I was emailing a friend of mine who is a very successful international sportsman the other day. In the email, we were discussing a Formula One race we had both just seen. He asked me this question:-
“You must’ve absolutely loved the race last night. Button was immense, it’s been a while since I’ve seen a comeback of that nature and he even rattled Vettel.
It seemed from the outside that after everything that had happened to him in that race the ‘gloves came off’ and he just went for it as if he had nothing to lose.
While playing I found this a very liberating state to play under and would constantly have to try and coax myself into that state to get myself to play my best *. I found this quite hard. I wonder if you know why?”
I answered with:-
“Button started to play to win, Vettel started to play not to lose.
Button saw winning happening in his mind, Vettel saw losing happening in his.
That is usually Button’s problem.
Getting to this state of play though should be easy as it is our natural state of play. When you used to be in the zone, you were just playing and quite naturally you wanted to win. However, when you weren’t in the ‘zone’ you were trying to cultivate it. This is because you let external bullsh*t in and your ego got involved. Button’s ego was not involved, he was just playing and he was playing to win.
… He was having fun and that’s why we are supposed to play the games – F1, Rugby, Football, Business success – they are all the same. The way to cultivate it is to silence the bullsh*t and just go and play.
This is just creating a state of mind where only playing exists, winning happens if you play well enough… The clue really is in the answer, trouble is people get all confused by themselves and lose track of the simplicity required.”
His response:-
“I don’t want to blow smoke up your arse here but the way you have just explained that is genius!!
I have heard it explained in many different ways, but never in such a simple and straightforward way to understand that actually makes perfect sense and had I still been playing I could see myself implementing this on the pitch.”
Working At It VS Playing At It – The Nature of Success
However, the answer is the same for all successful people, it is trait number one, we successful people are all just playing at it. Success is a game to us and we are playing to win.
People who try to be a success and are trying to cultivate it are working, not playing, as the result is important to them. Cultivating it is necessary for people who have lost touch with their natural success mindset, and I include successful people here too… As we all see amazing professional sportsmen and business people lose their way from time to time.
However, successful people mainly succeed because they are not trying to be successful; they are playing a game to win. Winning is important to us but because we are just playing a game, if we lose then we can start again with no loss of enthusiasm. We don’t like losing, in fact, we hate and detest it, so much so that in a few days we have picked ourselves up and are ready to give it 101% again.
However, people who are only in the sport or business to win… don’t like losing so this dents their confidence. They are playing the game not to lose. They do not realise what we successful people realise, that losing is merely an essential ingredient in winning big.
7 Traits Of A Multi-Millionaire
1. Successful people are playing a game, they are playing to win
Unsuccessful people are playing not to lose. Can you imagine an Olympic athlete making it to the games if they had been playing not to lose? Winners in life always play to win.
2. Successful people have a grand vision. They know what they want, and if they don’t know how they are going to get it, they soon will
I call it a ‘design’ of what they want their life to be like. An unsuccessful person lives without a clear destination or set of destinations. If you ask any unsuccessful person what they want in the future then at best they give you a wishy washy answer… or say something like, “Aaaahh, I don’t really know, I’m not sure, I suppose I’d just like xyz…”
When you ask the same question to a person who is striving to be successful, or a multi-millionaire then their eyes light up and they go into electrifying detail about all the stuff they want and how they are going to get it. You feel inspired to be in their presence as they know what they want. We all like to naturally (i.e. it is in our nature) follow a person who has a map. No one likes to follow someone who doesn’t really know what they want.
3. Successful people accept and are not afraid of losing or failing as they know that it will help inspire them to greater victories
Simply put, they know to use failure as part of their future success. In this process, they transmute failure into success. Unsuccessful people know failure is a bad thing, so it is a bad thing. Successful people merely see it as an obstacle to first get round and then use to help push them forward, so it is a necessary eventual good thing.
Successful people know instinctively that everything, even failure, will help them to eventual victory. Unsuccessful people know that if they have too many failures then they will be forced to give up trying.
4. Successful people have the ability to find solutions
People always ask how did the person ever invent this, or how did they think of that. Usually, things were invented or solutions were born out of the necessity for a successful person’s goal/desire/dream to be achieved. They had their mindset to a point where they could not see their future without the success they envisioned. And in order to get that, then this ‘whatever’ got invented along the way.
Successful people are ‘in tune’ with their subconscious mind so they have access to limitless intelligence. They do this by accident; however, it can be created on purpose once your mind is free of bugs.
5. Successful people have a naturally strong persuasive ability
This is not about selling, it is the ability to be enthusiastic about your vision and what you want to create. It is about having the natural ability to inspire the feelings in others. Why do you think we enjoy watching sports people win? They inspire us with their want to win so much that we will follow them. They don’t know why we follow them but it is for this reason. We love to see them win because we are drawn by their desire to do it. We get to feel great when they win.
6. Successful people have an abundant mindset
They do not see a shortage if they win, they see an abundance and they see them creating more. If a sports person wins something they see the sport growing as a result of their enthusiasm. Their winning and the other team coming second is just part of natural selection, so this is of no concern. They see everyone as winning because they have chosen to play the game.
7. Successful people have a bug free mind
Everyone has bugs in their mind, after they have left childhood it is impossible not to have. But successful people are just people who have no bugs where it comes to the subject of where and how they will become a success. In this area, they have a bug free mind. It is their natural state of mind and the only reason unsuccessful people will not become a success is that they do have bugs in that area.
It is impossible to create success when your mind is full of bugs. The reason so many young people become successful is that the younger you are, then the less bugs you have in your mind. Sports stars are an excellent example. Take a soccer/football star, they can be wonderful on the pitch, but they can be a useless husband, a bad gambler and a poor friend very easily because they have bugs in those areas.
But when it comes to their soccer/football, well there… they are bug free.
These traits and habits were once in every single person on Earth, the only reason people do not have them now is that they allowed rubbish thinking to become their chosen ‘default’ thought process. Our natural default is success, it is not failure! It is in our nature to succeed, it goes against our nature to fail and then give up.
However, with this current system of thought, no amount of new good thinking will solve the problem. Effectively when a person tries to add new good success software into their mind they are loading software onto a computer with a virus.
Which of course means it will never work… The solution is the antivirus for the mind and that is contained in my book “Creating A Bug Free Mind.”
The first five chapters of this book are available to you right now, and what is contained in those chapters alone will change your thinking on its own!… Let alone the other thousand or so tips and techniques which are contained in the remainder of the book.
Get all the details here: A Bug Free Mind Trial Offer
“Successful people have an advantage over others, they are just playing a game, and they are playing to win. Unsuccessful people play not to lose.”
