You, too, Can Be a Winner

T

he year was 1924. The Olympics were being held in Paris. The award-winning film, Chariots of Fire, portrays the fascinating story of two of the runners, Harold Abrahams, a Jewish student, and Eric Liddell, a Scot. Both were determined to win.

Abrahams was running for his people. Liddell for his religious convictions.

Both gave it everything they had. Both won.

However, they weren't winners because they won. They won because they were winners.

All people are either winners, losers or a mixture of both. But everybody can be a winner if he or she really wants to be.

First, the first principle to appreciate is that winning is a goal. One thing is certain, winners always have a specific goal for which they are striving. To them, winning is the ability to embrace a worthwhile goal and then employ all of their powers for the achievement of that goal.

So, if you want to be a winner, have a specific goal for your life. What do you really want to achieve with your life? Be honest. Make that your goal. Write it down, giving yourself a reasonable time to reach it. Go over your goal every day. Visualize it as having already been reached. Close your eyes and picture it done. This will help get your goal deep into your subconscious mind, where you will unlock the incredible resources of your inner self to help you achieve that on which you have set your heart.

If you believe in yourself
– that you can win –
you can. If you don't, you can't.

Second, winning is a philosophy, and your philosophy, simply put, is your system of beliefs. Among other things, you need to believe in yourself as well as your cause.

If you believe in yourself—that you can win—you can. If you don't, you can't.

As one person put it, "To be ambitious for wealth, and yet always expecting to be poor; to be always doubting your ability to get what you long for is like trying to reach east by traveling west. There is no philosophy which will help a man succeed when he is always doubting his ability to do so, and thus attracting failure. No matter how hard you work for success, if your thought is saturated with fear of failure, it will kill your efforts, neutralize your endeavors, and make success impossible.

You also need to believe in your cause. If you don't, nobody else will either.

Several years ago, Marjorie Jackson, an Australian Olympic runner, was devastated by the fact that her husband had leukemia. She said, "His suffering was terrible and I lost faith in God."

After his death, however, she not only found new faith but also new purpose in life. Describing her experience, she said, "Pete died, and I sat at his bedside holding him. Then a miracle happened, for a great peace enfolded me. I felt the presence of God all around me. I was so calm, I knew that Peter was out of pain, and that he was with God whom he loved and trusted.

"I felt that God had allowed me to share this suffering for a purpose. Then I asked him to show me what I could do."

She began the Peter Nelson Leukemia Research Foundation, which is dedicated to raising funds to help find a cure for leukemia.

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