W1NNING

• By: Louis Ochiel
• Date: April 29, 2024

The ability to win is in all of us. For some, it’s the first championship. The first million. The new business. The new house. For others, it’s finishing a workout, or finishing school. Sending a kid to college. Buying that first car. Going a whole day without smoking. Ending a bad relationship. Asking for a raise. Seeing the last open parking space, and grabbing it before the other guy gets there. Making a U-turn and getting away with it. Getting up every day and putting your two feet on the floor.

Winning is everywhere. Every minute, you have the potential to recognize an opportunity, push yourself harder, let go of the insecurity and fear, stop listening to what others tell you, and decide to own that moment. And not just that one single moment, but the next one, and the next. And before long, you’ve owned the hour, and the day, and the month. Again. Again. That’s how you win.

It doesn’t happen all at once. For my athletes, it starts with the first workout in the off-season, builds until the last second of the championship game... and continues into the first workout of the next off-season. For my business clients (who play a harder schedule than any athlete) it begins with an unpredictable array of opponents with no off-season, no playbook, and no clock to stop the action, with unofficial scorekeepers and referees who are constantly changing the rules. For everyone, there are endless setbacks, challenges, roadblocks, letdowns, and issues that force most people out of the race.

But if you can stay with it, if you can survive the battlefield in your mind, if you can tolerate fear and doubt and loneliness... Winning would like a word with you.

Winning is the ultimate gamble on yourself. The difference between dreaming about what could be, and actually living it.