THINK LIKE A WINNER (Part 5)

A STATE OF BECOMING

The clearer you are about your ideal result or future vision, the easier it is for you to alter your actions and behaviors in the short term to assure that you get where you want to be in the long term. You have no limitations on your potential except for those you believe you have. As Walter D. Wintle wrote:

The Man Who Thinks He Can
If you think you're beaten, you are;
If you think you dare not, you don't.
If you would like to win,
but think you can't,
It's almost a cinch you won't.

Life's battles don't always go to the stronger or faster man;
But sooner or later the man who wins Is the man who thinks he can.

THINK LIKE A WINNER

Thinking like a winner is the first step to living like a winner. You will become that which you think about most of the time. You are the architect of your personality and character. Your goal, your desire, is to be as successful, happy, and prosperous as you possibly can be in every aspect of your life. Therefore, the systematic development of a positive attitude is something that you need to work on every hour of every day. Continue to work on yourself and your thinking until you reach the point where you absolutely, positively believe yourself capable of winning in anything you sincerely want to accomplish.

People succeed not because they have remarkable characteristics or qualities. The most successful people are quite ordinary, just like you and me. Most of us start off poor and confused. We spend many years getting some sort of direction in our lives. But the turning point comes when we begin to believe that we have within us that divine spark that can lead us onward and upward to the accomplishment of anything that we really want in life. So, become the man or woman who thinks, I can. And when you reach the point where you feel unshakable confidence in yourself and your abilities, nothing will be able to stop you, not even the Sahara. Just stay your course and take each challenge ... one oil barrel at a time.

(Article extracted from Nightingale Advantedge News letter)

THINK LIKE A WINNER (Part 4)

WHAT IS HOLDING YOU BACK?

People who never achieve success do so because they fall in love with their excuses. It isn't the actual truth about yourself and your abilities that hurts you; it is the things you consider to be true but have no basis in truth that hold you back.

We naturally fall in love with our reasons for not moving ahead. Even if someone challenges those reasons, or tells us that we have the capacity to accomplish so much more, we will often argue with that person.

We attempt to prove to ourselves and others that our limitations are real, and the less justification these ideals or beliefs have, the more adamant we become in attempting to prove them to others. Richard Bach wrote this beautiful line: "Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours."

So how do you change your beliefs? The starting point is to get up the courage to question these self-limiting beliefs seriously. Question your basic premises. Check your assumptions. Ask yourself, What assumptions am I making about myself or my situation that might not be true? Think about them. Remember, most of our self-limiting beliefs have no basis whatsoever in fact. They are based on information and ideas that we have accepted as true, sometimes in early childhood, and to the degree we accept them as true, they become true for us.

You can always tell what your true values and beliefs are by looking at your actions. It isn't what you say or wish or hope or intend that demonstrates what you really believe. It is only what you do. It is only the behaviors that you engage in. It is only the actions you choose to undertake. And out of your actions come all the elements of your life. You are where you are and what you are because of what you have done in the past. But the wonderful news is, the past doesn't have to hold you back. That's because we are in a perpetual state of becoming.

(Article extracted from Nightingale Advantedge News letter)

THINK LIKE A WINNER (Part 3)

OVERCOMING THE FOUR OBSTACLES TO A POSITIVE ATTITUDE

These obstacles are fear, worry, anger, and doubt. When things are not working out the way we had expected, our immediate response is to become fearful and uneasy. We are afraid that we will lose our money, waste our effort, or forfeit our emotional or physical investment in what we have done. If we are not careful, we start thinking of our potential losses rather than focusing on our potential gains.

Fear triggers worry, and we begin to use our power of imagination to create all sorts of negative images that cause us unhappiness and insomnia, and make us unable to perform efficiently. Fear and worry create anger, or what has been called the "victim complex." Instead of moving constantly forward in the direction of our dreams, we begin to react and respond, and to blame other people and other situations for our problems and challenges at hand.

Surrounding these negative emotions is the mental quality of doubt. Doubt is a fertile breeding ground for the other three negative emotions. Therefore, to eliminate these obstacles to positive thinking, you need to systematically eradicate the weakening emotion of doubt.

How do you do this? It's simple. The only real antidote to fear, worry, anger, and doubt is positive action toward the achievement of some worthwhile ideal.

Psychologists tell us that the key to dealing effectively with life is what they call "cognitive control." This is the assumption that you can think about, and concentrate on, only one thing at a time, either positive or negative. Successful people consciously choose to think about what they want, rather than what they don't want. As a result, they are continuously taking action toward their goals, rather than spending their time thinking and worrying about the current difficulties or the inevitable challenges that are sure to face them.

(Article extracted from Nightingale News letter)

THINK LIKE A WINNER (Part 2)

As we moved south across the desert, we encountered endless problems, any one of which could have ended our trip and, probably, our lives. Yet, it was during this desert crossing that I learned one of the most important lessons in my life about attitude.

The French, who had controlled Algeria for many years, had marked a path across the desert with black 55-gallon oil drums. The drums were spaced exactly five kilometers apart. As we drove and came to an oil drum, the next drum, which was five kilometers ahead, would pop up on the horizon, and the last oil drum, which was five kilometers behind, would fall off the horizon. Wherever we were, we could always see two oil drums at a time — the one we had just left and the one we were headed toward. To cross one of the greatest deserts in the world, all we had to do was take it "one oil barrel at a time." We did not have to cross the entire desert at once. For me, crossing the Sahara was a metaphor for life. In order to maintain a positive attitude under all circumstances, all you have to do is take it one step, one oil barrel, at a time. As Thomas Carlyle said, "Our great business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand."

In any endeavor we can choose to be positive and constructive, sit down and think through the situation, and then begin to deal with it one oil barrel — one small achievement — at a time. Of course, this isn't always as easy as it sounds. We all must overcome the four obstacles that tend to get in the way of our maintaining a positive attitude.

(Article extracted from Nightingale Advantedge News letter)

THINK LIKE A WINNER (Part 1)

People who never achieve success do so because they fall in love with their excuses. It isn't the truth about yourself and your abilities that hurts you; it is the negatives you consider to be true that hold you back. Abandon your excuses and learn to overcome the obstacles to success ... one oil drum at a time.

When I was 21 years old, a friend of mine and I decided to go off to see the world. Many of our friends were going to Europe and hitchhiking around with rucksacks. We decided to be different and go to Africa instead. It never occurred to us to ask why no one else was going to Africa. We found out later, much to our great regret.

To get to our destination in Africa, we had to cross the Sahara. We started out from London, riding bicycles across France and Spain. The labor was excruciating, the progress slow, and the pleasure was nonexistent.

In Gibraltar, we sold our bicycles and invested our last few dollars in an old Land Rover. We crossed from Gibraltar to Tangier into Algeria. We were on our way in Africa. Still, there was one obstacle between us and the greenery we were anxious to see. It was that darn old desert. We had no idea how serious and how difficult this adventure was to be.

(Article extracted from Nightingale Advantedge News letter)

Impossible Is Not An Option

I love to walk along the beach near my house together with my wife after our dinner. Friday evening is the usual time we will have our walk on the beach. I worked a 5 days week, and during weekday night, I still need to work on my personal projects which normally take up 2-3 hrs. You can understand how I appreciate and take great important of every Friday evening walk with my wife.

Last week, while strolling under the moon light with soft sea breeze blowing onto our faces. Watching couples cuddling under the cover of the darkness. What you can hear is only the sound of the wave coming onshore? Such romantic scene, only can happen in Hollywood movie is unbelievable happening every Friday night to us.

Unconsciously looking down onto the cement path that we are walking, under the warm moon light, we noticed some white painted words on the cement path. Look a little closer, it reads,

“Winning is not about beating the man in front of you, but within you.
Impossible is not an option.”

Think about the words closely, a lot of thing we thought whether we can or cannot do is on our believes, is all in our mind. It remind me of what Brian Tracy talk about in one of his audio CD:

80% of our constrain we faced in achieving our goal is within ourselves, only 20% is coming from external.

It matches want I saw on the path that night.

The world is full of new experience and new knowledge. That’s how much we can learnt, as for me just a simple walk along the beach.

We Can Learn From Frank Lampard

For those of you who are Football crazy (soccer) about English Premier League, will know who is Frank Lampard. He is the mid-field superstar of Chelsea Football Club. I recently surfing the internet soccer news and come across this article which I like to share with you. Below is part of the extract on what Lampard said in the interview to BBC:

At Chelsea I practice after training because I was given that advice when I was very young: train and work on your skills after everyone else has gone home, work on your weaknesses where you can. That lesson has become part of me.

Instead of thinking I've had enough now, or I can't do it, or I can't hit it with my left foot, to try and do more on your own is a great thing to make you into a player. I do lots of shooting, passing and sometimes fitness work if we haven't played games. I'll basically work on anything I feel is relevant at the time. If something is letting me down I'll work hard on that and hopefully the improvement will show in the following weeks.

I know first hand that dealing with someone with a great technical ability can help you. Gianfranco Zola had probably the best technique I've seen in a footballer I've played with and he was so willing to help others. Zola was a massive influence on me because he arrived when he was 35 and I was amazed how someone at that age could still have that hunger to improve and to take me with him and say 'come on let's do it together'. He was the most talented player I played with and he was still working on shooting with his left foot so he was as comfortable with it as he was with his right. These are basic things but it shows you that players at the top of the game are still doing them.

Football has always been the biggest thing in my life so at any moment after school or during my lunch break I would be training or just playing with my mates as much as I could. Undoubtedly there are more skilful players than me, players like Joe Cole, Wayne Rooney, Gianfranca Zola - they're the more technical players. I like to put myself somewhere in between - a bit of skill and a lot of hard work as well. But what is important is that you make the best out of yourself. There will be players who might not be technically fantastic, but they work as hard as they can at their game and they get themselves to a good level.

I think many of us know the phrase,

Practice Makes Perfect

In fact, many of us used it very often, but how many of us actually practicing it. We have abused the very simple phrase that makes success look easy. Only those who practice it are the one who make it.