I wrote an article about quotes for winners because winning is important, especially in today’s culture. Nowadays people frown upon the idea of winning. You’re supposed to be modest. You’re supposed to be content (settle for less) instead of chasing your dreams.
Yet, when you look at some of the people we admire most, you understand the connection we have to winning. We love professional athletes because we see what we want to be in them –relentless pursuers of excellence.
Some of us decide we want to adopt the same mentality as these winners. If you’re one of those people, you’re going to need every dose of fuel available to you to get the job done.
These quotes for winners will inspire help you stay the course until you get what you want.
Suffer to Become a Champion
I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion. – Muhammed Ali
I’ve had to learn so many skills I didn’t want to learn so that I could become a full-time writer. But I learned how to do them anyway because they helped me do the thing I loved.
I’m not the type of self-improvement writer that gives you airy-fairy recipes to success. If you want to achieve something important to you, and win, you have to suffer. When it comes to pursuits like building an online business, you have to go through psychological suffering to get it off the ground.
Mostly, this means fighting through boredom and learning how to do tedious tasks. That’s what kills people’s dreams — death by a thousand cuts having to slog through all those menial tasks to get to the gold at the end of the rainbow.
That’s why having a ‘why’ behind your mission is important. It keeps you from quitting and gives you a compelling enough reason to suffer.
Win for the Sake of Winning
“Being the best means engineering your life so you never stop until you get what you want, and then you keep going until you get what’s next. And then you go for even more.” – Tim Grover
Tim Grover, author of Relentless, trained elite athletes like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. The book talks about the relentless attitude these athletes used to become the best in their sports. It’s the most motivational self-help book I’ve ever read.
The relentless attitude applies to any field. Attack your goals mercilessly and never stop. Check one box, create another.
You see this attitude in people like Tom Brady who still works his ass off, maintains a perfect diet, and studies film every day even though he’s won more Superbowls himself than every other team in the NFL.
You see people like this and it might make you think “What’s the point? When is enough going to be enough? Why not be content and happy?” Those are all great questions. I’m not going to persuade you that this attitude is healthy because it isn’t. It’s just the lifestyle certain people choose.
Excellence is addicting. The top of the mountain isn’t all that fun and that euphoria fades pretty fast, but the climb, the grind, is everything. If you’re the type of person who knows they’re meant to be great, a normal life will make you more miserable than a life spent chasing excellence.
Never Accept This Fate
“Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.” Vince Lombardi
Even in the lowest moments of my life, I was never okay with my situation. I never resigned myself to being a loser permanently. When the circumstances of my life made me feel like I was losing, it bothered me to the core.
That frustration helped me change my life. Some people are okay with losing. It doesn’t bug them that much. Sure, they want to change, they’d like to change, but it’s not some huge deal to them if they don’t.
To each their own.
This post is for the people that want to win and hate it when they lose. There’s this idea that you’re only in competition with yourself. Nonsense.
You’re in competition with everyone in your chosen field. You’re in competition with everyone in society.
The scoreboard exists. We all know it. Even if we don’t consciously admit it, we subconsciously feel it. Some people turn to acceptance to find some mental solace — low expectations mean you avoid being let down. Others play the game and rack up points.
Decide which type of person you want to be. Don’t sit in the middle.
This is How You Get What You Want
“If you’re serious about changing your life, you’ll find a way. If you’re not, you’ll find an excuse.” – Jen Sincero
Whenever I want to make excuses for myself, I think of my mentor Jon Morrow. Jon was born with a rare disease that left him paralyzed from the neck down. Most people with his disease only live to be a few years old.
He’s now in his mid 30’s and owns one of the most successful blogging education companies in the world to the tune of multi-millions in yearly revenue. He has to dictate his work instead of typing. Throughout the process of becoming a writer and building a business, he’s had countless surgeries and bouts of extremely painful physical therapy.
Who am I to have a tummy ache about anything in my writing career when my mentor has gone through that? A lot of people with his disease, justifiably, gave up hope on having any sort of meaningful life. Winning wasn’t even in their universe mentally. But John told himself he was going to win even though he had every single reason not to believe in himself.
There’s just something about saying or thinking about what you’re going to do and meaning it. Once you mean it, the universe bends to your will. If you don’t mean it, you’ll let your excuses dictate the course of your life.
To Become a Winner, Pursue Excellence in Every Moment
“Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.” – John Wooden
The UCLA men’s basketball team won 88 straight games and from 1971-73. Their coach John Wooden, had simple yet effective prescriptions for success. Do your best and give full effort, not just in every game, but in every play. Not just in every practice, but in every drill.
Other successful coaches like Nick Saban preach a similar mantra — don’t think beyond the next step, just do your very best and give maximum effort in each moment, then repeat it the moment after that.
Kobe Bryant said that doubt only comes from a lack of planning and practice. If you’ve done everything you possibly can to win, then you’re more likely to be able to deal with coming up short. When you come up short due to a lack of effort, the losses haunt you because you know you could’ve done more but you just didn’t.
So, ask yourself, are you doing your best to become the best you’re capable of becoming? What are you leaving on the table? Do you want to go to the grave with a bunch of unfulfilled goals, a boatload of potential you never used, and regrets over what you could’ve done but didn’t?
Use the answers to those questions to guide future behavior.
How to Combat Fear
“I am lucky that whatever fear I have within me, my desire to win is always stronger.” Serena Williams
I’m afraid all the time.
I’m afraid that the projects I put out will flop and leave me with egg on my face. To this day, part of me still wonders if I really have what it takes to be a great writer. I’ve grown more comfortable with rejection and embarrassment, sure, but the fear of them never totally goes away.
Like Serena, my desire to win tends to outweigh my fears. I always try to think to myself “Seriously, dude, what’s the worst that can happen if you just go for it full throttle?” Usually, the worst-case scenario is nothing more than hurt feelings.
That’s it.
You have to decide whether or not hurt feelings are worth achieving your goals and winning. I’m not saying these feelings are hard to overcome. I honor how difficult they are. Everything worthwhile is tucked underneath the potential for pain. That’s what makes success and victory taste sweet in the first place.
Shoot Your Shot
“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” Michael Jordan
It’s funny how life works. At the beginning of the journey to mastery, you get rejected a bunch of times. After a while, opportunities come your way.
I remember pitching a bunch of different websites and getting no response or a flat-out no. Years later, after putting in the work to master my craft, many of those same websites reached out to me and asked to publish my work.
I’ve launched products that flopped, zero sales. Oh well, just make a new one. I’ve written articles that people hated. Oh well, write another one.
You’re only out of the game when you stop shooting. In basketball, if a player starts having a few bad they go into a ‘shooters slump.’ They start to miss even more shots because they’re afraid to miss. They stop taking shots they’d normally take, which just worsens the problem.
Players like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant would keep shooting no matter what. They knew the shots would fall eventually, but only if they kept shooting.
The kids have a saying “Shooters shoot.”
The more shots you put up, the more risks you take and open yourself up to rejection, the more likely you are to knock a few down. Life is a numbers game. You can’t guarantee success, but the number of attempts increases your odds of success.
So, shoot your shot. You never know what’ll happen.