Are You the Gifted One? Do You Have The Mindset of a Champion?

I have found a perfect shortcut to success. It is called hardwork.
Are you a born genius? Are you the gifted one? Do you feel that you have greatness in your soul? Do you have same talents as those of Tiger Woods or Olympic champions?

If your answer is NO, then are you worried about success in life?
If you do not have greatness as a natural gift, you don’t have to worry about success in life. Most, almost all, of the successful people do not have great natural talents. But still they manage to rise to top or be very successful in life.
I am one of those people. Though quite successful, but never felt like a natural-born winner, a genius, an outstanding talent. So are a many of my friends. These are quite successful people, but no one has a really outstanding talent.
How did, then, they managed to be successful? Simply because they were lucky??
I am a great believer in luck. And I have observed that harder I work, the luckier I become.

Take for example Michael M, a well known real character in the internet business. When he started his first job as with a newsletter called "Business & Trade", he hardly knew the difference between business and trade. But he learnt fast. His next business-related position was as editorial director for a publisher in Florida. He had a half dozen freelance writers reporting to him and his job was to edit and polish their work. But he could barely understand what they were talking about: agribusiness and professional practice management and robotics etc. How could he guide the reporters what to write? But again he learnt fast.

How did he do it? He spent hours every evening in the National Library, studying the subjects he was writing about. He never told his boss what extra work he was doing, as he did not want him to know how ignorant he was. He simply worked twice as many hours as the other writers did. And slowly but surely, he began to know what he was talking about. Eventually, he was way better than other writers in the team. He understood the mysteries that had befuddled him as a beginner in business and marketing slowly became clear.

Later, he set out to create and market his own investment newsletter. He recalls, “I was nearly paralyzed with fear. I was not just worried about failing. I was sure I would”. However, his doubtfulness was proven wrong. The publication earned him millions of dollars in its first year and is growing ever since.

About 30 years ago, Michael’s assets had a net value of about $2000/-. Today, he has two multimillion-dollar mansions, have tens of millions of dollars in the bank and brokerage accounts, and interests in businesses with a combined value of more than $20 million. And now he is enjoying his second retirement.

In his words, any one can be successful in life and accomplish amazing things without thinking like a champion or having great natural talents. If one has doubts and fears, he doesn’t have to change his "attitude" to be a winner. Although it is great to have a changed attitude, a mind set of a champion, but if one continues to wait for success till his attitude changes, he will, most probably, wait for ever. Success comes in small steps and with each success, confidence grows. But it is not confidence in self; instead it is the confidence in the process of working hard that really matters.

Years later, when he became very successful in business, people began treating him like a champion. They assumed he had natural born talents that they lacked. He disagrees. He thinks of himself an ordinary person, with ordinary talents. He believes that success can be achieved by every “ordinary” person by following two simple ideas that he followed, which are:

1. If you donot have an abundance of natural talent, you can make up for it by working harder to acquire the skills and knowledge you need.
2. If you don’t have the natural genius to come up with great ideas, you can find out what rich and successful people are doing and imitate exactly what they do.
The point of this article is that you don’t need the mind of a champion to be successful. You need to do only two things: Work harder than all those who are competing with you and imitate the actions of successful people you admire. If you do that long enough, you will have the success you long for. And as a bonus, you will have acquired courage and confidence too.

Courage and confidence in self and own abilities cannot be achieved by mantras or mediation or self-imaging alone. It is achieved by persistent application of hard work and action. If you work hard and smart at anything long enough, you will know success. And with each small success, your mind and heart will grow incrementally braver and more confident.

"I don't believe you have to be better than everybody else. I believe you have to be better than you ever thought you could be."