I often wonder about what makes me different then someone I admire, but then I realize that I am also someone that others admire. Observation is a key factor for my content creation, the things I write about or speak about are based on behavior observation and feedback. By observing the people that I admire, I have gathered one thing we all have in common.

All of us have a winning mindset!

So what is a winning mindset? Well, you may think it is this courage and drive to win, this burning fire within us that just bursts through our competition, but no. The winning mindset is not about winning at all, it is about learning. In fact, it is more about losing then actually winning. The winning mindset is about striving to get a little bit better every time you set out to compete, that means, to condition yourself, to prepare, to check out your competition and to have courage to fail.

I remember on my first day of University, the competition brewing hot in the air, everyone looking around to measure each other, because once we received our degrees, we were going to compete for the same jobs. We started out as 50 or so students, and the graduating class a total of 8 people. What happened to the 42 students that did not stay until the end? Some gave up, gave in, quit, others reevaluated and changed direction of what they wanted to major in.

Me? I stayed because I had made a commitment with my parents and I wanted to honor my responsibility. It wasn’t easy, I failed at many tests, I had to take extra writing classes, and I had to work part time and eventually full time. In the end, I succeeded, I finished what I set out to do and that what the winning mindset is all about. It's not actually about being number one, but it is being better than you were yesterday and not letting failures stop you!

I learned something valuable with Les Brown that I always carried with me; “if there is no enemy within the enemy outside can do us no harm!”. He says that because our worse enemy is ourselves, we will make excuses, we will play the victim and we will quit at the smell of failure. However, that is not a winner mindset, a winner mindset is “I’m going to do this thing I set out to do for myself, and if it doesn’t workout I will find another way!”

Stay positive and keep working on that winning mindset!