Have you ever asked yourself, why winners keep winning and losers keep losing? Personally, I started asking myself these questions at a very young age.
Mostly because I wasn’t a popular kid growing up. In fact, that’s an understatement. In the 5th grade, I was voted the most obnoxious and annoying kid in the class, which was difficult. I thought something was inherently wrong with me, when in fact, I just needed more self-confidence and more self-love.
Have you ever asked yourself, why winners keep winning and losers keep losing? Personally, I started asking myself these questions at a very young age.
Mostly because I wasn’t a popular kid growing up. In fact, that’s an understatement. In the 5th grade, I was voted the most obnoxious and annoying kid in the class, which was difficult. I thought something was inherently wrong with me, when in fact, I just needed more self-confidence and more self-love.
Today, I’m happy to say that my life is very different. I’m a published author, public speaker, martial arts and personal development coach, podcast host, and my story has been featured on national media for helping people increase their self-confidence so they can live happy, healthy, and abundant lives.
I want to share six tips with you that helped me change from a person with low self-worth, without friendships, and without hope of ever becoming successful in becoming the person I am today.
I’m hoping these six tips will contribute to your life and to your journey towards becoming the most beautiful version of yourself.
1. Train in Martial Arts
- By far the biggest contribution to my life came from training in martial arts.
- There is something about training on a regular basis that overcomes perceived limitations…
- Martial arts essentially means the feeling of being whole.
- Train your body, mind, and spirit to work together as a beautiful symphony.
- People get stuck in their mind. They wrestle with thoughts, worries, and fears. They may fail to see the broad perspective.
- While the mind is an exceptional tool, it cannot be your master.
- To accomplish this, I personally recommend finding martial arts schools in your area and meeting different martial arts masters.
2. Meditate
One of the most difficult things that you will ever do is just sit with yourself. Since I started training in martial arts at the age of 13, I wondered about meditation. I’ve asked myself, “How can people just sit there?”
It felt useless and impossible for me at the time. Three years ago, I began meditating, and I can honestly say, it has made a huge contribution to my life in terms of self-confidence, mental balance, and having things happen more easily.
- A relaxed state is a wise state.
- In martial arts, the body generates the most speed, power, precision, and stability when it is relaxed, loose, and active.
- A similar process occurs in your life when you allow yourself to become actively relaxed and take things as they come.
- Meditation enables a state of flow, grounded in certainty and wholeness.
- I recommend starting your day with 10-15 minutes of meditation.
- I love to sit on my balcony with my earphones and listen to peaceful music.
Here are two songs that I love to listen to while I meditate:
3. Embrace Failing to Experience Winning
- It’s not always going to be roses and rainbows.
- In fact, you may fail 100 times, before you get one success.
- Of course, you will fail less, the better you get.
- Preparing yourself mentally for failure actually makes the ride easier.
For example, if you expect to get $10,000 at the end of the month, you will tend to spend more. Then, if you receive less than the $10,000 you were expecting, problems arise.
However, if you do your best to get $10,000 a month, but expect to get $5,000 while planning your expenditures accordingly, you will be much better off.
Similarly, if you go to a competition with the expectation that everybody will compete and is working hard to win, you will train harder and will be better prepared for the competition.
Now, this needs to be balanced with the joy of winning and the feeling of fully deserving success, which we will talk about towards the end.
Two common pitfalls to avoid:
- If you don’t expect to win and do expect to lose, you will never begin.
- People expect to win on their first try, and when they don’t, they give up.
4. Learn From the Best
Early on, I made it a personal rule to train and learn from the best, or from somebody who had a natural advantage over me. For example, I would always spar with the biggest and strongest opponents in the martial arts school. Not because I’m masochistic, (laughs), but, because, they were the ones who pushed my limits and offered the best opportunity for my improvement.
- If you’re starting a business, spend time learning from the people who are already successful in that field.
- If you start a new job, spend time learning from people who are the best at your workplace.
Seek knowledge while respecting yourself, your time, and your experience.
- Learn from the best while keeping an attitude of self-confidence and self-respect.
- Don’t be one of those people who complain, sweet talk their bosses, and expect a raise without actually putting in the work.
- Don’t take shortcuts; you want as many opportunities to grow as possible.
5. Take Your Body With You
People read books, take courses, listen to podcasts, but don’t do the work on their bodies. On the other end of the spectrum, there are people who only focus on their bodies and not on building wisdom.
You want both:
- You not only want to learn about self-confidence and taking action, you want to be the embodiment of self-confidence and taking action.
- Learn how to improve your life and your body.
6. Feel Deserving of Success
This is the big one. It doesn’t matter how many techniques you learn, or tips you read about in blogs, what is essential, is how deserving you feel about personal success.
Think of lottery winners. Most lottery winners cannot overcome the scarcity mindset, end up spending their winnings, and then return to their previous lives.
- So, do you feel deserving of success? First, you need to define what success really means to you.
- Then you need to be at peace feeling worthy, deserving, and loving until it becomes your natural state.
- The state of worrying, of not feeling as good as everybody else, or not good enough is not what life is meant to be.
This may feel like a contradiction to what we discussed earlier when I said that you should expect to fail. The idea is simply this:
When something doesn’t go the way you thought it would, or you don’t immediately get the win, have the certainty that by holding a positive, relaxed state while working towards your goal, you are bringing something much better than you initially expected to your life. The desire you had did not come because it would have occupied the space for that bigger, better situation that is coming towards you and will give you more happiness, joy, and fulfillment than you ever expected. You can’t imagine right now what life has in store for you, but if you just keep following your heart with a loose, yet active, state of being, you may get something beyond what you could ever imagine.
I hope this serves you deeply and meaningfully in your journey to becoming the most beautiful version of yourself.
