Authentic champions are those individuals who in a very natural, free-flowing way seem to consistently get what they want from life by providing valuable service to others. They put themselves together across the board—in their personal, professional, and community lives. They set and achieve goals that benefit others as well as themselves. You don’t have to get lucky to win at life, nor do you have to knock other people down or gain at the expense of others.
Winning is taking the talent or potential you were born with, and have since developed, and using it fully toward a purpose that makes you feel worthwhile according to your own internal standards. Happiness, then, is the natural by-product of living a worthwhile life. Happiness is the natural experience of winning your own self-respect, as well as the respect of others. You can’t buy it, wear it, drive it, swallow it, inject it, or travel to it! Happiness is the journey, not the destination. Winners are those whose “inner hard drive” carries a message something like this: “I can do a variety of things pretty well. I can try new challenges and be successful. When things don’t go smoothly at first, I keep trying or get more information to do it in a different way until it works out right.” These are the few, like yourself, who can and usually do learn the most and who can give the most to others from what they’ve learned. They’ve discovered that their imaginations serve as a life-governing device—that, if your self-image can’t possibly see yourself doing something or achieving something, you literally cannot do it! It’s not what you are that holds you back, it’s what you think you’re not.
To develop to your fullest potential, begin by consciously avoiding the temptation to judge yourself against the fantasies presented by the media, especially those of television commercials and motion pictures. Reality says you have the potential to become infinitely more than you are now. Animals are programmed by instinct, but we human beings can develop abilities through observation, imitation, and reasoning. As we have discussed, the greatest limitations you will ever face will be those you place on yourself. The power of others to rain on your parade and stifle your self-image is awesome for most people. The good news is that you don’t have to take on the role of victim. You can rewrite your scenario and become a victor in the drama called life. You are your own scriptwriter, and the play is never finished, no matter what your age, position, or station in life.
This “behind the mirror” introspection begins by realizing that skin color, birthplace, religious beliefs, gender, financial status, and intelligence are not measures of worth or worthiness. It is accepting the fact that every human being is a distinctly unique individual—and thinking how good that is! We are unique in our fingerprints. Unique in our footprints, lip-prints, and in our eye-prints. Each of us also speaks with a sound frequency unmatched by any other person.
You spend your life learning, exploring, growing, losing, winning, and, if you are unselfish, trying to make a positive contribution. Your life is a collection of moments and memories. It also is the legacy you pass on to family and future leaders. The lessons you leave in your own, next generation—as core values—are far more priceless than the material valuables you will leave them in your estate. Life is governed by universal laws that have remained unchanged since the beginning of recorded time. Actions cause reactions. Rights carry responsibilities. Truth promotes trust. Thoughts become things. Love is to life as the sun is to planet Earth. Every choice carries a reward or consequence. In the long run, like rings within a tree, each of us becomes the sum total of our actions.
The greatest men and women in all walks of life achieved their greatness out of a desire to express something within themselves that had to be expressed. Successful people—successful in the deepest sense of the word—don’t look for achievements that will bring them the most for the least amount of effort. They look for the greatest challenges to test their potential. In considering your own potential, realize that success and fulfillment choices in your life far exceed what you may currently think is possible. And our concept of “possible” is always expanding! Just recently, scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California discovered that the memory storage capacity of our brains is ten times what they had previously thought—now, a petabyte, which is equivalent to 500 billion pages of text! This begs the question, what are you storing in your mental library? Don’t limit your thinking! Do not impose mental obstacles before you give yourself (and your brain) an opportunity to explore possibilities and believe in the champion in you!
I was in Dubai for a business meeting recently and was introduced to the flying drone taxi service from the airport. You pay by smartphone or credit card, dial in the address you are going to in the GPS onboard computer, you fasten your seat belt, and the pilotless drone takes you up and over the rush hour traffic to your destination in a few minutes, instead of the normal bumper to bumper one hour ride. While I realized drones had many applications, I assumed that—like driverless cars—it would take several years to make flying taxi drones commercially viable. What appeared to be science fiction only a year or two ago has now become science fact!
The invisible barriers contained in your attitude and beliefs are, quite simply, functions of what you see day in and day out. Information can be taken in almost unnoticed. You won’t react to it until later, and you still may not be aware of what lies behind your response. You don’t need to be watching a computer screen or TV. You can be lying down with your eyes closed, or commuting to work, or walking through a park or at the beach or lake. By seeing from within your role in being a change master, instead of a change victim, you can literally change your life. That’s the power you have at your command.
We all yearn to shape our own lives, fashion our own destinies. But most of us find ourselves in the same dilemma from our teens onward. How do we really want to spend our days? What choices should we make? What habit changes do we need to make? What can we do that will fill our lives with meaning and bring us the adventure and rewards we are seeking? How do we know we’ve chosen the right career and the proper goals? Who should our role models be today?
This journey begins with pinpointing where you stand today on your career path, not where you wish or hoped you’d be. To know other people takes intelligence. To know yourself takes wisdom. By exploring yourself as deeply as possible, you will expand your opportunities for leading a life of significance and fulfillment. When you know where you are today, you will be able to employ the winning techniques in this course to create a new tomorrow.
Here are some action steps to help you gain more self-awareness, so that you can reach your goal of breaking your invisible barriers and setting yourself free:
Get a journal, if you don’t already have one.
Use it to define your character, as if you had been given an assignment to publish an autobiography of the person you’d most like to become.
Begin by asking yourself and writing your responses to:
“If there were no constraints of money, time, or circumstance, what would I begin doing tomorrow?”
In order to answer that important question, use these other key questions as guides:
What did you love to do as a child?
Are you enjoying your personal and professional life and expressing your talents in a way that is fulfilling?
Write down everything you can think of that is good about yourself.
Make sure you’ve identified your talents and abilities, and your unique personality and character traits.
Write down the important role models, mentors, contacts, springboards, and sounding boards in your sphere of influence.
Put all this in your journal—really make your life and your dreams an open book—and then turn the journal entries into phone calls, texts, e-mails, proposals, applications—and actions!
Schedule a comprehensive physical exam from a reputable clinic at least once a year.
Maintenance of your only transportation life vehicle, your body, is vital.
Don’t wait for the problem to surface.
Engage in prevention.
Also, study the health history of your close relatives. Their predispositions and longevity pros and cons can offer you valuable insights into your own outlook and vulnerability.
Break the daily and weekly routine you have set.
Stretch your comfort zone and get out of that comfortable rut.
Unplug the TV for a month.
Meet some new friends.
Join a positive online community.
Check your knowledge sources as to their validity.
Engage in some different weekend and after work activities.
Make a list of “I Am’s,” two columns: assets or “I Am Good At,” in one column; liabilities or “I Need Improvement” in the other column.
Pick your ten best traits and your ten traits needing most improvement.
Take the first three liabilities and schedule an activity or find a winner who will help you improve in each of the three areas.
Forget about the rest of the liabilities.
Relish and dwell on all ten of your best assets. They’ll take you anywhere you want to go in life.
Look at yourself through other people’s eyes.
Imagine being your spouse or partner.
Imagine being your parents.
Imagine being your child or children.
Imagine being your boss or employee. How do you think each of those individuals would describe you?
Step back from the canvas of your own life and consider the kind of people who are attracted to you and the kind of people to whom you are attracted.
Are they the same type?
Do you attract winners?
Are you attracted to people who are more or less successful than yourself? Why?
Listen for truth and speak the truth. Don’t let the ads and the fads make you one of the countless victims of greed or tunnel vision. When you read something that impresses you, check the source. When in doubt, call the research department of a national publication you trust or call a major university you respect. If it really works wonders, it will be available everywhere, like aspirin. If it’s a breakthrough, look for it to be announced by reputable news authorities and government agencies. Rather than hearing what you want to hear, listen for the facts of the matter. Remember, everything you think is your opinion, based upon your impressions from limited sources. Keep expanding your sources from the best authorities. View everything with a certain open-minded skepticism, to explore it without prejudice, yet skeptical enough to research and test its validity.
Take thirty precious minutes each day for you alone. Use this extra half hour of your life to wake up and live. Use this time to answer the question: How can I best spend my time today on “A” priorities that are important to me? Be completely aware and honest that your life belongs to you and that all that exists in your life is seen out of your own eyes and experienced by your own mind and body. Turn every mental crisis you are now facing into an opportunity for more personal growth.
Question: Think about it over the weekend. If there were no constraints of money, time, or circumstance, what would you begin doing tomorrow?
Action: Enroll in, investigate, research, and begin to pursue something that has been a lifelong dream of yours. It could be a hobby, a home-based business, community service, or a new career path.
The greatest limitations you will ever face will be those you place on yourself.