The Psychology of Winning ~ 10 Qualities of a Total Winner

The Psychology of Winning ~ 10 Qualities of a Total Winner

Quality 1

 Positive Self-Expectancy 

"Life is a self fulfilling prophecy. True winners go into every event expecting to win."

Positive self-expectancy is pure and simple optimism: real enthusiasm for everything you do. And optimism is expecting the most favorable result from your own actions

Winners understand that life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. And they know that you usually get what you expect in the long run. So winners accept the belief that hope and a deep, unbreakable faith — forged into a fundamental attitude of positive self-expectancy — is the eternal spring from which all creative, motivating energy flows.

How often have you expected that something would work and it did?

Now, flip that around, how often did you just absolutely known that something was going to fail – and guess what – it did?

I wish I could go beyond this notion of positive thinking and explain in quantum physics terminology that actual workings of this but, I’m a results person. If it gets results, I don’t always need to know why.

Quality 2

Positive Self Motivation

"True winners dig deep and find motivation inside themselves to get through that tough task or to learn a new skill."

Self-motivation is, in its simplest form, the force that drives you to do things. 

Self-motivation is far from being a simple topic; there are many books, web-pages and articles that attempt to explain self-motivation and some top academics have dedicated their life’s work to trying to understand, model and develop motivation theory.

Self-motivation is a key life skill and something that everybody interested in personal development should think carefully about. It is also a key part of emotional intelligence, one of the three areas of personal skills that are integral to the concept

This may sound straightforward but sometimes your motivation is hidden from your consciousness – your own personal hidden agenda.  Your motivation may well change from hour-to-hour, day-to-day and through life.  As this happens your needs, wants and goals change and evolve.

Quality 3 ~ Positive Self-image

Self-Image - The idea, conception, or mental image one has of oneself. Self-Esteem - Respect or favorable image of oneself (Random House Dictionary)

Self-image is how you perceive yourself. It is a number of self-impressions that have built up over time: What are your hopes and dreams? What do you think and feel? What have you done throughout your life and what did you want to do? These self-images can be very positive, giving a person confidence in their thoughts and actions, or negative, making a person doubtful of their capabilities and ideas.

Surprisingly, your self-image can be very different from how the world sees you. Some people who outwardly seem to have it all (intelligence, looks, personal and financial success) may have a bad self-image. Conversely, others who have had a very difficult life and multiple hardships may also have a very positive self-image.

Some believe that a person's self-image is defined by events that affect him or her (doing well or not in school, work, or relationships.) Others believe that a person's self-image can help shape those events. There is probably some truth to both schools of thought: failing at something can certainly cause one to feel bad about oneself, just as feeling good about oneself can lead to better performance on a project. But it cannot be denied that your self-image has a very strong impact on your happiness, and your outlook on life can affect those around you. If you project a positive self-image, people will be more likely to see you as a positive, capable person.

However, it's important that your self-image be both positive and realistic. Having a self-image that is unrealistic can be a drawback, whether that self-image is negative OR positive. Sometimes having an occasional negative thought or criticism about oneself can encourage change, hard work, growth and success. Sometimes having too positive an image of oneself can encourage complacency, underachievement, and arrogance. Finding the balance between feeling positive about oneself but having realistic goals is important. I think that in order to be a winner, you have to carry a positive self image of yourself because it builds strength. You have to be undetermined and know what you're mind is capable of so that you can reach out and be a successful winner.

Quality 4 ~ Positive Self-Direction

You gotta have direction if you are going to go anywhere. True winners know where they are going. Their sense of direction comes from the self and not from outside influences like parents or friends"

What positive self direction means is to know where you're headed to and how you're gonna get there. When you are a person of character, you know who you are and where you want to go. You’ve already spent a great deal of time thinking about it. You’ve been working on the parts of your personality that will make you better–your attitude, your health, your time-management skills. You’ve been putting it all down on paper. And you’ve developed positive self-direction.

As you talk with yourself every day, how often do you ask, “Is what I am doing today getting me closer to where I want to be tomorrow?” Because here’s what you don’t want to ever do: kid yourself. Kid your neighbor and kid me and kid the marketplace if you want to, but don’t kid yourself. You can’t wait around with your fingers crossed hoping you’ll arrive at a good destination when you’re not even headed in the right direction. You say, “Well, maybe the wind will take me.” There’s a chance, of course, but it’s about as likely as winning the lottery. You’ve got to take charge.

Quality 5 ~ Positive Self Control

Whether you call it willpower, discipline, or self-control, regulating your own impulses--particularly in the face of tempting diversions--is really hard to do.

It’s also something I could stand to work on. Perseverance I have in spades; when I make up my mind to get something done, it will get done. But along the way, I often find myself either standing in front of the open fridge, or realizing, too late, that I’ve lost half an hour of my life to YouTube. Again. 

Self-control is a self-improvement project well-worth working on. Research shows us that kids with greater self-control make more friends, get higher grades, are protected against unhealthy weight gain, and smoke and binge drink less. Over time, a kid’s self-control emerges as more important than things like intelligence, or how much money his family has.  And if you're getting high grades and you smoke less and you drink less then that means you're a CTR person.






Quality 6 ~ Positive Self-Discipline


One of the most important life skills to develop, for those just starting out in life (and everyone else!), is the skill of self-discipline.But if you don’t develop self-discipline, it causes problems: health problems, distraction, procrastination, financial problems, clutter, things piling up and overwhelming you, and much more.

So it’s such an important skill to develop, but most people don’t know where to start. The first question is, how do you even get motivated to start? Most of us don’t want to think about our lack of discipline, let alone take a bunch of actions.

For me, the motivation came from realizing that what I was doing wasn’t working. Ignoring the problems only made things worse. Trying to be disciplined but doing it half-assedly only resulted in me feeling bad about myself. Being wholly undisciplined was causing myself a bunch of pain.

Once you realize that you’re causing yourself pain … you might develop a whole-hearted intention to stop hurting yourself. You might say, “OK, that’s enough with making my life worse. Let’s try to make it less worse.”

With that in mind, you can tell yourself that you are going to:

• Start taking small actions to make things better
• Do the things that hurt you less
• Push yourself into discomfort a little bit, so you can get better at this over time
• Get good at self-discipline with some practice

Keep these things in mind as you practice, as you get the urge to not practice, and as you make mistakes and then want to give up.

Quality 7 ~  Self-Control

Self-control is the ability to control oneself, in terms of having mastery over one’s desires and appetites. Those who are self-controlled can temper what they want, to ensure that they do not over- or under-indulge.

St Thomas Aquinas, a medieval philosophy and theologian, said that self-controlled people were able to ‘preserve their lives’. In other words, they were able to do the right things to keep themselves healthy and happy.

Quality 9 ~  Initiative

Initiative is the ability to be resourceful and work without always being told what to do. It requires resilience and determination. People who show initiative demonstrate they can think for themselves and take action when necessary. It means using your head, and having the drive to achieve.

Initiative is a self-management skill, and self-management is one of five key life and work skills for Young Professionals.

When you use your initiative you do things without being asked, solve problems that others may not have noticed needed solving, and go out of your way to continue learning and growing. You do extra research if required, ask questions, and seek help if you need to.

Quality 10 ~ Intentness

Good intentions are wonderful. It is fantastic to have good intentions in life. They are a brilliant starting block and you can leap ahead from your good intentions and make powerful moves in life. The problem is that intention is not a solitary  concept, it has a best pal and they work really well together. That crucial comrade is called action and good actions should naturally spring from good intentions. If they do not, the good intentions were futile.
Having good intentions without the subsequent good actions is…well, a bit lazy to be honest. It is one big cop out. It means you can have all the good intentions in the world without ever really having to take any responsibility.
We can say, “I had the good intention to do one hour of exercise today. I had the intention to start a new healthy lifestyle plan. I had the intention to go to bed early. I had the intention to search for a new job. I had the intention to cut down on my alcohol consumption. I had the intention to quit smoking.” And so it goes on and on. We applaud ourselves on our good intentions and settle back down into our cosy little routines, feeling soothed by our well-meaning intentions.
Here is the bummer though, those good intentions we had did not matter a jot because we did not do anything about them. The Universe does not think, “Oh well, they had good intentions to live a good life, lets give them a gold star.” It is not quite as simple as that. Intention gets lonely without action, they are soul mates.
There are many individuals who trudge through life constructing millions of good intentions. They have big plans. Hazard a guess at how many of them actually follow those intentions through? I would guess, not very many, because the world is in a bit of a state and it might not be quite so terrible if everyone followed their good intentions through with good actions….