success is achieving maximum rejections in life. The more you get rejected the more acceptances you get. It is a number game called ‘the laws of averages.' This means you increase the probability of success by increasing the probabilities of failures.

Let's assume that you are tossing a coin to get 5 heads and suppose you toss it 15 times to get 5 heads and call it a success. But you also get 10 tails called failure. Let's say you want 10 heads next time for success, looking at the law of THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 31

averages, what you should do is try getting more 20 tails called failure. That is increasing your failure rate to increase the success rate. Thomas J Watson, founder of IBM once said “The formula for success is quite simple: double your rate of failure.” Increase your failure rate and thus increase your success rate. The key to acceptance is through massive rejection. The irony of life is that the more you are rejected the more you will be accepted.

Winners in our society know this magic formula called ‘the law of averages': the more NO you get the more YES you can expect. Winners never stop at rejection points. A movie star like Sylvester Stallone, was turned down by more than thousands of agents. He accepted several NOs diligently till he found a big YES and that was for his movie Rocky. Stallone once said “I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake up and get going, rather than retreat.” People who have made history have gone through several rejections in their life. Now this is a proud moment for all the ones that are rejected at some point in their life.

When Colonel Sanders of KFC started his profession as a restaurateur at the age of 64 after his retirement, he left his home with his pressure cooker and his special recipe for cooking; he almost received over 300 rejections before he found someone to believe in his dream.

Thomas Edison flunked in school; It was rejection for him. Beethoven was called a hopeless composer by his teachers; he was rejected. Michael Jordan was kicked out from his school basket ball team; he was rejected too. Where do you think these people were placed after several rejections? They created a benchmark and became the ultimate winners in their field. The secret of mass acceptance is massive rejection. Remember that.

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People who overly protect oneself from making any mistakes and fearing rejections seldom do anything or achieve anything. They develop an analysis paralysis to stop themselves from taking actions. The good news is that the more you are rejected the more you will be accepted.

Therefore increase your rejection ratio to increase your acceptance ratio.

Successful sales people know that every ‘no' will get them closer to a ‘yes'. The more you are rejected, the more you will sell. They know that every NO also means money.

Let's assume that it takes ten sales presentations to make one sale and nine prospects already said a big NO to you. If a sale fetches you ten thousand rupees, in reality what happened was that you were making almost a thousand rupees to every NO you faced: remember you had nine NOs before you got one YES. Every NO means thousand rupees. This is the kind of math winners follow.

There is a law of average to almost everything. Think of these analogies that are very true in life. The guy who gets to date more women is also the one who got rejected by most women. The movie star who has delivered the maximum super hit movies is also the star with lots of flops. The more you fail in your business the more you succeed in business. Rejection, just like failure is the key to winning.

Winners don't stop at negative outcomes. They are persistent and also know for a fact that there are hundreds of ways to achieve an outcome. So if something does not work, they work on something that will work. The duration between their attempts are short. They experiment and revise their plan constantly. They wake up to the reality if something is not working and they move on till they make it work. Losers on the other hand keep doing the same thing THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 33

all over again and expect to see a different result every time.

They get disappointed at one point and give up forever. Do yourself a favor; stop recreating the same experience over and over! This means change the path to get to your destination and do not change your destination. Change the ways you achieve an outcome and do not change the outcome you seek.

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Chapter Five: Transforming Pressure

into

PLEASURE

“When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure.�

-Peter Marshall THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WINNING lies in the mastery of emotions. Positive emotions propel us to reach our goals and negative emotions like constant disappointments and frustrations can make us break down and give up on our goals. When the emotions are managed differently, you will experience an extra thrusts for winning at all times.

Winners and losers manage their emotions differently.

Winners turn failures into success. Winners transform pressure into pleasure and frustrations in to fascinations.

We live in a time and society where we are constantly placed with demands. We have growing demands from employers, family, spouse, children, peer group, customers and followers. We also have to compete with time, quality, performance and consistency. As an effect, pressure seems to be increasing on us. Our ability to cope with pressure is being tested to the full.

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For people who are mediocre achievers, pressure means stress but for winners pressure means motivation and a sense of urgency. Mental health professionals and doctors refer to positive stress as ‘eustress’. Eustress refers to the constructive stress that helps keep you motivated and driven in all aspects of your life. For example, an athlete may find a big game stressful, but the nerves and excitement of eustress encourages him or her to push harder and play better. In this case, stress is a temporary response that brings about positive changes - such as the drive to play better. Pressure turning into drive and ambition is eustress and pressure turning into stress and fatigue is distress.

Winners know how to ease their pressure with a positive note and turn stress into a eustress. They accept pressure as a means to grow and as a result they become stronger than ever before. On the other hand pressure taken with a negative note becomes stress. Stress has become a fashionable word to define the largest excuse to the lack of joy in many people's life. Why do you think more and more people experience stress these days? Here is why, They do not move their butts! These days many individuals are either glued to a desk, a computer or a television set creating a state of atrophy compelled by their work environments.

Without enough body movement and variation in breathing it is very difficult for human lymphatic system to work effectively. In the absence of body movements, toxins are piled in the blood stream making the body more acidic and stressful. But here is the solution: The fastest way to deal with stress is to simply work out. When you get pressure next time or every time turn that pressure into pleasure. That's what winners choose to do.

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Remember pressure and time makes diamonds. Pressure expands our comfort zone by challenging us to do and achieve more. Pressure helps us to mobilize ourselves to think and respond quickly when the need arises.

Winners are masters when it is about relieving pressure.

Winners seek pleasure by looking out for ways to ease pressure, but losers feel pressured and seek disease.

One of the biggest pressures almost everyone faces in their life is financial pressure. Financial pressure is a state of mind rather than the lack of money. For example let's consider a person who earns about a lakh of rupees a month and a person who earns ten lakhs of rupees a month.

Who has more pressure? Of course the one who earns ten lakhs rupees a month? Why? Because he has more bills to pay and he has to look out for more ways to manage his money. Who has more pressure, a person who is working for somebody or a person who has employed somebody? It is the person who has employed somebody as he has to do his work and also monitor the other person's work. Almost everyone is affected by financial pressure. The rich and the poor people experience financial pressure at various degrees. When you experience extreme financial pressure, guess what happens, you tend to treat yourself and others very bad.

Lack of money is not the reason for pressure. Truth is that abundance and scarcity is a state of mind. Think of this one. There are over six billion people in this planet, yet many people among us feel very lonely and have no dear friends.

Poverty is a choice just like loneliness. There is so much of abundance in this universe, yet many people among us experience scarcity. Scarcity is a choice. It is mental condition that people choose to accept as their inevitable THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 37

reality. How do we deal with our thoughts on scarcity? How can we be free from financial pressure? Do you think you can have more money and then you will have less financial pressure? I don't think so! In fact the more money you have, the more financial pressure you will have! The big question is ‘How do we handle our financial pressure?'

Here is the catch; financial pressure is something to do with our minds than our wallets.

One way to manage financial pressure is to give money away even if you feel you do not have enough. What this act does to your mind is something really amazing. You will be sending a direct message to your subconscious mind that there is more than enough. When scarcity is removed from our minds abundance remains. Some of the richest people on this planet like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet give away most of their money every year for charities. They believe in abundance and they remain in abundance.

Pressure also arises when we are not sure about the outcome. One of the best remedy to overcome pressure is to have constructive thoughts: focus on your goals, and have enough wants in your life, rather than what you don't want. This automatically eases your pressure points and keep you focused on your goals.

Few years ago I happened to meet a person who is extremely calm and peaceful. Happiness reigns, even on her face. She looked serene. The moment anybody sees her, they get to experience this unique nature in her. It becomes difficult to know if she is gripping happiness and peace or is it the other way round. Everything is so perfect about her, she gets whatever she wants and she carries every task with great elan. Out of curiosity, when I asked her if there was anything that bothered her or does she ever feel pressurized THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 38

or tensed, she said ‘never'. Her answer was very simple. She said, “I only know what I want in my life and I never think about what I don't want. Probably that keeps me happy and peaceful always.” Pressure arises when you contemplate on what you don't want and pleasure awakens when you think about what you want.

This does not happen overnight, it has to be practiced.

It's very important to have enough ‘wants' in our life to eradicate all the ‘don't wants'. One of the crucial factors to eliminate pressure is to constantly think constructively, focus on goals and do result oriented tasks. By doing this, we also experience some biological changes through the excretion of healthy hormones, which keeps us to be in a good and blissful state of mind.

What happens when you lack enough wants in your life? Frustrations show up. Frustration is a stronger version of distress that gets irritable with an anguish note. We also experience them when things don't go our way. When dejections and disappointments mount up, we feel an internal pressure gobbling up to frustrate us.

We get frustrated when we do not live up to our standard and potential. You feel disappointed when you do not meet your own expectations. Frustration kills your dreams. It turns a positive attitude into a negative one.

Frustrations have killed dreams, aspirations, goals and ambitions of millions of people on this planet. A total surrender to frustrations has contributed in the creation of a lot of losers. And above all, it breeds mediocrity and victimizes people completely.

But frustrations have a purpose to serve and winners use frustrations to their advantage. Winners know how to breakthrough their frustrations by turning their frustration into developing a fascination for something, devoting their THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 39

focus to overcompensate something they feel they lack the most.

Now you too can use frustrations for your advantage. I will offer you some suggestions and help you to look for ways to use your frustrations to produce some positive results.

Frustrations are the powerful agents for change and change is a powerful agent for personal growth; it is a catalyst that triggers our emotions to create either fruitful or foiling outcome.

Human beings are conditioned by habits. They tend to lead a comfortable life in the comfort zone they have developed, even if the zone is negative and filled with misery. The purpose of frustrations is to create discomforts so that we break from our comfort zone. Frustrations help us decide.

The only way we can grow is through the expansion of our comfort zone. People are tested and stretched through frustrations so that they make up their minds and decide to change. Here The Universe plays a vital role by piling us with more frustrating circumstances until you are on the edge. When you feel ‘enough is enough', when you have altercations with your own thoughts, you don't have any choice but to take action to make the changes. The decision to change is a long persuasive process and frustrations are here to pressure cook us to make that change. It becomes imperative at this point that you take the right decision, use right strategies and implement it to produce the result that you want.

Managing frustration means breaking through frustrations. Frustrations make us uncomfortable and we change only when we are uncomfortable. In good times we party and in bad times we ponder. In bad times we plan out THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 40

and scheme out to become successful. Good times keep us comfortable. Remember the alibi for the comfort zone is that it keeps you comfortable from trying anything new or seeking a new path to achieve the outcome that you desire the most.

Frustrations also prepare you to change and adapt to new conditions in life. Frustration defines the shortcomings in your life. It defines the big gap we live in - the gap between where you are and where you are supposed to be.

Frustration also helps us to realize what we really want in our life. Many people do not know what they want in their life; instead they get frustrated for what is missing in their life. Remember, on the other side of frustrations and problems lies goals and objectives you have not set and met. Instead of getting frustrated all through life, find out what you are frustrated about- turn your frustrations into goals that you can direct your life purposefully.

Winners turn their frustrations into their fascinations.

Frustration is a critical decisive point to make up your mind and perform better next time. Therefore ask yourself a different question next time when you are frustrated- what else could this mean? What good can come out of this situation? What lessons have I learned? What's next?

Ask questions that will breakthrough your frustrations and stop asking yourself questions – ‘why this is happening to me?' When you ask a question ‘why me', your brain will come up with answers blaming you more with reasons ‘why'; instead ask ‘how can I?' It is magical!.Because your brain will come up with answers for that too- and those answers will become your solutions for life.

Drawing from an analogy, the impact of frustrations can be like a ‘domino's effect', one falling on top of another.

Constant frustrations lead to an emotional flooding situaTHE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 41

-tion, that will lead to constant irritation and anger. The bigger challenge is to experience calmness and composure during these challenging times.

Here are some quick tips: You can overcome your irritations by changing your breathing pattern. A great way to calm your mind is to slow your breathing by taking deep breaths. If you are breathing more than 18 times a minute, means you are under stress. Also, you are breathing from the top of your lungs, since there is not enough supply of oxygen to your cells, the stress hormones cannot be released. When you take slow deep breathes, which can be seven or less breathes per minute, the pineal gland in the brain becomes more active. This releases the stress hormones and supplies your cells with more oxygen, which means more vitality, strength and energy.

There is tremendous power and solutions to breathing.

Today, in order to stay healthy one key skill you need to develop is to breathe effectively. Scientific studies now conclude that effective deep breaths can alter your state of mind making it more active and alert.

You can also change your state of mind by changing your physiology. When you are frustrated you tend to look down, shoulders dropped with rapid breathing. You can change all of this by just changing your body posture.

Position yourself with a sense of achievement, curl your lips, lift your head, look upwards, widen your shoulders, chest forward and see for yourself how you feel. You just can't help but feel good, if you continue this for some more time, endorphins will rush into your brain and put you into a complete state of bliss.

Another effective way to encounter your frustrations is to simply laugh at your silly frustrations. When you look back in time don't you feel like laughing at yourself for THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 42

something that was frustrating to you at one point?

Remember times when you felt too frustrated and later when you recall that experience you felt like laughing at yourself. The catch is this- you don't need to be in the future to look back and laugh at something frustrating going on right now. You can laugh at yourself at this very moment.

Become bigger than your problems. When you do that you can literally dwarf any overwhelming situations.

That's the psychology of a winner.

Remember this: little things affect little people. If you feel your problems are bigger than you, the problems will appear as a genie to give you more problems and frustrations in life. If you believe that you are bigger than your problems you will be the genie and every frustrating moment will look small and insignificant.

Winner's ultimate focus is on the outcome they desire.

They know the fact that pressures and frustrations are a means for peak performance. Pressure stretches your abilities to be more and do more and frustrations help us decide. Next time you feel pressurized, stop beating yourself up and avoid being stressful about your ‘to do’ list, instead get focused on the result. Remember a healthy state of mind is the key distinction to a winner. Healthy mind is relaxed and highly creative.

When you are confronted with a challenge or opportunity, ask yourself this question, before you settle down with choices: Will this choice propel me toward the outer edges of what is possible, or keep me from repeating what is good or defending what is great? Go out of your way to talk with spirited and demanding people who are not satisfied with mediocre results, those who disrupt the status quo instead of settling for it: difficult colleagues, unTHE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 43

satisfied customers, clients who push your limits, demanding investors, tough coaches and persistent mentors.

These men and women can give you the stimulants for you to reach for what is possible instead of settling for what is just ‘good enough'.

Quality pressure gives you tense energy. When tense energy is created, your brain cells are activated, they are in the creative pursuit to solve problems. They produce more electrochemical energy from new connections, remodel nerve endings, improve receptor networks and revitalize you overall brain function. You become more capable, smarter and more vibrantly involved with life and engaged at work. Each time you reach further, your brain becomes better at helping you go beyond that.

The future is being rewritten everyday in every endeavor. Yesterday's progressive thinking becomes today's passĂŠ news. You can keep repeating what got you here, or you can keep unlocking hidden capacity to reach more of what's possible. Remember becoming better than the best starts deep inside you. Peak performer's start with a well defined and concrete impossible goal they care deeply about and then they build a through-line that clearly connects here with there. You brain achieve a motivated state through the clear focus on what you want and it seeks coordinated information processing inside and across brain regions and that produces engaged behavior toward positive goals and away from negative outcomes.

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Chapter Six: From comfort Zone to

GROWTH ZONE “In bullfighting there is a term called querencia. The querencia is the spot in the ring to which the bull returns.

Each bull has a different querencia, but as the bullfight continues, and the animal becomes more threatened, it returns more and more often to his spot. As he returns to his querencia, he becomes more predictable. And so, in the end, the matador is able to kill the bull because instead of trying something new, the bull returns to what is familiar. His comfort zone.”

-Carly Fiorina ‘THE COMFORT ZONE' may be the worst place to be.

Some positive psychologists argue, in the case of personal growth, that ‘rock bottom' may be a better place. When you hit rock bottom, it give you tremendous pain and the pain will motivate you to take on the challenges at hand. The pain that a person can feel when they are this low will push many people to go places they've never dreamt, simply because now they feel like they have nothing to lose. But when a person is very comfortable, he/she is not motivated to change any of his/her situations and environment. When you don't change you don't grow.

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Comfort zones are what prevent you from growing, expanding and becoming more. Some people are so conditioned in their beliefs that they would even define themselves by their limitations. Apart from that, these ‘limitations' are often used as the convenient excuses for why their lives aren't working on the level that they ultimately desire.

We all have stories about why we can't have what we want. We all have our comfort levels and we don't want to break them by attempting to do anything new or unfamiliar. We are moulded into a pattern of behavior and thinking and we seldom try to break those patterns. You must break out of this mould because it is what prevents you from taking the actions that will raise you from where you are to where you ultimately want to be. It's easy to talk about growth, improvement and advancement, but what it really comes down to is action. Only when you actually do it can you break out of the comfort zone. It's amazing how incredibly easy it really is when you just do it and act on what you always thought was difficult or even impossible.

The challenge is that your old beliefs tend to keep you from taking these simple actions that can free you. Many times we are unfortunately our own worst enemy when it comes to our self-imposed limitations and boundaries. We need to challenge ourselves and motivate ourselves to do the uncomfortable. By doing this consistently we can expand our personal boundaries.

What controls our comfort zone is fear. Fear is one of the strongest, if not the strongest, emotion that controls who we are and the choices we make in our lives. When we fear something, we act in ways that support our belief in that fear. Fear leads to inaction, which is in itself, a choice.

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In business, our biggest fear is the fear of failure. We are so afraid of not succeeding that we often choose not to even try something new. Fear of failure keeps one from realizing their true potential; how do you know what you're capable of if you never step out of your comfort zone? Most of us are afraid to step out of our comfort zone, because we think it's easier than facing our fear. The truth is, by staying within our comfort zone, we give our power away to fear and that is a real drain on our energy.

Mediocrity is the outcome of complacent thinking and comfort zone. People who are outstanding winners today have overcome the challenges of living with a complacent attitude. The objective of a comfort zone is to protect us, but the irony is we choose to be overprotected. There is no growth or sense of adventure in being enclosed in a comfort zone. Here is a fact: When you are blinded by the state of complacency you seldom notice the changes in your surroundings.

You need to grow on a consistent basis. The nature's rule is- that which does not grow, dies. If you are ripe you will rot, if you are green you will grow. When we were kids, we were fearless, we were not scared of dreaming or thinking big and we felt that everything is possible by us. As we got older we realized that the sails need not be smooth always; we get to experience rough winds and high tides, as well as smooth waves and cool breeze. If we consider the rough tides as a fearful experience, then we lose our capacity to dream big. We need to rediscover the courage we had. We need to be back to our source of innate greatness. We need to be kids again to be imaginative and to think outside our comfort zone.

Comfort is the enemy of achievement. The biggest challenge for our long term success can be often our short THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 47

term successes. Many people get comfortable with their earlier success. People who succeed very early in their career have a plan to retire early. The thoughts of early retirement sabotages their ongoing progress. Here is a major challenge-success in any area can quickly breed complacency. When you get comfortable, you don't want to change. When you don't change, you don't grow. When you don't grow, you die.

Mediocre people love to stick around with the boundaries of their comfort zone. They resist change and perceive change as something uncomfortable and threatening. People, who fear change, withdraw themselves to their comfort zone. For them change is an attack on their comfort zone. Mediocre people do not accept a new idea, belief or an activity that may break away from their ‘comfortable' working pattern. In some cases they act like victim confessing that they ‘do not know how to change?!’

Think of your comfort zone as a prison you live in.

We are all confined to our limitations. You might have seen a baby elephant that was trained at birth to be confined to a very small place. Its trainer will tie its legs with a rope to a wooden post planted deep in the ground. This confines the baby elephant to an area determined by the length of the rope – this is the elephants comfort zone. Though the baby elephant tries many times to break the rope, after several attempts the baby elephant knows that the rope can't be broken. Therefore it stops trying at one point. Even after the elephant grows up to a mammoth creature that could easily break the rope, it does not even try because it has learned as a baby that it could not break the rope. In this way, the largest elephant can be bound by the feeble rope.

Human beings are very much the same, although it is THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 48

a lot less obvious. Our feeble rope is our limiting beliefs. We all have ‘limitations' that we've been conditioned to believe and now that we are capable of breaking free from them, we don't even attempt it. In fact, the possibility does not even cross our minds. When you believe something you create a sort of ‘mental blindness' to other possibilities because your experiences are filtered through your beliefs.

The result is that you tend to stay with what you are comfortable comfortable with which is what you are certain about.

They are the limitation we have put on ourselves. We solace ourselves with our limitations and we excuse ourselves from doing something new or uncomfortable. As a result we do not seek change or challenge. We cease to grow. The key is this: If you can do what others can't and willing to do what others won't; you can have everything what others can't and will achieve anything what others won't.

As humans, we are highly adaptive to our living conditions; thus, a frail mind can easily become complacent. We can be accustomed to misery, poverty, loneliness and depression easily.

We need to become more perseverant. We need to be committed to our goals that we have all the right to pursue.

We need to liberate ourselves from the chains of comfort zone. Remember everything that we ever want to achieve lies outside our comfort zone. What we need is perseverance the will to follow through our dreams.

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Chapter Seven:

PEAK VISION

“View life as a series of movie frames, the ending and meaning may not be apparent until the very end of the movie, and yet, each of the hundreds of individual frames has meaning within the context of the whole movie. View your life from your funeral, looking back at your life experiences, what have you accomplished? What would you have wanted to accomplish but didn't? What were the happy moments? What were the sad? What would you do again, and what you wouldn't?"

- Victor Frankl PSYCHOLOGY IS DEFINED as the science of mental life. In a mental life we all have vision about ourselves- who we are and who we want to be. In a mental life, a winner sees things differently than everyone else.

The psychology of a winner is about the right perceptions, attitudes of how we can look at something positively with a complete outcome in mind and believe the fact that it is achievable by all means.

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What happens when you look at the Mount Everest from its foothill?! It appears to be gigantic and almost impossible to climb. Though you desire to be on top of the peak, yet you cannot see the peak. You look so negligible and so minute, the fact that it is million tonnes heavier and taller makes you feel lost in its presence. This is what I call the Valley Vision. Now; when you look around, everything around you will look the same or may be even bigger than you. The unending path to the top, the big snow boulders, the tall pine trees, and the strong cool breeze aggravates your fear about the journey to the top. From the Valley Vision, everything looks like an impossible feat.

Now let's shift the planes for a moment. Imagine yourself on the tip of the Everest. Now look down- look around. How is the view from the top? Everything looks so small, even the very presence of the Everest is not considered to be scary. It is peaceful out here. The path to the top is clearly visible; everything looks so small from here that a lot of miniature creatures at the bottom are almost invisible. You feel bigger and better because everything is at your feet now. The accomplishment of being at the peak, the view from the peak, the serenity that accessorizes the beauty, God, everything is so surreal!!!! Is there a better feeling than this!

You not only experience the achievers joy, you are also cascaded by the warmth of life, and you have attained the epitome of humility. This is the Eureka moment!. Your presence on the top of the world geographically talks about your success to the world and your journey wherein which you have climbed all those big boulders, reached beyond the heights of pine trees and cut through the cold strong winds with your will power, has given you the fulfillment.

The physical differentiation is completely negligible. That THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 51

was just amazing! Now this is what I call the Peak Vision, looking at life's challenges and opportunities from a peak point that everything looks small and achievable.

Don't you want to experience this? Don't you want to absorb every moment of your success journey? Doesn't your soul crave for this fulfillment? I bet it does! The psychology of a winner is about thinking from the topthinking from the end. On the contrary the loser thinks from the bottom, sees everything from the foothill, the Valley Vision. If you want to develop the psychology of a winner, if ever you want to master the mental science attached to it, then always, no matter how big your problem is, how impossible your goals may appear, always remember to view it from the top. Have the Peak Vision.

Now let's connect this peak vision with some ground reality. Most often we have a vision, goal or dream to achieve something. Most often we fall for the mediocrity of viewing it from the valley.

Valley Vision is the view from the bottom. This happens when you think from the problem. When you think from the problem or an obstacle, the end is not clear as the problem stands like big boulders, tall pine trees between you and the end result. The fear that builds inside you, every time you look at the obstacles blinds your vision from achieving and eventually you lose hope: at this point, most of the people give up on their dreams. They lose the willingness to try once more. When the incomplete tasks get piled on one after another, we make a mountain out of a mole hill and the obstacles look bigger and taller than the Mount Everest. We get stuck in time and that's how we get stressed about our tasks.

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always finish strong. Peak Vision is the vantage point from the top. It is all about thinking from the end. Here, you become bigger than your problem, as your mind already feels that it has accomplished its goal. A person with Peak Vision is under composure as they have faith in themselves, their abilities and always believe in their dreams. They are cool under pressure. The path to the top, the ways to overcome your obstacles, the forte to override the hindrances is derived from the faith and through your sense of destiny. This can happen only when you think from the end result. For this; your mind, body and soul should be in complete coherence. When a person with Peak Vision sets the goal to climb on top of the Everest, his soul already rests on the top, that's how he can have a clear vision of the path to the top. He already feels the sense of achievement. He then uses his mind to direct his body to get to the top; he will use right strategies to do this as his mind can only see the tip of the Peak and not the obstacles which can stop him. Now, his mind accelerates the body to take action and move forward, so his body will execute the strategies developed by his mind. It is very clear, that a person with Peak Vision has a synchronized mind, body and soul; it is in sync to work towards the common goal and achieve the same purpose. Eventually, the vision, thoughts and actions are also in sync with one another. As a result a Peak Visionary achieves the impossible.

Peak Vision conquers all doubts. You can have a vision and still be doubtful about achieving them. Peak visionaries see everything but they have the traces of doubt that will sabotage their plan. You can't achieve the impossible with pessimism.

Peak Vision inspires, compels and pulls you toward the Vision itself. And it naturally moves you toward the THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 53

expansion and expression of who you really are. Peak Vision stretches your possibilities. The purpose of a vision is to pull you forward into a fuller expression of your greatness and strengths.

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Chapter Eight: The Thin Slight

EDGE

“Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown." - H. Ross Perot IN HIS BOOK, ‘The greatest secret in the world', Og Mandino shares this simple yet profound statement that reveals the best kept secret of all the champions in the world. It goes like this: ‘The greatest secret in the world is that you only have to be a small measurable amount better than mediocrity'.

Since the world is filled with mediocrity, a thin slight edge above others can really make you stand out. A slight degree over excellence can make anything outstanding.

In today's highly demanding world we have to deal with certain ironies in life. For example when you do a poor job you don't get poor rewards, you usually get fired. When you do a good job what usually occurs is that you are not noticed. Why is it like this? When you are a good husband or a good wife, why is that the spouse leaves you? When THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 55

you are a good parent why is that kids just don't like you anymore? The answer is simple. Good is the enemy of great.

Remember that. Good job gives you poor rewards.

Now here is something everyone is after, the search for excellence. A person who does excellent job often gets good rewards and not excellent results. Even though they perform very well, they are not appreciated for good results.

There are so many excellent employees who does excellent job in their organization, but they are appreciated for their good work-not excellent job done. That's why many excellent people get disappointed and leave companies.

Good rewards are just frustrating to excellent performers.

If you need an excellent reward, what is that you must do? Here is the formula: when you do something outstanding you get excellent results.

The key is this: When you stand out from the rest of the excellent crowd may be for a quarter of an inch or micro seconds more; you play it outstanding and you get excellent rewards.

Being outstanding is not about skill, it is a state of mind, and it is a shift or change of your state of mind to exceed excellence. There are many excellent computer companies in the world, but Apple is truly outstanding.

A winner needs a compelling Peak Vision or big dreams for outstanding performance. When outstanding individuals achieve their Peak Vision everyone calls it; the triumph of enduring human spirit. It all boils down to one truth: A winner must have the mind set and the willingness to go beyond any human boundaries set by another human.

They must exceed excellence.

When you are outstanding as a spouse, parent, boss, professional or leader you see the magnificent results.

Being outstanding is a slight thin edge over excellence.

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A very- slight –thin- edge indeed! For example, the thin edge can be one hundredth of a second faster, especially when it comes to Olympics. Here is an anecdote to further explain, what a thin slight edge means.

In 2005, Lance Armstrong made history as he crossed the finish line in the world's premier long-distance bicycle race, winning his seventh Tour de France. For 2,232 miles the cancer survivor and American cyclist fought fatigue, competitors, and even allegations of drug use by the foreign press. In the end, the winner of 2 stages of the 21 stage race was crowned victorious.

Despite the glory and rewards that go to the victor, Armstrong's winning time of 88 hours, 15 minutes, and 1 second was only 280 seconds ahead of second-place finisher, Ivan Basso of Italy. In other words, Armstrong was only about 1/10th of a percent faster than his nearest competitor. In fact, the top ten finishers were all within 4/10ths of a percent.

In the 2004 Olympics, in Athens, American Justin Gatlin ran at a speed of 9.85, in a hundred meters race winning the gold medal. What was amazing about the race was that the runner up, Portugal's Francis Obikwela ran 9.86 and won the silver medal- a difference of 1/100 of a second. The thin edge meant gold to the winner.

Let's look at another example. At NASCAR Daytona 500 between 1997 and 2006 the average margin of victory between first and second place was 0.175 seconds, less than two tenth of a second and for the winner it meant $509,000 more. In Olympics gold and no medal at all is often separated by split seconds. For instance in 2004, the women's 200 meter freestyle event came down to 0.43 seconds between gold and nothing.

In sports winning is matter of a second or one THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 57

hundredth of a second. Sometimes it is a matter of few inches especially in horse race if the winning horse has made the first place for an inch of nose difference. In every professional sport, the difference between the champion and the also-rans is fractional. Vince Lombardi said ‘champions are gauged in inches they achieve, not yards.’

That is why he once said “Inches make the champion” To succeed in life and to become an ultimate winner the formula is you need to be slightly better than othersespecially the ones who call themselves excellent. All the winners have this winner's edge: an extra ounce of effort or slight increase in personal confidence, skill and timing that help them outperform and out beat the rest.

Every winner has a thin edge of difference that makes them separate from the rest of the pack. Some call it the X factor. The fact is that the X factor is nothing but a small difference in ability that can lead to an enormous difference in results. Every top people in every field or industry are usually a little better than the average in the critical things they do.

The good news is that this X factor can be learned and developed. You too can develop this X factor. The X factor gives the little extra and often walking an extra mile helps you to become outstanding in your field. You can develop and apply the X factor in primarily four areas; the attitude, aptitude, action and association.

The X factor in attitude All achievers with the thin slight edge have a better attitude than the rest of the people. A slight degree of attitude can help a person stay motivated at all times.

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they can persevere, while others get disappointed over the shortcomings. If you observe different competing team on any sports, we can see the fluctuation in a team's attitude and motivation and see how that affects the game ultimately.

The X factor in aptitude Winners have an extra attitude or skill set that set them apart from the rest. Arnold Schwarzenegger took up ballet lessons to improve his body posture for Mr. Olympia and the extra skill he mastered served him to win the titles many times. An extra knowledge base and skill set can make you stand out from the crowd. Winners need an incredible combination of multiple skills to succeed. Learning a new skill or polishing a skill, can serve as a cutting edge to make you stand apart at all times.

The X factor in action Winners take action on time. They do not delay or struggle with their predicament over analysis paralysis.

Winners take inspired action. They are the first one to jump in when an opportunity presents itself. Winners are agile in their actions. They do not wait for things to happen, instead they make things happen.

Winners take every action with confidence. Acting ‘as if' puts you in a confident state. In order to act with confidence you must understand your potential both tapped and untapped. You see your current opportunity with tapped potential and you explore the possibility with your untapped potential. When you tap into your untapped potential of what you can become as a possibility, you will begin emerging as a winner. The journey of winning begins where you are with what you have and it always starts with THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 59

a dream, idea and purpose. What gets you going is the commitment to your goals and what drives you there is your ultimate purpose.

The X factor in association Winners have an exceptional group of accomplices that fill in their team to accomplish larger goals. They associate themselves with other winners who are exceptional in what they do. When you work closely with extra ordinary individuals, you will learn to do ordinary things extra ordinarily well. Michael Schumacher was the fastest F1 racer also because of his pit stop team. In the F1race every millisecond will count. Schumacher had an exceptional team of associates at this pit stop that could refuel, change tyres and even make minor mechanical adjustments faster than any other racing team.

A well networked support from a team, or rolodex is an extra degree of strength for a winner. Make the most out of your quality associations and stay away from energy vampires, dream stealers and frenimies.

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Chapter Nine: The Power of Creative

VISUALIZATION “Every moment of your life is infinitely creative and the universe is endlessly bountiful. Just put forth a clear enough request, and everything your heart desires must come to you" -Shakti Gawain THERE IS A very interesting finding in psychology.

There is a pattern for winning and a pattern for losing. The neuron structure in our brain tends to connect all of our ‘wins' and ‘losses', it could be one's own experiences or imagined experiences. This means, our sub conscious mind uses all the stored information to make us what we are in the present moment. Real or imagined experiences! That's the hitch. Real would be what is happening or happened in our physical experiences, and imagined is what we thought or are still thinking about the past, present or future in terms of our potential in context to winning or losing. It is this fraction of moments that makes us winners and losers.

Decisions are made in a moment. It takes a moment to say ‘I quit' or ‘let's begin', ‘it can't be done' or ‘let's do it again'.

These decisive moments are controlled by our state of mind and our state of mind is in turn controlled by the inner images we experience.

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All winners see it in the inside whatever they want to experience on the outside. Seeing it on the inside is a conscious dreaming or imagining process of already experiencing the events with a positive outcome. It is called the creative visualization technique.

Creative visualization is the power to experience the future inside your mind. Winners visualize an event happening on their favor. Constant visualization creates a neuromemory and this neuromemory begins to work on your favor to manifest your visualization into real experiences.

The critical thing to understand is that, just like selftalk, we all engage in visualization in some manner every day. But when we control it, by deliberate practice, we help control the results we experience.

Visualization is merely forming an imagination in your mind or following through actions in your mind through picturing them. Being able to visualize something is a large part of creative thinking. Creative visualization is the art of turning imagination into a psychological reality, where the person who imagines creates innumerable possibilities.

Studies have repetitively shown that creative visualization can effectively help people create positive physical change in most aspects of life. In a famous study published in Research Quarterly, British psychologist Alan Richardson demonstrated that athletes can orchestrate improvement in muscle memory through visualization of certain sporting activities. So that athletes who visualized winning moves on a daily basis for 20 days exhibited improved results to virtually the same degree during the same time period, as athletes who practiced physically.

The December 2007 issue of Men's Health detailed a study in which participants were asked to visualize THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 62

themselves doing bicep curls. They did no weightlifting whatsoever, yet their average bicep size grew by 13%!

To make it to the Olympics athletes often spend just as much as or more time visualizing their performance as they do practicing. They know that we can train the body through the mind.

In the 1980 Olympics the Russians used this technique to study the importance of mental practice or creative visualization over physical practice. They split their athletes into four groups: Groups A through D. Group A used 100% traditional physical practice and no mental training. Group B had 75% physical and 25% mental training. Group C had 50% physical and 50% mental training and Group D had 75% mental and 25% physical practice. The results were astonishing. After the Moscow Olympics and the Lake Placid Olympics these world class athletes scores were tallied and those in Group D had won the most medals.

The power of visualization is not only limited to the sports world. Creative visualization can be used to unlock your creativity as well. Nikola Tesla (1856 – 1943) one of the greatest electrical inventors who ever lived used the power of creative visualization to unlock his hidden creativity. He was a prolific and unparalleled genius, giving us AC electricity, the electric car as well as many other devices, some which have not seen the light of day because they would revolutionize man's approach to free energy. At an early age Tesla trained his powers of visualization. In his autobiography ‘My Inventions’, he describes, “Every night (and sometimes during the day), when alone, I would start out on my journeys, see new places, cities and countries, live there, meet people and make friendships and acquaintances and, however THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 63

unbelievable, it is a fact that they were just as dear to me as those in actual life and not a bit less intense in their manifestations. This I did constantly until I was about seventeen when my thoughts turned seriously to invention.

Then I observed to my delight that I could visualize with the greatest facility. I needed no models, drawings or experiments. I could picture them all as real in my mind.�

Another account has been recorded of Major James Nesmeth, prisoner in Vietnam for 7 years in solitary confinement in a cell 4 1/2 feet high and 5 feet long. During his solitary confinement he committed to playing a full round of golf each day. He had been an average weekend golfer, shooting in the mid to low 90's. Each and every day he practiced walking each fairway, picking up and smelling each blade of grass, feeling the breeze, swinging his clubs, etc.

He never actually touched a club that entire time.

Since he couldn't go anywhere and wasn't in a hurry, he took just as long to play 18 holes in his mind as it would have really taken. Not once did he miss a shot, never hit a hook or slice, and never missed a putt. He played 18 holes, 4 hours a day - 7 days a week, for 7 years, vividly visualizing and focusing on his dream. A few days after his release, even though he was weak and frail, having been cooped up in that small 4 1/2 ft. high 5 ft. long cell, he played his first real round of golf and took 20 strokes more than his former game! It was just like he had pictured in his mind!

Visualization is a very powerful tool and when used in its most effective form, it can enhance strength, improve attention, demolish negative thinking, and dislodge destructive self-images. Creative Visualization is a cognitive process and as such, may improve the health of THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 64

mental models, transforming nearly every conceivable unwelcome situation or condition into a far more favorable one. Creative visualization can work magic in your life. But for most of us, that magic doesn't arrive instantly. It takes some time for your creative visualization to show up in your physical world. How much time it takes often depends on the visualization itself and your commitment to its attainment.

Visualization is simple. If you want to visualize a dream home, start visualizing the home every day as if you are living in that home. Every day as you visualize, work on the details of the home, the interior and exterior. Everyday go in to the details of the home as you visualize. There comes a point as you keep visualizing that you literally feel like you are living in your dream home. You get to the feeling that you can see it.

One way to make sure you benefit from the power of creative visualization is to do it often. This means at least once a day to keep your dream alive and energized. Make creative visualization part of your daily schedule. Make it as a habit that you visualize everything you want to achieve.

Visualize what you want. Anxiety and worry habits are strong visualizations about what you do not want. As a result we manifest them. Then we wonder how it happened!!

Focus on what you want. Whatever you focus on expands and energy flows and eventually they get materialized.

We all have a visualized image about our self that is called our ‘self ideal'. We carry the image within us and we become the person we see it on the inside only if we act like the person we see on the inside. Acting as if is the key to become the person you want to be.

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Chapter Ten:

MANTRA

WINNER’s ULTIMATE TOOL for success is the use of mantra, tantra and yantra in every areas of life. Once you learn to apply these principles, you will become a person unstoppable with courage for massive action. You will awaken all your innate potential and channelize all your energy to realize most of your goals. In this chapter, I want to give you something that I call 'the winner's ultimate tool kit'. This contains powerful and ancient strategies to winning called 'mantra, tantra and yantra'. These are Sanskrit words. 'Mantra' means motto, goals and objectives. 'Tantra' means strategy, plan and purpose.

'Yantra' means the mechanics, vehicle and system. Mantra, tantra and yantra are ruled by three principles I call the 'triple A' principles for winning, ie ATTITUDE, APTITUDE & ACTION 80% of winning is the psychology and 20% is pure mechanics. What do I mean my mechanics, is the skills or aptitude you put into action.

Mantra or motto is ruled by the principle of attitude, tantra is ruled by aptitude and skills and yantra or the mechanics is ruled by action.

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Let's begin with mantra which is a combination of motto, goal and objective.

The mantra of every winner is having big dreams and big goals. Winners know what they want. They know their mantra. Winners have big dreams and goals that ultimately raise their standards. If ever you want to raise the bar, at first you must raise your standards. The mantra of winning is to have higher standards. All winners have kept their bar higher than everybody else. They have this drive to demand more from oneself, because they are committed to higher standards and superior outcomes.

One must have the highest degree of mantra to achieve the highest degree of results: Winners have big dreams.

Since everything that is created in this world begins with a thought or an idea or a dream, the bigger is your dream the bigger is your achievement and your end creation. In fact you are only as big as your goals in life.

Big dreams make your life more exciting and worth pursuing. Small dreams do not excite you or other people around you. The very reason why there are so many people around us are lazy in our culture is that they have no big dreams to pursue. Big goals are appetite for massive action.

People get attracted to big dreams, big goals and big projects.

Isn't true that all of us in life are attracted to something that is larger than life?

Small dreams do not move or motivate people. All high achievers have big goals. One thing to remember here is that when you have big dreams and goals, it is almost imperative that it should be supported by small goals and plans to accomplish them. Remember a dream without a plan is merely a hallucination.

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incomplete formula.

Winners are big dreamers. All peak performers are called the blue sky thinkers. For them the sky is the limit. In Charles Garfield's studies of ‘peak performance', he made an interesting discovery that I want to share with you.

He saw average performers reaching extra ordinary results after they began engaging in ‘blue sky thinking'. In blue sky thinking, you imagine that all things are possible for you, just like looking up into a clear blue sky, with no limits. You project forward several years and imagine that your life is perfect in every aspect. You then look back to where you are today and ask yourself this question: 'What would have to have happened for me to have created my perfect future?' You then come back to where you are today in your own mind and ask: 'What would have to happen from this point forward for me to achieve all my goals in the near future? How do I close the gap between where I am to where I want to be?

What is my plan of action to become the person that I choose to be?'

It is very important to create your ideal self in your mind therefore you are pretty sure about where you want to go and what you want to achieve. Once you know truly what is that you want to create in your life to become the ideal you, you go about creating it every day till you become the person you have dreamt of becoming.

On the contrary, if you have no idea or dream about becoming anything, you become nothing.

One of the reasons that people achieve less and often fail in life is because they focus on irrelevant things in life.

They waste their energy on low value achievements. They really sweat for the small stuff. They major in the minors of life.

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Having said that, people with clear objectives and big goals work on achieving their goals and eventually they achieve them. But having just big goals is not just enough to create the success you want. You need to have consistent focus on achieving what you want. Your ability to harness the power of focus can change your life, when it comes to becoming a high performing individual or organization.

Becoming purposeful is very important to having a consistent focus on winning. It is always reasons that come first and answers come second. Remember you are only limited by your own imagination. Think what a Hen does on a consistent basis. If a hen, with the brain the size of a pea, can sit and concentrate on an egg and incubate the egg for 30 days, then what could you do when you concentrate with a brain that has the potential of a thousand computers processing capacity? Just focus on simulating a fantasized WINNING experience for the same period of time and take massive actions. The price of success is always paid in advance. Therefore you must pay the price for your goals.

The price is your efforts, your guided energy and your precious time executed through tantra and yantra.

Mantra is ruled by the principle of positive mental attitude. To be a winner you must have a winning attitude.

A Winning attitude is a psychologically pre-set mind set to achieve an outcome no matter how hard the obstacles are.

Attitude determines your feelings, and feelings determine your actions and behavior. I know positive mental attitude is an overly stressed word in personal growth. That is because it is the most essential factor in creating success in every area of life. Several studies in positive psychology show that people with a positive, optimistic attitude are more successful, healthier and happier.

Another important factor that controls the mind set of a THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 69

winner is a sense of certainty. Your certainty for anything is supported by your belief system. Winners have strong belief system that is empowering while mediocre people have a belief system that doubts their own strength.

What does a belief system do? It either gives you the certainty that you will fail or win. Like any power tool, certainty, used at the right time and for the right purpose, can be extremely effective. However, when overused or misused it can do a lot more harm than good.

The best metaphor to represent how certainty should be used can be found in the Olympic diver. First, the athlete will stand on the board and reflect on every aspect of the dive that he is about to perform. Once that it is done, all doubts are put aside, with complete certainty he sets in and the dive is executed with perfect confidence. Great athletes do that every time. They win because they are certain they will. When you are certain, something magical happens to your mind, you began to expect a positive outcome. When you expect an outcome there is a strong co-ordination between the mind and the body. When everything works in harmony, you will materialize that outcome. Certainty turns hopes into expectation. When your mind operates at a state of complete expectation, everything what you deserve will be manifested to you. All Winners winning attitude is filled with certainty for a positive outcome. The bad news is that a little trace of self doubt can divulge you to miss the winner's edge. You need the absolute certainty to win at any conditions.

It could be said that there are two types of certainty.

There would be certainty in action and certainty in conviction. Certainty in action is the type of certainty that is needed when the planning and reflection has been done and the time for execution has come. That is the certainty THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 70

that has been called, ‘The Winner's Edge.’

An attitude of absolute certainty is a powerful emotion-an emotion that can provide untold energy when properly harnessed. That energy in many cases can spell the difference between success and failure.

Certainty usually springs from the core belief that says, “If I am committed enough and passionate enough, I can succeed at anything that I'm willing to do." That is one of the most powerful and empowering belief that a person can have.

That is the kind of belief that sustains all the movers and shakers of this world. There is nothing as powerful as the, “If I really want to do something, nothing can stop me.” attitude and belief. At one time in our life, we all had the belief that nothing could stop us. Sadly, for many of us, that belief has been crushed by failures and frustrations.

Luckily, beliefs may be crushed but it does not mean that it is destroyed. It can always be restored, rekindled and revived. It can even be resurrected. So what is your MANTRA/MOTTO for your life?

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Chapter Eleven:

TANTRA

TANTRA MEANS STRATEGY, plan and purpose.

Tantra is ruled by the principle of aptitude or skills. If mantra is about ‘what' you want, then tantra is about the ‘how' and ‘why'.

To achieve your mantra you need the power of tantra.

To achieve your goals you need to take multiple plans and actions inspired by the ‘why' or reasons. With enough reasons new ways will be formed to reach your goals easily and faster. The more different things you do that are likely to help you to achieve your goal, the more likely it is you will do the right thing at the right time. You can make a mind map. It is like forming a list of possibilities to reach your goals. You can create a mind map with specific action list. Once you make your map, the path becomes clear and the journey in life picks up a faster pace.

Lots of people fail in reaching their goals because they have limited ways to reach their goals and they have no strong reasons to pursue them. Winners are people who THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 72

have devised several ways to reach their goals. Once you have several means, your leverage increases. By ‘several means' I mean multiple and unstoppable massive action plans. I call it massive action because the action list is a habit of consistent efforts and irrevocable action. Not a one time job, not just a try, but an everlasting commitment to your goals with consistent action. Every single day when you make a progress and you are in the pursual of your goal, life becomes an exciting collection of experiences.

You build qualities like patience, courage, and confidence.

You stay motivated at all times and you become an unstoppable force. When you pursue a big goal, you are actually becoming a big person yourself.

How do you get bigger?: You get bigger by learning more skills and having more valuable experiences. When you learn more skills; problems will start appearing smaller in front of you. It is a fact. When difficulties arise you can push through them because you are pretty clear about what is waiting for you on the other end of struggles. Your current problems and challenges become insignificant in front of your target. Most importantly every time you overcome a problem you are getting more skilled at solving them. You become a tantric- a master strategist at solving problems.

The core of tantra is strategy. One major tantra of all winners is the ability to turn problems into challenges, and challenges into winning opportunities. Winners are never limited by anything in this world. Remember they are 'blue sky' thinkers. Therefore winners stand out in one area of breaking limitations where most of the losers are bound by their limitations.

The ability to overcome limitations is the capacity to outgrow any challenges. Winners are solution seekers. This THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 73

means that they really seek out a solution to every problem they face. They possess the tantra or skills to manage their challenges and profit from their problems by turning them into opportunities. The tantra in this context means the ability to achieve personal breakthroughs in every human adversity. No one can escape problems and challenges in life. Everyone faces difficulties and challenges on every step of their way, if they are moving towards their goals.

The difference between high achievers and low achievers is simply that high achievers utilize adversity and struggles for personal growth, while low achievers allow difficulties and adversity to overwhelm them and leave them discouraged and dejected forever.

It is not about how many times you fall that matters.

The truth of the matter is, you fail only when you refuse to get up. Remember to bounce back after every time you fall.

No disappointment set back, trauma, or tragedy becomes so devastating that you can't gain something of value to take with you to the next experience. Successful people learn from everything that happens to them. They become victorious in situations where others see themselves helpless as victims.

Tantra is ruled by aptitude. Aptitude in this context means a collection of life enhancing skills.

One key skill to problem solving and overcoming challenges is applying a different kind of questioning process.

Whenever we are faced with problems, our mind will start this ping pong of questions and answers. When challenges are thrown at winners, they begin thinking in a pattern to seek solutions rather than multiplying the problems. Problems and challenges can overwhelm us and diminishes our capacity to ask the right questions. When THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 74

you engage in a questioning process like ‘why am I in this problem?' or 'why me?', you are not seeking answers to the problem, but you are sulking.

Winners maintain their calmness and composure at their worst situations and ask questions like ‘how can I?' (Even though I have made this point earlier, I believe that repetition is the mother of learning.) Whenever you are faced with a challenge, when you ask a question like, ‘why this is happening to me?' our brain will come out with answers to justify the problem. You dwell in problems and all justification leads to more pain and suffering. On the other hand winners frame questions quite differently when they face a challenge. They ask questions like these: How can I benefit from a situation like this?

What good can I learn from this experience?

What lessons have I learnt from this?

What am I excited or juiced about my life at this very moment?

What activities can make me feel greater today?

How can I improve my life situation?

Questions that start with ‘how can I?', not only put you on a positive mode giving an immediate shift from problems to solutions but also give you a sense of direction and power over your situations. You can reinterpret life's experiences that were previously labeled as negative into positive nurturing experiences as well.

It is the right frame of questions that will give us more clarity to a situation. ‘How can I?', is a magical questioning process during the times of greater difficulty.

Questioning process like ‘why me' can only make you dwell in problems.

We must turn every problem into opportunities and that THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 75

begins with the right questioning. Our quality of life is primarily determined by the quality of questions we ask and the decisions we make based on them.

The one who describes a problem scenario so poetically and ay nothing can be done about it remains in the problem. That is a loser's mind set. Winners are solution providers. They are the ones who find solutions and bill other people for their problems that can't be solved by themselves.

Another tantra of a winner is to use all their resources strategically to achieve an outcome. One of the key resources all of us have is the resource of time.

We all have time-24 hours, one particular resource equally divided among all humans. Many people who say they do not have time are just lying to themselves and everyone around them. People can only relate to time.

When someone says 'I do not have time for exercise,' he or she actually means that they do not want to invest their time for exercise. But they have enough time for other things like shopping or watching brainless television.

People relate to time in accordance with their priorities in life. If they say they do not have time for something means, they do not have that set of activities in their list of priority. It's that simple.

Time is the modern day currency. What you do with your time makes you a winner or loser. Time is a powerful resource. Time is money, so it has been said. Why do you think people say time is money? There are three things you can do with both time and money. You can either invest both time and money or you can spend them or probably you can waste both.

Time management has become an effective skill to thrive in today's demanding work place. Perhaps the oldest time management is skill is taught by Ivy Lee called ‘the THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 76

critical six'. There is an interesting story behind developing this time management tool. At the turn of the last century, a man named Ivy Lee met Charles M Schwab, president of Bethlehem Steel. His objective was to sell his service to Schwab and help Bethlehem steel company to become more efficient. Schwab's reaction was that his people already knew what they should be doing, his problem was just getting them to do it. As a result Schwab wasn't buying Lee's idea.

‘Just suppose I could give you a tool, an action that would guarantee you'd become more efficient, you'd be interested, wouldn't you?' Lee asked. ‘Better yet,' he continued, sensing Schwab's resistance, ‘how about if I just give you the idea, let you use it for 21 days; if it works, share it with our employees. Then send me a cheque for whatever you think it's worth'.

‘Well, okay, what is it?' Schwab asked.

‘At the beginning of every single day, or better yet, at the end of the day before the following day, take out a piece of paper and write down the six most important things you need to do to achieve your objectives on that particular day,' Lee said. ‘In fact, go ahead and do that right now for tomorrow.' Schwab thought about it, and wrote down six action items.

‘Now put them in order of importance, one being the most important, two being the second most important, and so on,' Lee continued. So Schwab did that.

‘Starting tomorrow first thing, start on item number one.

Do not go on to item number two until you have fully completed item number one. Then continue the succession with each number. If you go to the end of the day and have not completed your first list of action items, then roll over your your actions to the next day. If five and six are left THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 77

undone, they automatically become items one and two for the next. Use this for as long as you like, and then if you think it's worth something send me a cheque for that amount.' Lee concluded.

Later an interesting thing happened. Less than a month later, Ivy Lee got a cheque in the post for a princely sum of twenty five thousand dollars. Attached was a note signed

by Charles M Schwab: ‘That's the most powerful tool for achievement that anyone has ever taught me, and here is a fraction of what it's worth.'

Bethlehem Steel was relatively unknown at the time, but went on to become the world's largest steel producer in the world within five years. Schwab earned 100 million dollars, making him the most powerful and famous steel man alive. The twenty five thousand dollar investment on Lees' idea turned into many millions at a time when the average income in the American work force was around two dollar a day.

Since then, many powerful business people have attributed their success to this technique. When you invest your time like money on productive areas you will receive a residual life time income. Time is the most valuable commodity today. Winners realize that. Customers are ready to pay more for a job well done in less time. Business world is catching up with time in a highly competitive environment where everything is changing drastically. The only way you can measure time is through speed and sense of urgency , it has become the key secret of major achievements today. Sense of urgency is taking action and result faster than others. Fast tempo is essential to succeed.

All winners have a reputation for speed. They do things faster; they do it with passion with high energy, better than others. They have a dependability record to prove that.

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Winners are always in demand. That is why everyone is after winners to get their job done.

Tantra is ruled by aptitude. Winners invest their time to build their aptitude. The biggest investment you will ever make in this life is on you. Winners are highly aware of this thumb rule for winning. Therefore they are always committed to progressive learning and growing.

One of the best use of time is the use of NET time, or No Extra Time. You can use your NET time to your prime time learning. You can use your NET time like you can listen to a motivational audio program while you are driving or jogging.

Losers are caught up in the intelligent trap of pretending to know almost everything. They use their education and qualifying degrees as an impediment to stop them from learning anything new because they believe they already know everything. Their cups are already full.

Most of the people do not read books or invest on training programs after their college education. They are caught up in an ‘education trap'. The truth is that information is changing rapidly today. Many things what we have learned in the past is obsolete information today.

Winners will upgrade. They will revise their information. They are committed to learning. Learning is growing. Learning and growing are unending process of life. Therefore be a student for life. Otherwise you are forced to learn expensive lessons from mere life experiences due to the lack of right information.

Philosopher and social pioneer Eric Hoffner once wrote, “In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned will find a world that no longer exists” A person who is open to learning and open to new information is curious and admires all the wonders of life.

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To be a winner, you need to study other winners. Winning is about the mind game. We are living in one of the most exciting time in history; we can call this age a ‘psychozoic age' which means everything is achievable with the power of mind.

If the mind has to win a game, the mind must be well fed to wrestle with the uncertainties of life. Feed your mind everyday by reading a good book, listening to an audio book or attending a meaningful workshop and seminars by the experts in the industry. Improve your quality of thinking by reading thoughtful and inspiring books on personal development. Take your mental protein every day.

Invest on yourself. Feed your mind.

Winners have voracious appetite to learn new information, a new skill or a new winning attitude. Yes, attitude can be learned from others by modeling them.

Attitude can also be mentored.

Tantra means building skills to overcome challenges.

Gain skills and information, read & learn everything you can to improve your human potential. Do your homework.

Study the field you are in. Research it thoroughly.

Overcome the fear of ignorance and become an expert in the industry.

Be outstanding.

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Chapter Twelve:

YANTRA YANTRA MEANS THE MECHANICS, the system and the vehicle for action. Yantra is ruled by the principle of action.

What controls your daily actions? What are the mechanics you follow everyday as rituals?

We humans have developed a familiarity with our lifestyle that is so mechanical that we call them as habits.

The first core principle of yantra is habits: Winning and losing are not accidents. Winning is predictable, learned and duplicated. Failure is also as predictable as success.

Why? Because both winning and losing are the results of difference in our habits.

A habit is defined as a conditioned response to stimuli. It is an automatic or mechanical way of responding to a particular situation. A habit is formed through a repeated response, thinking and action. Habits are conditioned which means they are learned over time. Habits control most of human actions. We are all creatures of habits. As we all know habits are either good or bad. Ed Foreman said, “Good habits are hard to form but easy to live with. Bad habits are easy to form and hard to live with.�

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The good news is that you can unlearn bad habits by substituting them with good habits.

You see people who are successful at achieving and living their dreams understand the fact that we shape our habits first and then our habits shape us. Winners don't like doing unpleasant tasks any more than losers do, but they get help when needed - to develop the habits of success in doing those little things - that make a BIG difference! It's really simple and natural to them.

The second core principle of yantra for winning is building a support system: The support system for any successful person on this planet is his or her network of powerful relations with other like minded people. You can call it as your own mastermind groups or rolodex. The best growth system is the kind of people we are all connected with. We literally become whom we hang out with. If we hang out with winners we will become winners. If we hand out with a bunch of losers we will become losers. The system is very simple and works with 100% accuracy.

Dr.David McCelland of Harvard University researched the qualities and characteristics of high achievers in our society. What he found was that your choice of a ‘reference group', the people with whom you habitually associate was more important in determining your success or failure than any other single factor. As Zig Ziglar says, “If you want to fly with the eagles, you can't continue to scratch with the turkeys”. The choice and expansion of a positive oriented reference group can supercharge your success in every step of the way. When you have high standard individuals in your group you will eventually raise your standards as well.

Therefore make worthy contacts. Remember your network equals your net worth. Also work on your interpersonal intelligence of connecting with other people, the ability to THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 82

understand and to be understood by other people. Relate to people you want to associate with. Begin to connect with people and expand your Rolodex. Work on a support system that will be a greater leverage for you in succeeding ahead of time.

Decide upon people, groups and organizations whose support and cooperation will support your goals and relate to them. Practice the golden rule of relationship building: ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' The principle of cooperation and reciprocation is the critical factor in relationship building. One of the greatest way to connect with people is genuinely being interested in other's welfare. Great relationships are built on mutual trust and respect for each other.

People lose jobs, businesses, customers, employees, and support from friends and family due to the lack of an interpersonal skill of getting along well with other people.

Winners create a network of interdependencies. They make their power base by doing number of favors to a lot of people and keep them obligated to serve them back in return. That is the tantra of yantra, being a giver much before being the receiver.

Losers are selfish and do not do any good to others or to themselves. They encourage others to waste their time, talent and energy. Winners on the other hand inspire and support other people to become their best.

Winners are great communicators. They build a support group who will cheerfully leverage the success they seek.

To become a great communicator, first one must become a great listener. Listen more than what you talk. It is the one mouth versus two ears ratio. Listen without judgment and interruptions. The objective of communication is to build and not to destroy relationships.

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Use clarity as a power principle when it comes to communicating with others.

Simple gestures like a smile can break the ice to begin communication with any strangers. It is easy to smile because it takes only 12 muscles to smile compared to the use of 103 muscles to frown. Words like ‘please' and ‘thank you' can do wonders wherever you go and communicating with people from any walks of life or culture.

You can also make a systematic or yantric approach to winning by leveraging on a strong supporting team.

Building a strong TEAM is the biggest part of the yantra for winning. A strong dependable team is greater leverage to accelerate the speed of winning. Team is a wonderful system for winning and the application of team power at strategic places can make you reach the heights unimaginable by one person's ability and potential alone.

Remember two heads are better than one.

To build a great team the first and foremost important factor is selection. Once you select the right team members.

You must tell everyone, what is that you want to achieve.

Explain your mantra to all team members. They must be clear about your Peak Vision, your plan and purpose. You must also explain to every team member ‘why' you want to achieve the goals you have outlined. Explain to your team members about your ‘tantra'. Everyone's roles, responsibility, functions and powers must be well defined and well informed to everyone to avoid confusion and discrepancy.

Every team member must feel the sense of control on the part of the job they are assigned to do. You must create an environment for everyone to perform at their best. That is the true team leadership; creating an environment for growth and progress, allowing everyone in the team to deliver their best. Make every team member feel great about THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 84

themselves. When someone does well, recognize them publically and when they do mistakes, criticize or evaluate their behavior privately. When the team fails, accept 100% responsibility as the leader of that team and when the team wins share the glory with everyone.

Have your machine or yantra ready! Develop empowering habits, develop your support system and have a great team on place. Building your yantra always sets for outstanding results.

Yantra is ruled by the principle of action: Once you've identified and accepted your mantra, or better yet, embraced it and made a determined decision to pursue it through tantra, now you must execute it through yantra.

There are many techniques and strategies for action, but here I'll just share three simple principles, yet powerful ones which you can use immediately to keep your yantra vehicle moving. These are the principles commonly applied by winners to develop their credibility, trust, reputation and efficiency.

First principle is ‘Make a promise only to keep a promise' Practice being aware of what you say you'll do. Listen to yourself. Treat each commitment as a promise, make them sparingly and keep them religiously. We need to also realize that we say things that others take as implied promises.

It's been said that its a greater compliment to be trusted than to be loved. Haven't you ever known someone who loved a person, but didn't trust them? MAKE A PROMISE, KEEP THE PROMISE! It's the difference between a casual contribution of convenience and a conscious commitment of character, and it's all the difference in the world, especially, in the world of success and achieving your THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 85

dreams. Stick to your mantra.

Secondly, Build and use structures, systems and support.

Develop, hire, outsource, put in place methods, routines, structures and systems that will support you in achieving your dreams by forcing, or reinforcing you to do what are needed. A simple example would be to get up early in the morning to walk or jog. But instead, we make excuses to hit the snooze button on the alarm clock. Am I the only one who's done that? When we do, we are simply losing the battle of mind - over - matter. What's the structure you could use? Get an exercise buddy whom you know will be waiting on the corner for you. By being accountable for your commitment, you're more likely to keep it.

A great example of someone who successfully used the strategy of methodically relying on a ‘structured routine' was gymnast Peter Vidmar. Years ago he committed to himself and his coach that he would be the last one out of the gym each day, and would undertake his hardest and most concentrated practice for 15 minutes each day after everyone was gone.

At the Olympic level, that's tough to do, especially when everyone else is trying to do the same thing! But he did just 15 extra minutes a day, 6 days a week and the years that followed until he made it; he made a promise and kept the promise. He employed a structured routine that reinforced his best. It gave him the confidence and the winner's edge that comes with such integrity and commitment. He was in the process of living his dream and he achieved it, 4 Olympic Gold Medals! The message is clear, stick to your yantra.

The power of yantra is action. Daily mind conditioning techniques like visualization and affirmation puts your mind in complete alertness of your mantra and tantra to THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 86

take daily action.

Always remember to keep your yantra in motion.

Yantra is active only when mantra, tantra and yantra, all the three are put into action in harmony with each other.

Yantra is made for action. The machine must work at all time. You must make the machine move towards achieving your highest goals.

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Chapter Thirteen:

The philosophy of

SELF DISCIPLINE

OUR PHILOSOPHY IS DEFINED as the way in which we choose to see the world. We all have a philosophy of life with which we direct our lives in various paths. Our philosophy is the software that runs and determines all our decisions and actions.

All human beings are very similar in terms of our physiology rather like the basic hardware of a computer.

But it is our philosophy or the software that ultimately determines how the hardware operates. Its our philosophy towards health that determines our food habits. Its our philosophy towards relationship that determines how we are connected to other people. Our philosophy of wealth determines our bank balance and investment decisions.

And ultimately, our personal philosophy is a major determining point for all the decisions we take in our lives.

All events in our lives are colorless but it is our personal philosophy that overlays tone and meaning to our experiences. What is this personal philosophy?

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Our philosophy is the expression of our character. It is the definition of our beliefs. We create our vision and goals with our philosophy of life. All our commitment and action speaks our philosophy. All our motivation and the attitude we show towards others are the myriad expressions of our philosophy. Our personal philosophy ultimately determines what success is for us.

What is your personal philosophy? What is your definition of success?

Remember that our personal philosophy is a set point.

Our personal philosophy will determine the standard of our thinking and actions. People with superior personal philosophy have higher standards. All achievers in this world have higher standards and their secret to lasting success is having consistency in improving their standards.

We all can do well once in a while; we can hit a sixer in a cricket match once in a while. But to become a master blaster like Sachin Tendulkar, you need consistency and constant improvement in the game.

It is strategies that give us the unique edge to achieve results; and strategies can be learned. All of us have some strategies. They work as leverages. The biggest life strategy you must develop in order to become super successful is the strategy of self discipline. People who are successful in their field are competitive, not with others but with oneself. The biggest competition you will ever have in this world is the competition between your disciplined mind and undisciplined mind. When the undisciplined mind becomes the boss, your life will lead to a ruin and when the disciplined mind takes over, your life is led to victory.

Disciplines give us the order and structure in life. It gives us tools to overcome our challenges. A disciplined mind gives us clear perspectives and above all discipline gives us the THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 89

power to overcome our natural laziness.

Elbert Habbard defined self discipline as ‘the ability to make yourself do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you like it or not'. It means that you are in charge, and not your emotions. Certain emotions can put you into a state of laziness. Laziness is a feeling state of doing nothing, where you lose your drive to do anything worthwhile. If you have ever tried to stop being lazy, you know how hard it can be. And it is emotionally exhausting to be fighting a losing battle against yourself.

Most of the people are lazy because they have no motivation to do something. They do not have goals or purpose in life to drive them to act upon their dreams.

Laziness is a lack of motivation: For human beings, to do almost anything they need to be motivated. Let's say you're sitting comfortably watching your favorite show on TV, you then feel discomfort from your bladder getting full, you need to get up out of the comfy seat and go to the toilet.

This is indirect motivation because in your head, you prefer to stay at rest where you are, but your body is making it increasingly uncomfortable for you to keep sitting there and is telling you to get up and do what needs to be done.

You can probably hang on until a commercial break, but of course eventually you get up. This is indirect motivation because its not something you chose consciously.

Indirect motivation is a state of being uncomfortable, It is also a state of frustration. A state of frustration only tells you that you are not living up to your full potential. When we do not operate on our fullest capacity, we get frustrated.

Frustrations are indirect motivations to act on our potential, goals, abilities and skills. To end any frustration we must act immediately and get bottom line results.

But if you are frustrated and lazy at the same time, then THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 90

achieving success is next to impossible. Normally human beings love to sit idle unless they are forced by circumstances to do otherwise. You must challenge yourself to do more and achieve more by demanding more from yourself.

You need to achieve your highest standard. Continuous improvement is the key to success and you should challenge yourself every day to strive more and to achieve more. You should be climbing, if not, you are only sliding.

Success is making measurable progress in a reasonable period of time. The same goes for failures as well. Failure is making measurable decline in a reasonable period of time.

A measurable decline can happen when we cease to take action. So, the biggest challenge we often face is laziness. Laziness can creep into your day and it can take away your precious time, without you realizing it.

Procrastination is indeed one of the biggest symptoms of laziness.

According to Dr. Joseph Ferrari, a well known psychologist in Chicago, there are three basic types of lazy people: The first category comprises of people who are thrill seekers and they wait until the last minute so that they get into a euphoric rush when they finish the work at the very last possible minute.

The second category will avoid work simply because they are too scared to fail. Doing it at the very last minute gives them an excuse for the mediocrity of the job they did.

They would just rather put the blame on lack of time rather on themselves.

The third category of lazy people simply let go of the responsibility so that they avoid making the ultimate decisions. They avoid tasks saying it's not their work.

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We are surrounded by successful people and lazy people. The challenge is that we are affected by people whom we are surrounded with. The bad news is that the majority of people are lazy and they can influence us easily.

I am not saying this out of cynicism, because most of the people have already embraced their comfort zone, and that is nothing but a lazy zone.

Laziness has become the biggest enemy of productivity. A noted French writer Jules Renard says “Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired" How do we spot this laziness disease? The biggest sign of laziness is the procrastination habit. You procrastinate because you are lazy; you are lazy because you procrastinate. It works either ways. One causes the other and the vice versa. While there are so many other reasons for procrastinating a task, the most common and the straightforward reason is laziness.

Laziness requires no reason to postpone a task.

Procrastination is a time manipulator of ‘not now, but tomorrow' syndrome. Those who are afflicted with this are held back either by their fear of failing to get what they want or by their fear of actually getting what they want.

Success comes to the man who does today, what others were thinking of doing tomorrow. Today is the best day of the week. Someday never comes. Look into a calendar, 'someday' is not any day of the week.

Remember that, procrastination is the mother of all regrets. It postpones the future, aborts liftoff at the last minute. Unless you take action to achieve your goals, life becomes a constant series of postponements, cancellations, and missed opportunities. When you begin to procrastinate few times, it easily becomes a habit.

As for procrastinating habit, the cure is simple: ‘do it THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 92

now.' That's it. Remember the Nike slogan, ‘Just do it'. Just do that right now. Take some step, no matter how small it is, but take a step. That is the key.

Start with what you have, not with what you don't have. Opportunity is always where you are, never where you were. To get anywhere you must launch out of somewhere or you will get nowhere. You will never know what you can until you begin. Hamilton Marbie once said “the question for each man to settle is not what he would do if he had the means, time, influence and education advantages, but what he will do with the things he has.”

Each one of us has the ability to begin and to create what we need from something that is already here. The raw materials are available everywhere. You must identify them, believe in them and use them. The reason why people fail in what they do is not because they lack resources, it is because they lack resourcefulness.

Do you want to be the fastest person on your road to success? Then you need one extra quality and if you master this mind set, your pace will never be the same. I am talking about developing a sense of urgency in life. The fastest way to act on anything is to have a sense of urgency in life. The easiest way to motivate oneself is to have a sense of urgency in life. A sense of urgency takes you to the edge of reason and it reminds you to act upon ideas that you have been postponing. As the popular saying goes ‘Early birds get the worms.'

Develop a sense of urgency in life. This is an inner drive and desire to get on with a job quickly and enthusiastically. This inner drive is a race against time and it is a race against your own procrastination habits. Sense of urgency turns you into an action oriented person. It turns what you do into a sport. If you have watched any THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 93

sport, you will know that its is about speed, quickness and alertness. That's sense of urgency in action.

People with a sense of urgency will always ask ‘what is now and what is next?' They take immediate control of their present moments.

Fast tempo goes hand in hand with success. When you do that you have kicked in the ‘momentum principle' on to your advantage. The faster you move the more energy you have. It shifts your performance to the fast track and your energy will explode. As a result your tempo becomes a sign of your superior efficiency over other slow people.

Build your reputation for speed. People who get things done faster are ahead of others. People who are pioneers are way ahead of other people. Do not wait until someone else come up with your idea. You be that leader. You be the pioneer. So, do it now.

Those who have the thirst will find their drink. Those who are hungry will find food. Those who are tired will find rest. Those who want to succeed will take action now.

One of the reasons why we all become lazy is because of being slow. When you walk slowly, your metabolic rate slows down. Right from the morning you wake up, put your life in a fast pace with energy. But don't mistake movement for achievement. There are a lot of busy people, but when you take their inventory of achievements, you will know that they are so busy with the minors in life, that they lose track of the majors.

Be the busy bee that brings in the results. Fast pace with energy starts with a simple habitual exercise of jumping out of the bed in the morning. Get enough rest and wake up with energy.

Upon awakening, start your day with a boost of enthusiasm. Jump out of bed, raise your arms in the air and THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 94

declare, “Today is a great day. I am grateful for my life. I am grateful for myself.� Repeat that affirmation out loud with as much emotional intensity as you can for 2 to 5 minutes while pacing around your bedroom. And most important, start your day with an attitude of gratitude.

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Chapter Fourteen: The power of

DECISIONS “It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.�- Tony Robbins TO DECIDE OR NOT TO DECIDE, that is the procrastination.

One of the most important skills to develop on the road to becoming highly successful is the ability to become proficient at making decisions. Your power of decision should be strong enough to compel you to take actions, not tomorrow or next week, but today. The earlier you decide on what your plans are and how to implement it, the faster you would be in the throne of success.

One of the easiest ways to take control of your actions is to take control of your decisions. Decisions are what precede all of our actions. Many people go through life failing to decide an act. Consequently they live in uncertainty, mediocrity, insignificance and inner conflict.

Simple decisions about how you want to live can affect the entire path you walk through life. Deciding what kind of person you want to be is a powerful decision that can influence all of your future choices and successes.

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Decision is the hinge between hearing and doing, between knowing and living, between theory and practice.

Decisions are the embryo of new habits and the graveyard of old ones. Many decisions don't need to be re-made every day because they have become habits. We are, by nature are creatures of habits. Our habits create the essence of who we are. We like to find security through a consistent way of living. However when our experience meets change, we can become indecisive.

Your life is composed of a chain of decisions. The life you now live is the result of all the decisions you have made up to this point. If you want to change your life, just change the decisions that you make. I want to remind you at this point, even your indecision or lack of decision is a decision.

Your indecision means that you have decided not to do anything different. Remember you are where you are and what you are because you have decided to be there on the first place. Now many will disagree with this and tell me ‘Come on, I never wanted to be in a situation like this, I didn't decide to be in a position like this?'

Sorry to break the bad news my friend: YES YOU ARE!!

Remember every time you did not take a decision or never taken an action to improve your life situation you have still taken a decision or taken the action not to improve. When you do not decide, you have still taken a decision to continue to dwell in the same situation. When you do not take action you are still taking action on an opposite direction. That is inaction. Most of us live in this state, the state I call indecision. We dream about the book we will write, the trip we will take, the business we will start, the great relationship we will have, or the creative project we will begin. But we don't do it. We decide not to do it and that becomes our decision.

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Deciding not to decide creates ambivalence, and ambivalence feels unsatisfying. Ambivalence is where we dream and then we hope everything will turn out well.

Hope becomes a substitute for action. Hoping that some thing will occur that will make us happy, save us, or fulfill our lives through some magical forces even if we do not do anything about it. That's foolishness. Do you want to continue fishing without a bait and still expect to catch some fish?!

Ask yourself these questions: What great project have you considered for long but never taken action? What are you "hoping" in your life at the moment? Are you doing something to materialize your dreams? Have you taken the first step? Did you ever follow up on fulfilling any of your dreams or projects? What decisions are you postponing? What are the major decisions you have been avoiding?

I want you to make a list of all activities and decisions you have been procrastinating. Beware of the impact if you avoid them completely. Ask yourself what will happen if you continue to avoid them. Feel the pain that you go through if you avoid them, experience the pleasure you get when you achieve the results from all your decisions and actions you have taken.

Remember everything you accomplish for the rest of your life will be largely determined by the actions that you will take, or fail to take in the present. You are responsible and you are in charge no matter what the odds are. We all have the power to light up our life instantly. It is decisions that determine the course of our destiny. It is not conditions, but decisions.

Decision making ability is the sign of maturity and responsibility. We all possess the power and ability to act upon those decisions. We all know that different actions THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 98

produce different results. Every decision we take is followed by action.

The challenge is that most of us have weak decision making abilities mainly because we tend to say “I will give it a go and see if it works." A truly committed decision is like a laser beam that is so focused on its target that nothing can get in its way. In its Latin form the word ‘decide' means to ‘cut off' and that is what a truly committed decision calls us to do. Cut off all other possibilities to the extent that you will not even consider any other result. As Hernan Cortez phrase it “burn your ships behind you”. Your decisions must be firm that it must be cut off from all the wavering ideas that can change your decision.

Consider going into a restaurant and ordering tomato soup, but before the waiter can bring the order you have changed your mind and ordered cream of mushroom soup.

Change your mind a third time and ask for tomato soup with mushrooms and chicken. The poor waiter has no idea what to bring because you have no clear idea of what you want on the first place.

Your subconscious mind and the universe are playing the role of the waiter. Your subconscious mind desires to please you and fulfill your chosen selection; however, the task becomes impossible until you have clearly make a specific decision.

Clear and strong decisions shape your destiny. We can all tap on to the power of decisions. Everyday you can make decisions that will take you get closer to your dreams.

On an average day most of us humans get about sixty thousand thoughts and 95% of the thoughts are repetitions from yesterday's thoughts. Most of the thoughts include different ideas, activities you should be doing, new ideas of making money, new ways to have fun, new things to bring THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 99

into life etc. But the truth is, these thoughts are just thoughts. They are fleeting ideas, some good, some interesting, some totally useless, some practical, some stupid, some fun, etc. These ideas come and go and there's no real reason to invest time in most of them, our minds tend to run all day so if we treated each little thought we had as important we'd never get anywhere. Its easy for a thought to come in, be classed as unimportant or irrelevant and then dismissed and forgotten.

There's a huge difference though, when we take one of these thoughts and instead of just thinking about it we make a definite decision about it. Taking a fleeting thought and deciding to take action on it makes the thought real and gives it power. It's no longer a formless idea, it's been brought into form and it now has power to affect your lives.

Most of our thoughts lead us into decisions and actions or indecisions and inaction. But what ultimately shape our lives are decisions. The more decisions you take to act on an idea, the faster you will be achieving all your goals.

Thoughts without decisions are impotent. You need thoughts charged with purpose. If you think about losing weight, well... its just a thought and chances are nothing is going to happen from it. Even if you read about losing weight and make yourself a dietary plan and exercise chart, without a decision your goal will be lacking focus and determination and you might not make it too far.

Once you decide on something you should take the first step. If it's making changes in your fitness level, the first step is to join a gym. That is a decision. If its the decision to write a book, the first step is to write the first page. If its a decision to build a personal library, the first step is to buy the first book. A true decision is always, with no exception is accompanied by an immediate action. This means that THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 100

one must do the most that one can do, the moment the decision has been made.

Its decisions that gives us clarity of directions. Every decision is a new path to a new experience. Through decisions we can alter our human experience and we can change our lives by directing it with right timely decisions.

To achieve things you have never achieved before, you MUST make a decision to do things you have never made before.

Well, we all take two kinds of actions in life. One is the mental action that happens inside us called decisions and the second is the real physical action-to manifest it and give a physical form.

We are the thinker behind our thoughts and we can make infinite choices about what we want to do in this life time. We have the choices, and the choices we take shape our destiny. Choices are emotional and intellectual responses to an event or situation. You are where you are because of series of choices you have made in the past.

We all are much like a loaded gun, we are loaded with ideas and abilities we just need a trigger and a squeeze on it to fire. The irony in life is that a guy with the single bullet can take out the loaded guy with a gentle squeeze on the trigger. The one who act get results.

Some people do not pay attention to decisions because most of the outcome of decision is not immediate. We can neglect a warning, and continue to mess up our health until disaster strikes. Tiny wrong decisions can bundle up as lifetime stupidity. Bottom line, simple choices we make everyday can make a huge impact in our lives.

The psychology to winning consistently is about making some quality changes in our lives. We can make those changes by taking some quality decisions today. One of the THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 101

most important days in all our lives is a decision making day. If ever something has altered your life in the past, it is because you have decided on something and later stuck to that decision. You would have said to yourself 'I do not want to live like this anymore' and finally you decided to take action.

Whatever decisions that have helped you to grow as a mature, independent, successful individual is the decision you have made to embrace the unknown. You were willing to experience a field of possibilities. You took that risk to step into the unknown.

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Chapter Fifteen:

Take Massive

ACTIONS “Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.�

- Dale Carnegie A WINNER IS MADE OF ACTION. We all know that talk is cheap. There are so many disguised losers in our society. The disguised loser is a coward who avoids action, the one who postpones taking action, the one who justifies and rationalize and come up with excuses to avoid taking action and the one who manipulates time with manyana syndrome.

The best time to begin is now. Stop waiting for the perfect time to do it. There is never a perfect time. And stop taking so much time coming up with the perfect plan.

Successful people will tell you that things didn't happen according to how they initially planned it. They kept taking action, and made adjustments along the way.

Action is known as the ingredient that ensures results.

No Action, No Result. Simple as that! Many people plan and talk about what they want to do, but when it comes to actually doing something, They do nothing!

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W. Clement Stone wrote “I think there is something, more important than believing: Action! The world is full of dreamers, there aren't enough who will move ahead and begin to take concrete steps to actualize their vision.”

The right time to act is when your ideas are hot and the emotion is strong to manifest that idea. Do it before the idea gets cold and emotion goes weak. Discipline is the ability to capture a worthwhile idea and turn them into a reality.

Capture and act. The key is to stay motivated all the time.

Stay hungry for success. Go after results-work on the majors of life. Remember results are the real measure of your success.

Lack of results tells you few things: You are not doing enough to create the results you want or you are not focused enough in your pursuit of your dreams or you are not skilled enough to undertake the tasks at hand or you are not learned enough or you are not pushing enough or what you are doing is not serving the purpose. When you get the results you least expect, then it is time to employ new strategies and various methods to reach your goals. Get new tools to execute your plan. Take a new path to reach your destination. Get help from people and collaborate with them. Make your bigger efforts collaborative.

There is a huge difference between what you can and what you do. ‘What you can or what you are' is your personality and ‘what you do' is behavior. You can't confuse personality with behavior. No matter what your personality is, the results and outcome are from your behavior.

Your performance is an outcome of your behavior and your behavior is the vehicle of your action. You are made of action. The world does not pay you for what you know. It THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 104

pays you for what you do. And pays you more for what you are outstanding at. Success simply takes good ideas and puts them to work. According to David Bly, ‘Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven't planted.' You can't just dream yourself into what you could be, without taking action. There is a famous old saying ‘laziness travels so slowly, poverty soon overtakes it.' Don't be that person who says ‘nothing is impossible' and do nothing in life!

The world is divided into people who do things and people who talk about doing things. As Moliere puts it “All men are alike in their promises; it is only in their deeds they differ.” Remember this, Wishing alone never made a poor man wealthy, a fat person lose weight, or an unemployed person get a job. Remember results are the outcome of action. Always take action. Actions don't speak, they actually roar.

Here is the thumb rule to action. Do not mistake an action for accomplishment. Accomplishment is the result of an action or consistent actions, not always a one-time event. Many people delude themselves believing that they have taken action only by starting something. They will start their business and expect the business to flourish by itself. They get married and they expect the relation to improve by itself. They join a job and expect a promotion by itself.

Getting started alone does not guarantee any success.

Confucius wrote “a journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step” I want to add this “a single step will not guarantee you the journey of thousand miles.” You need to keep walking. Without consistency and continuity you are not going to get there. You need to follow through on your actions and you need to build a momentum of moving THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 105

forward in the pursuit of your dreams. Many people give up after few steps. Persistence is self discipline in action.

Perseverance is the true spirit for victory. The success of the journey is about making progress and getting closer to your destination.

The world is full of people who are waiting for someone to come along and motivate them to be the kind of people they wish they could be. They are waiting for the messiah who will come someday and save them. They do not know there is a messiah in all of us, our inner voice, who constantly reminds us to fully live our potential. No one is coming for the rescue. These people are waiting for a bus on a street where there will be no bus service. If you do not wake up to this reality, you will be still waiting.

The majority of the people in our culture are just waiting. They are not hustling while they wait. Studies prove that only 2% of people can work without any supervision. The rest 98% need someone to come and put some pressure on them to do something. The two percent are the leaders. You can be that person. You can be that proactive person or the self actualized individual in the words of Abraham Maslow. You do not need to be told or asked to do anything in life. You must know what to do, and you do it pro-actively.

The whole waiting is over. Faith and action has taken charge now. Today is the first day of your new beginning.

Start with a new philosophy. Let these messages guide you.

Do the things you are most afraid of. If you think you can't then you must. Success is a process of growing. Life is about stretching beyond your limits. Success is growing out of your comfort zone.

Therefore I invoke you to start a new journey from today. Set this day up for a new life. It's time to start your THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A WINNER/ 106

dream business. If you have no office space, then start it from your home. If you have no name start with your name, and you can change that later. Start with a visiting card. Start with one client. It's time to act now. Its time to write a resume and apply for a job if you are unemployed.

Its time to read that book you have always wanted to read.

Its time to buy the first book to build your library. Its time to join the gym to begin your fitness life. Its time to eat an apple a day, to keep the doctor away. Its time to save the little part of the money you earn for your future investments. Its time to make that telephone call and say ‘I love you' to that person you love the most. It's time to begin writing that book. May be you will start with the first page today. Its time to launch that product or service. You will make the first call to the client today. Its time to ask that person out for a date. Its time you pick up the phone and talk to that difficult client with confidence. Its time to send that email. Its time to ask for help if you need some. Its time to say sorry if you have to. Its time to start a brand new life.

The time has finally arrived. No more excuses. No more delays. You will change; therefore your life will change.

You will be in your higher self. With more energy a new synergy will be established with this universe. A new hunger has begun for more success.

Bottom line, you are in charge of creating the life you want- the life of a winner.

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