The Key to Your Own Success Is in Your Mind

The Key to Your Own Success Is in Your Mind

If you view yourself as a failure, you will train or work in the same manner: carelessly and unconscientiously. If you believe you can win, your training will reflect that. What causes people to have either a winning or a losing mindset, and what can be done about it, is the focus of this essay.

In his new book, "177 Mental Toughness Secrets of the World Class," Steve Siebold details his journey toward realizing his goal of becoming a tennis great. He lacked nothing in terms of ability or motivation, but at times he struggled to see himself as a true contender for the title. What he has to say in his writing is:

"I trained like a champion because I thought I could win." "In my time of self-doubt, I exercised like a chump."

As early as age 10, he was already thinking like a champion after defeating practically every opponent he faced. He prepared for victory by doing everything in his power to ensure his success.

He stopped expecting to win as he got older, which led to him training like a loser instead of a winner.

He still yearned for glory, but so do many others. He thinks his confidence in himself, or lack thereof, was the deciding factor.

He discovered that hanging around with people from the "middle class" rather than the "world class" eroded his self-confidence. People in the middle class have a tendency to settle for less than stellar outcomes. The elite in the world are never satisfied until they achieve ultimate success in their chosen field, be it tennis or business.

In elementary school, when I was eleven years old, I put in long hours, paid close attention in class, and completed all assignments with the goal of excelling. Given my performance, the school principal recommended that I be allowed to skip an entire grade.

Something went wrong here. Other students in my class, unhappy that I had skipped a year, began to exert their influence on me. They were calling me names like "swat" and "bighead." Perhaps they are correct, but I doubt it. They weren't the kind of people who valued hard work.

They altered my sense of self-worth to the point that I no longer considered myself a stellar student but rather a strange aberration for my dedication to the task at hand. My motivation and sense of worth both tanked as a result. Remember that the people in your life can have a significant impact on your success. It was only by sheer dumb luck that I managed to ace my finals and gain admission to college.

It took me a long time to learn to trust myself again. Norman Vincent Peale, Frank Bettger, and William James are just a few of the great American positive thinkers who have been an inspiration to me.

Multimillionaire English author Stuart Goldsmith has also contributed significantly to this. In his book "The Midas Method," he describes how we are socialized from a young age to believe that we are destined to always fall short of our full potential.

Once we accept that we have created this barrier between ourselves and our "friends," we will be able to push over it and achieve outcomes that will astound us on a global scale.

Many of our self-limiting views were developed by those who taught us that achieving extraordinary success was reserved for an exclusive few and that our aspirations were unrealistic pipe dreams.

Let's stop listening to the working and poor classes (who aren't even aware that they have the potential to be champions) and start taking advice from the elite of the world. Let's replace our limiting self-perceptions with more positive ones and go to work on realizing our goals.

To accomplish all this, a background in psychology is not required. Using just our senses and some observation, we can figure things out. Books by Steve Siebold, Stuart Goldsmith, and, if I may say so without sounding like a conceited jerk, yours truly can also be useful.

Whether or not you have access to world-class neighbors or friends, you do have simple access to world-class writers and philosophers through the media of books, audio recordings, and video tapes. Of course, the internet has greatly increased that availability.

It's time that you and I both stepped up to the next level and realized the world championship potential that is inside us.