The secret of success
With the Olympic Games in full flow, behaviour expert Dr Pam Spurr says you, too, could be a winner.
Make Fear Your Friend
Fear makes you feel alive and aware of your environment and that’s necessary if you are to get out there and succeed. If you didn’t feel fear, you wouldn’t rise to a challenge. The secret is to make fear your friend. Listen to what it’s telling you. Treat any fear in the face of a challenge or goal as a friend that helps you target a problem.
Learn to understand your fear because once you know where it comes from you can solve the problem and take one step closer to your goal.
Plan Your Action
No one with a winning attitude ever goes into a challenge without a plan. But the crucial difference between those who succeed and those who fail is that those with a winning attitude know that things don’t always go to plan. So be ready to rethink if something goes wrong.
The secret of success is to ensure you have the flexibility of mind and spirit to come up with new ideas or at least rethink some of the stages of your original tactics.
Understand the Competition
Whoever you are up against – be it a colleague, boss or a partner who wants something different from you – you must make sure that you know how their mind works. Knowledge is a vital secret of winning. The more you arm yourself with information about the person or issue that you are dealing with, the more likely you are to succeed.
Never underestimate the power of knowledge and don’t go blindly into a situation. You can bet the Olympic competitors are very well-informed about their sporting rivals.
There Is No Single Solution
Don’t fall into the trap of believing there is only one way to solve your particular problem. That is the attitude of someone who will lose. There are always many different ways to achieve a goal. The secret is to generate as many solutions as you can think of and then evaluate each one for its possible level of success.
Once you are satisfied you have found what seems to be the best possible solution, go for it
– but remember that ultimately you may need to fall back on one of the other options.
Be Fighting Fit
An athlete would never go into a competition tired, hungry or hungover and neither should you. Even though you’re not taking part in a sporting contest, you need to be fighting fit. This means ensuring that your body is in top-notch condition because this will mean that your mind will be functioning at its best.
Those with a winning attitude know that it is vital to be refreshed and vigorous so that they can respond to whatever is thrown at them.
You can achieve this state of equilibrium by eating well, making sure you have good quality rest and limiting your consumption of alcohol while you are preparing for any challenge.
Visualise Your Success
Whatever you’re striving to win or whatever problem you have to conquer it’s important to embed deep inside your subconscious the belief that you can do it.
Winners achieve this state by visualising their coming success. Take a little time every day to close your eyes, lie back and visualise what you’re trying to do. Really see yourself succeeding. Feel the emotions that go with that. Think through what will come of that success.
Finally, make a note of anything you’ve learned once you’ve done this exercise. Sometimes when you take the time to visualise success you can
see another pathway to it.
View mistakes as a gift
People who succeed and have a winning attitude never crumble in the face of a mistake. They know everyone makes wrong turns.
The key is to learn from your mistake and see
it as a gift that will stop you making that same error again, whatever it was. Sit down and analyse what went wrong and how it can be prevented in future.
Do you need to change something about your attitude or do you need to rethink some of the practical steps in your plan? Carefully going through this procedure will strengthen your resolve to be a success.
Dr Pam Spurr is the agony aunt on MSN.
