Are You Born To Win?

We are all born with the seed of success, and yet as we grow up we seem to be pulled back by the weeds of our self-created limiting beliefs.

If you have everything in you that you need to succeed; what then makes a winner?

At the heart of the matter, lies a deep understanding of yourself and your connection with others. Notwithstanding circumstance, we are compelled towards becoming responsible whole persons.

At first sight, this may seem simple enough; in practice, assuming the life of a self-actualizing person, as psychologist Abraham Maslow defines one, is easier said than done. A mindful effort is required to gain an understanding of what's behind the way we do things. It also necessitates discipline and the courage to hold a mirror unto ourselves, in which we may not like what we see.

We have been taught to evaluate and judge everything we experience. Pretty much without realizing it, we take these beliefs to be the expression of reality, becoming slaves to society's or our own preconceived notion of the way we judge things to be. And often, the road less traveled upon, that of self-awareness becomes forgotten in the recesses of our personalities.

Pretend for a moment that you have been drafted into a play; would you find it odd to not be given a script? Most people would; it certainly doesn't make sense to have a script less play, does it? Does it? Have you realized that life is often like a play, in which we are given free reign to write our own scripts?

This is the hallmark of a winner; the person who defines his own purpose. One who refuses to remain less than what he or she could be, and that contributes to the larger cause by determining to gain a clear sense of self that will be satisfied by nothing less than a win-win situation.

Take Rosa Parks, earlier in her life she recalls going to elementary school, where buses took white students to their school and black students had to walk to theirs: "I'd see the bus pass every day… But to me, that was a way of life; we had no choice but to accept what was the custom. The bus was among the first ways I realized there was a black world and a white world." What giant was awakened within when she clearly determined to not stand up?

Some time after her arrest, she was asked why she decided against relinquishing her seat, her answer was clear, "I would have to know once and for all what rights I had as a human being..." But there's a feeling there's something more; a sense of self-awareness far greater than anything words could express, and that only action would exemplify. Parks once said: "When that white driver stepped back toward us, when he waved his hand and ordered us up and out of our seats, I felt a determination cover my body like a quilt on a winter night."

In life it pays to drink up the 3 Ls...Look, Listen and Learn. To assume nothing and determine the causes of our automatic reactions. That may be the difference between a losing outcome and winning one.