In this book Dr. Beecham, a sport psychologist and leadership consultant, talks about the importance of beliefs and the power of the mind.
It’s really amazing to consider about how much what we think or expect to happen actually influences what does happen in our lives. According to Dr. Beecham, those who win are the ones who not only want to win, but have the intention and expectation to win. Winning, here, is defined not only in context of sports but also in business. Winning might be a promotion, a raise, or just not getting fired.
Beliefs control biology, biology controls behavior, and behavior determines success.
Dr. Beecham has worked with collegiate, olympic and professional athletes, and relates several stories illustrating how the athletes’ perceptions and goals going into their sporting event play a large part in the outcome. Athletes not expecting to win almost never win, and few athletes are going into competition expecting to win. This was a shocking revelation to me.
In order to do your best, you must expect to win.
He also spends a portion of the book talking about failure and how winning (success) cannot exist without failure. You must learn to fail, and learn from failing, to succeed. Take those bad days and learn from them!
Success is not the avoidance of failure any more than life is the avoidance of death.
His recommendation? Take a look at your beliefs, go deep, and answer the question Who am I? Today, present tense. Only then can you consider who you want to be. One exercise is to draw a pyramid, with the largest section at the bottom being “have”, or what things you want to have/possess in life; the middle being “do”, the things you want to do with your life; and the top being “be”, what/who you want to be. An interesting note is that most people these days seem to value their stuff more than their time.
A large section talks about the necessary, the possible, and the impossible. Most people do the necessary, the things that must be done, and consider this the possible. Until you are actually doing, to your full extent, the possible, you will never be able to do the impossible. Once you are doing all that is possible, it is just a short step to do more, what previously may have seemed impossible.
If you are able to commit yourself to doing all that is possible each and every day, a wonderful and marvelous thing will happen to you. You will find what you once thought of as impossible, you now view as possible.