Lead The Field

I've been thinking recently, what is it that separates the 'winners' from the losers, especially at this particular time when Olympic positions are being fought over?

For myself learning to become a 'winner' as such was something that I accidentally discovered around ten years ago. A philosophy I stumbled upon by pure accident, something that was to eventually shape and change my life forever.

Being involved in plenty of martial art competitions over the years, I often asked myself what could I do to separate my students and myself away from the rest of the group? I later discovered my answer to this question quite unexpectedly.

One day out-of-the-blue a strange looking package was delivered to my front door by the postman. I hadn't ordered anything in particular and still don't know to this day how this parcel had come my way.

Looking inside the package I discovered a set of six tapes in-cased within a folder, which were appropriately labelled 'Lead the Field'.

The author was a gentleman named Earl Nightingale. I later discovered that Earl had been described as 'the Dean of personal development' and part responsible for the Nightingale Conant corporation. www.Nightingale.com

Following on from this, I had a 30 day free trial period to listen to these tapes. If I didn't like what I heard I was able to return them with no obligation to pay.

During this time I studied the material and before the thirty days was over I was hooked and decided to purchase the product immediately.

Today, this tape-set is considered as one of the all-time classic motivational programmes and basically outlines a specific set of commonsense principles that anyone can follow.

I eventually started to apply this material over a period of time, which in turn slowly began to change my whole outlook and direction in life.

Looking back, I believe that it was the single most important thing that I did, nothing more would have a greater influence on me than those tapes had done.

Suddenly winning started to become second nature, for both myself and my team. At the same time many positive opportunities began opening up in my life as well.

For many years now people have often asked me about the secret to my success? ( I think that's a great question to ask someone). At first I wasn't sure myself - it just seemed 'too good to be true'.

Eventually I came to realise that it was not luck or coincidence. I started to understand that if I followed certain outlined principles contained within the tapes I would ultimately gain the results - It was as simple as that.

To complete this particular post, you might be asking yourself - what has all this got to do with fighting-fit-at-fifty.

Well, you see, without sounding too-much of a know-it-all, I discovered some very basic truths, which I believe are common place for any level of success.

Whether it's just shedding a few pounds and wanting to feel good about yourself by the age of fifty, or becoming an Olympic Champion - the common principles are basically the same.

As Earl says on the tapes, its all to do with attitude; develop a great attitude, expect great results, have an average attitude = average results, poor attitude, well of course poor results.

This probably all sounds a little too simple, but don't let the simplicity deceive you. Ask any top coach or instructor, If a student has a poor attitude, there's not much you can do to help them in the way of progress.

On the the other hand if an individual has an outstanding attitude - well who knows - watch them very closely - you never know, one day you might find them standing on the winners rostrum 'leading the field'.