Success strategies: Playing To Win

Success strategies: How well have your success strategies served you over the last year? Have you even got any:  Take a look back at your life over the past 12 months and tally up the scores. How many times did you ‘Win’ at something, and how many times did you ‘lose’? There is a famous quote by Canadian hockey player & coach, Wayne Gretzky, who said: “You Miss 100% Of The Shots You Never Take”. And there is a great clue in there. If you feel you have ‘lost’ more times than you would have liked in the last year, perhaps you need to ask yourself, how many times did you actually Play To Win?

“You Miss 100% Of The Shots You Never Take”. What does that actually mean? Have you ever missed out on something in your life, business, relationship because of the shot you were too afraid to take? Or maybe it means we should never risk taking a shot at anything in case we fail? If someone were to ask you, what is the biggest thing that is is currently holding you back from going all out and Playing to Win? I would hedge a bet that it is Fear of Failure. F-E-A-R- probably the biggest thief in our modern society. Bigger even than Procrastination because it is the causeof us doing nothing with our lives.  F-E-A-R- stealing our dreams before we ever dare to go for them. In case we fail.  F-E-A-R:  F-alse  E-vidence  A-ppearing R-eal.

How many times in life, in business, in our relationships have we bailed out, unprepared to back ourselves, just because we couldn’t be sure we wouldn’t fail? In that moment, our fear of failure has 100% sealed our fortune. We have 100% no chance of winning because we never even gave ourselves the option of playing.

But what if you were wrong, what if you succeeded? Had you planned for that? Do you even have a mental image that you can run that plays out that possibility? Or has your Self-Image so sabotaged your chances of success that you are no longer even in the game? Is Success really so improbable to you that you never bother to even prepare for it, because you do not really believe it can ever be yours?

“Aim for the moon, at least if you miss you will be among the stars”– I don’t actually know who originally coined that phrase but it is so inspirational that I am going to borrow it here because I think it illustrates the point perfectly. Make it one of your success strategies. Your playing small does not serve the world. Play big. Even if you miss 90% of all the shots you ever take, at least you’ll be 110% better off than you would be had you played no shots at all. Sometimes we all need to take charge and start shooting at life, instead of sitting back and trying to dodge the cannon balls life shoots at us. Maybe all we need is a little bit of practice, the guts to back ourselves and put our money where our mouth is. Maybe we just need to change our surroundings, surround ourselves with a back-drop of positve people who are prepared to cheer for the winning side. What is your excuse for not achieving all the goals you have set for yourself this year? No money? No time? No support – Don’t know where to start? You have a choice, and the decision you take today could be the one that determines what your life looks like in 12 months time. Are you going to choose to miss 100% of your shots again this year, or is this the year when you decide you are finally going to change the rules, start shooting on target and Playing To Win?

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